The role of vernacular typography in the linguistic landscape of multicultural Singapore: a multimodal analysis case study of a gentrified street

The art of typography has been receiving a fair amount of attention at the crossroads of linguistic landscape, garnering the interest of sociolinguistics. Technological advancement has pushed typography to the forefront alongside traditional modes of communication. It...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Yam, Angeline Min-Yee
Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174313
https://cumulusassociation.org/resources/conference-proceedings/
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:The art of typography has been receiving a fair amount of attention at the crossroads of linguistic landscape, garnering the interest of sociolinguistics. Technological advancement has pushed typography to the forefront alongside traditional modes of communication. It is therefore no longer viable to limit the analysis of communication modes to just speech and writing but to also consider typography as an important semiotic mode for meaning potential in its own right. This paper attempts to present a case study of analysing the vernacular typography of a gentrified street (Haji Lane) in Singapore through a multimodal analysis approach. The results provided preliminary insights into how Singaporeans through the creative expression of typography and language use, assert their 21st-century multicultural identity alongside the nation's de facto language – English, in a situated gentrified urban environment. The study also contributes to an on-going endeavour of semiotizing typography as a mode for rational explanation.