The Semiotic Landscape in Nuuk, Greenland Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi School of Slavonic and East European Languages, University College London Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom and Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University BOX 636, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden [[email protected]] Lily Kahn Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom [[email protected]] Abstract This paper explores the semiotic landscape in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The connection between images and choice of language in both public and private signs is analysed in relation to the function of the signs, Greenlandic culture, history and politics, and the space where the signs, notices, and advertisements are displayed. The data was collected in May 2017. The focus is on signs depicting the sun, polar bears, and people. The use of the images and the choice of languages reveals centralising, reclaiming, localising or even transgressive tendencies in the civic frame, the school system, the community, the marketplace, and on the walls of social housing. The data also shows the importance of English in the global marketplace (tourism and shipping), the tertiary education system, and graffiti. The Greenlandic language is firmly in the centre in almost all contexts, but Danish appears in the civic and community frames and in the marketplace for practical reasons. Introduction Greenland has been under the Scandinavian sphere of The purpose of this paper is to study the semiotics of influence since the Middle Ages. Protestant both public and private signs in the linguistic landscape missionaries from Denmark and Norway started moving of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The topic is to the country in the 1600s, and Greenland became a important in the endangered languages context because Danish colony in this period. In the 1900s there was a Greenlandic is a statutory national language with a shift from a traditional fishing and hunting culture to a vigorous language use according to the Ethnologue money economy and consumerism; this has been classification (Simons & Fennig, 2017) and thus a followed by a revival of Greenlandic culture (Stenbaek, success story in the minority language context. Second, 1987). Greenland remained a Danish colony until 1979 although the language of signs and notices has been when it was granted Home Rule. The Home Rule Act studied in the minority language context (e.g. Puzey, granted official status to the Greenlandic language 2008; Cenoz & Gorter, 2006; Coupland, 2010; (alongside Danish). Greenland achieved a greater level Moriarty, 2014a, 2014b; Pietikäinen, 2014) there are no of political autonomy in 2009, when Home Rule was previous studies on the linguistic or semiotic landscape replaced with Self Rule. At this time Greenlandic in Greenland. Third, the combination of semiotics and became the only official language. However, in practice sociolinguistics, i.e. the relationship between the the country remains fully bilingual with Danish. Danes discursive modalities of language, image and space, is who live on the island work as tradesmen, academics, an emerging field with which the current paper is teachers, and administrators. They constitute around engaging (e.g Jaworski & Crispin, 2010; Jaworski, 12% of the population (Central Intelligence Agency, 2015). 2017). English is a prominent third language. Approximately 50,000 people in Greenland and The Danish name for Nuuk was Godthåb. The Danish Denmark speak West Greenlandic (Kalaallisut). government moved people from small rural coastal Greenlandic is an Eskimo-Aleut language and closely settlements to the capital in the 1960s in an effort to related to Inuktitut in Canada. It is a polysynthetic impose a modernising and urbanisation agenda on the language with a rich system of suffixes. Greenlandic has Danish colony; this created the first truly urban many Danish loanwords (e.g. palasi ‘priest’, femten Greenlandic environment leading to rapid growth and ‘fifteen’, juulli ‘Christmas’). impacting the traditional way of life (Grydehoj, 2014). Godthåb was renamed Nuuk in 1979, and it now has 1 approximately 17,000 inhabitants. Although tourism has with political, economic, and trade power. The been a key priority for Greenland since 1991, the sector periphery is the opposite. Globalisation interferes with shows slow growth due to prices, accessibility, and the local dynamics between languages. Our study of the extreme conditions (Kaae, 2006). semiotic landscape in Nuuk will take into consideration the question of how central the Greenlandic language is Research questions within this context and how it relates to Danish, the This study seeks to explore three key questions. First, former colonial language, Danish, as well as English, what imagery is used in government and road signs, the global language. commercial signs (brands) and community signs in Nuuk, Greenland? Second, how do the images relate to Method the linguistic elements in the signs? Third, how do the Our study is qualitative and explores the non-linguistic images relate to Greenlandic culture and the space they aspects of signs and the interaction of these images with are in? the languages used in the signs, on one hand, and the built environment and society, on the other hand. Theoretical framework According to Kallen (2010: 43) the spatial domains in Traditionally the term ‘linguistic landscape’ refers to the which the semiotic landscape can be divided into are: 1) languages of official signs (e.g. traffic signs, street the civic frame (space governed by the state), 2) the names, government notices), private signs (e.g. shop marketplace (the world of commerce), 3) portals (e.g. names, private business signs, personal ads) and graffiti airports, banks, internet cafés, TV channels), 4) the wall (Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Gorter, 2006; Shohamy & (graffiti and posters), 5) the detritus zone (rubbish on Gorter, 2009). These signs have both an informative the ground and in bins), 6) the community (social clubs function and a symbolic function (Landry & Bourhis, and leisure), and 7) the school. Our paper excludes 5) 1997), i.e. they are used both to convey information and the detritus zone but visits all the other spaces. to promote certain types of ideologies. In more recent studies, the concept of linguistic Data landscape has been expanded to include other Our data was collected during a fieldwork trip 8 May – modalities, such as food packaging, notes, discarded 23 May 2017 in Nuuk and its suburbs Nuussuaq and items, and moving signs on buses or t-shirts, in addition Qinngorput. The data set of 90 images was collected to to other elements, such as the non-linguistic aspects of study the linguistic landscape in Nuuk (see Valijärvi & signs (e.g. Jaworski & Crispin, 2010). This dynamic, Kahn, in progress) but here the focus is on constantly mediated multimodal linguistic landscape semiotics,specifically images depicting the sun, polar gives space its meaning and interacts with the built bear, and people. The selection has been made because environment (Moriarty, 2014a). the themes in question recur in a number of different contexts and zones. Their prominence and cultural Semiotics refers to the study of signs (e.g. Sebeok, significance point to a particular importance within the 2001; Chandler, 2017). There are some recent semiotic landscape of Nuuk, which is worthy of sociolinguistic studies that are particularly relevant for analysis. our approach. For example, Papen (2015) has studied the linguistic landscape and the semiotics in Berlin. She noted the ‘aesthetization’ and commodification of Analysis commercial signs and the use of English in the fields of fashion, food, and tourism. Furthermore, Papen The sun observed that signs in green colour are associated with a The Greenlandic flag, which was officially adopted in green lifestyle. Together with urban street art, these 1985, is divided into two horizontal bands of white (top) green signs add to the trendiness of an area. A second and red (bottom). There is a circle in the middle where relevant study for our paper is Jaworski and Thurlow’s the colours are reversed: white at the bottom and red on (2010) article on travel posters for the super-elite top (Figure 1). The white symbolises ice and the red is tourists They have analysed the representations of the sun. Moreover, white and red are also the colours silence both in the images and in the accompanying text. used in the Danish flag, and as such the Greenlandic Abousnnouga & Machin (2010) have gone even further flag evokes close associations with the colonial power. and analysed the semiotics of war monuments and the Despite this prominent link, it is important to note that ideologies behind the choice of images therein. Greenland is the only Nordic country or territory that does not have the Nordic cross in its flag. Theoretically, we rely on the notions of centre and periphery. In minority language contexts there is a constantly negotiated dynamic process of centralising and peripheralising norms and ideologies (Kelly- Holmes, 2013, Pietikäinen, 2013; also Grydehoj, 2014). The centre is dominant and advanced, and associated 2 Figure 1: Greenlandic flag This image is a prominent feature of the semiotic landscape of Nuuk, appearing on numerous signs in a Figure 3: Graffiti inside social housing block variety of different contexts. For example, on the wall of a social housing block in Nuuk we can see an image The language of the social housing motto is Greenlandic of the sun accompanied by the words tatiginninneq as it is a domain for the colonised, i.e. only ‘trust’ and asanninneq ‘love (Figure 2). It is important Greenlandic-speaking people would be likely to live in to note that the sun symbol in this case draws explicitly these blocks. The language of the transgressive graffiti on the imagery of the Greenlandic national flag, as it is is Greenlandic and English; this suggests that the writers framed by a blue ocean underneath and a white sky are attempting to place themselves within an above.