"Sometimes artist always anti-fascist" Judith & Nerea
"Sometimes artist always anti-fascist": THE EMERGENCE OF ENGLISH FOR GLOBAL PROTEST AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN LLEIDA.
Street name: Carrer de la Palma
Name of Linguistic Landscape: "Sometimes artists always antifascist"
Multilingual/monolingual: Monolingual
Main Language: English
Neighbourhood: Centre Històric
Activity domain: Urban art
Support/Medium: Graffiti
Type of Sign: Transgressive
Production: Bottom-up (monoglossic)
Authors (Group): Judith Carretero and Nerea Bernadó
Introduction
This project focuses on the use of linguistic landscapes (tokens), public inscriptions, collected by students in the city of Lleida. These, whose term was coined by Landry and Bourhis (1997), was defined as "the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combine to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration." (p. 25)
Later, the concept was further developed by scholars such as Gorter (2006), Shohamy and Gorter (2008), and Backhaus (2007), among others, who investigated the relationship between linguistic landscapes and identity, multilingualism, and social power, that is, LLS were used to explore the communicative inscription that provided demographic, economic and political factors in a society, displayed in language used in public.
The token we chose (figure 1) is a graffiti that states “Sometimes Artist Always Anti-fascist”. We believe the author is Aka Modesto, an artist from Lleida known for painting mattresses from the street, you can check out his Instagram account @akamodesto. A monolingual linguistic landscape with a political message. A transgressive type of sign as a form of resistance and rebellion against fascism, linking it to the political positioning of an arts activist.
Contextualisation
This Linguistic Landscape is located in Carrer de la Palma, 7, 25002 Lleida (Figure 2). It is a narrow street that connects the Carrer Major with Rambla Aragó, among others. Despite being in the commercial district, with many shops, education is the main presence. That is because the Headquarters of the Youth Department, the ILERNA Vocational Training Center and also Leandre Cristòfol Municipal Art School are there. In figure 3 and 4 we can spot the token. It’s one of the most important streets in Lleida due to their abundance of businesses, they are referred to as the "Eix Comercial," which is one of the lengthiest commercial areas in Europe spanning over 4 kilometers. Additionally, the "Sant Joan" square located within this area boasts one of the tallest escalators in Spain. (La Paeria, 2023)
Figure 2. Map of the location. Source: Google Maps.
Carrer de la Palma is a street where art overflows, the author of the graffiti is an artist under the name of Aka Modesto that has done other projects there (figure 5). In 2019, he began painting by taking a stencil workshop. He has worked on his own projects since then, learning various artistic techniques through self-teaching. He has been exploring the world of art and discovering his own artistic style. He is also part of the Promethea collective, a cultural association of artists from Lleida.
Figure 3, 4 and 5. Graffiti and Street Art Work in Carrer la Palma.
Picture taken by the authors in February 2023 and @akamodesto on Instagram.
The artist turned to painting on mattresses as a legal alternative to continue creating street art. This provided a creative outlet for his ideas, including his love for poetry and criticism of the city's waste (figure 6). In the same image, we can see that politics are very involved in his street art showing us his political beliefs and that he is against fascism. Which, like any other ideology, can find supporters in any part of the world, including Lleida, Catalonia.
Figure 6. Graffiti on a matress.
Source: Instagram @akamodesto
Methodology
In order to collect data for this project, we decided to look for linguistic landscapes on our habitual routes, examining them from a social perspective. This informs us about the social consequences of using English for transmitting political thoughts, which is taking roots in cities like Lleida, increasingly globalized and in tune with the world’s policial dynamics.There are many, but when we saw this graffiti, the opportunity of helping the artist to give publicity or raise public awareness on the artistic political movements the are emerging the city, was very appealing.
The photo was taken on the 27th February 2023. And it is directly linked to the political identity of Lleida. With a bottom-up production, it aims to make an impact as graffiti are used to address a message to a wider population. Focusing on graffiti, we noticed that the ones found surrounding area, are written in Spanish, Catalan, and English, among other languages. This helps us understand the multicultural community we inhabit. English is used to attract a more international public.
Spanish and Catalan are both considered to be legal languages in Catalonia, which makes it a bilingual society. Spanish, on the other hand, is the principal state language and a language spoken throughout the world, while Catalan is the minority tongue. Despite Spanish being the majority language in Catalonia, Catalan still holds significant cultural and identity importance. Many signs, labels, and official documents are written in both Catalan and Spanish. Efforts have been made to protect and promote the use of Catalan, including offering bilingual education in schools and promoting its use in official government settings.
According to Blommaert's (2010), English usage in non-native settings, such as in graffiti and street language, illustrates the worldwide dissemination of English as a means of communication between different languages and cultures, resulting in the emergence of novel forms of linguistic and cultural blending.
Results and discussion
We took the values from the European linguistic landscape observatory. http://www.catpaisatge.net/eng/glossari.php
In this paper, the analyzed token "Sometimes Artist Always Anti-fascist" in the Catalan city of Lleida can be associated with multiple values, aesthetic interpretations, and political connotations, and therefore an Englishisation process in the Catalan city of Lleida.
First, it has an aesthetic significance since it is a type of visual art that relies on multimodality, in this case we can see it with the visual display
of text with dots and lines limiting the statement with an ornamental border, looking like a blackboard chalk, since it frequently employs the use of color, composition, and style to produce a visually appealing and expressive picture. It is also noticeable that when doing graffiti, the artist uses a determinate pattern. Also drawing capital letters to indicate strong feelings. He also plays with poetic techniques with an ABAB rhyme scheme that indicates that the initial and third lines “Sometimes” and “Always” of a stanza have the same rhyme, while the second and fourth lines “Artist” “Antifascist” have a different rhyme from each other.
Secondly, by bringing focus to issues that are significant to the neighborhood, graffiti can have political worth. Political problems like police brutality, immigration laws, and environmental concerns can be brought to the public's attention through graffiti. Catalan artists have a tradition of opposing fascism and its ideals, especially during the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist regime. Anti-fascist principles have received more attention in Catalan art and culture in recent years, as artists use their creations to address problems like immigration, nationalism, identity, and support for the Catalan independence movement.
Conclusion
To sum up, studying sociolinguistics and analyzing linguistic landscapes are useful ways to encourage people to become more environmentally mindful while also bringing to light the cultural diversity of language.
We also liked linking the theory that we learned with this practice because it helped us to see and understand it more clearly. Becoming more aware of the language in contact that Lleida has with English and how it has changed the society that we live in.
It is also empowering to be able to get involved as competent observers and knowledge providers, as we can engage more easily with the material that has been taught.
Using new technologies like TKA (Technology of Knowledge Acquisition) and TEP (Technology-Enhanced Pedagogy) have made learning more fun and interesting for us. Employing technology to gain knowledge, and to improve teaching and learning.
References
Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gorter, D. (2006). Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 23-49.
Martín H. (2020, November 23). AKA Modesto: Art al carrer amb matalassos a Lleida. Surtdecasa.cat. https://surtdecasa.cat/ponent/arts/aka-modesto-art-carrer-matalassos-lleida
Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2008). Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. New York: Routledge.
La Paeria (2023) Barris - Ajuntament de Lleida. https://www.paeria.cat/ca/ciutat/coneixer-lleida/barris
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