"Amor libre - Fuck Homophobia!"

 



“AMOR LIBRE, Fuck Homophobia!” 

Sociolinguistics in our city, opening our eyes to new language meanings.


Sandra Silvestre & Laura Ortiz





1. INTRODUCTION


By carrying on this project it is understood that sociolinguistics is everywhere, and it helps us open our eyes, be more critical, and search for new meanings and an alternative view of local and global languages in contact and in competition in the streets. The key of this initiative is understanding the relationship between the city's language insights and how society and languages are connected, as well as its influence on the citizens. For example, wall paintings and graffiti are a huge part of our street surroundings, and they affect our behavior by evoking a response or some reflection.

Actually, we believe that this project highly encourages students because we are able to learn and better understand the uses and meanings of various public local and global languages through multimodal signs in Lleida City, with an emphasis on Englishization.

To start with, our Linguistic Landscape corresponds to graffiti; our token was found by looking and walking through the streets of our city, Lleida. As it is graffiti, it belongs to the activity domain of urban art and its type of sign is transgressive. It corresponds to bottom-up (non-official) language policy because it was produced by an individual or a small group (unknown).

We believe that this graffiti could have been done in two steps, as the lettering and the material used to create it are not the same. As it is seen, it stands with the independent expression "amor libre" (free love), and next to it there appears "fuck homophobia"; two concepts that are perfectly linked due to the fact that the meaning to be transmitted is stronger if both messages are put together.

Our LL token is written on a street’s wall, it is urban art (graffiti), and it is written in Roman script. Moreover, there exists multilingualism because there appear two languages: Spanish and English. There are the same number of words written in both languages, but we believe that may be Spanish could be the matrix language because it is more visible and noticeable to human eyes; the part written in English ("fuck homophobia") seems to us to be the secondary language because of the fact that it is written in a tinier and less appealing style. 


2. CONTEXTUALISATION

Our token is located in Carrer Lluís Companys, 22 (see the location in figure 2), extremely close to the "Teatre Municipal de L’Escorxador de Lleida ''. It is a modernist building from 1918 that is nowadays a cultural institution. The "Teatre de l'Escorxador'' is a place where dramatic art studies take place; interesting interpretation workshops and monographic courses are also offered in this space. 

Moreover, there is a park very near in which young children play during the day,  and also a spot in which some teengaers meet in the afternoon. Neighbors from different cultures meet there and there is plenty of cultural diversity. It is near Mariola, a neighbourhood in which the majority of the population is constituted of gypsy people as well as immigrant people. Additionally, it is also close to Ronda where the majority of the families in the area are from the working class. We can see some more graffiti in the area with different languages that demonstrates the multicultural society of the city and particularly in that specific zone (Castillo, Q. 2020).

Figure 1: LL location in Lleida. Source: screenshot taken from Google Maps, 19/03/23. 


Figure 2: Surrounding and signaling of the token location. Source: picture taken from Google Maps, 19/03/23. 

Figure 3: Street view of the token’s surroundings. Source: picture taken from Google Maps, 19/03/23. 


3. METHODOLOGY

In order to start with, our group made 3 fieldwork visits in order to analyze and collect all the necessary data for a major comprehension of the LLs and the surroundings as a means to have a more general view of the token and the area itself. 

The first visit was made by Laura the 6th of March in the afternoon because she is from that neighbourhood and it is an area that she passes through every day. She knew that in that specific spot where teenagers meet there were some potential LLs, but she only observed the different graffiti. In the second visit, made on March 7th, both of the members of the group attended, after observing the different urban art they finally selected our token and took the photograph of the linguistic landscape at 11:18. The third visit was the 8th of March, the aim of it was to collect information in order to obtain a general idea of the languages spoken in that part of the residential area. 

As mentioned before, our token is located in Lleida, Catalonia, and autonomous community of Spain. It is a bilingual territory and the two official languages are Spanish and Catalan (Estatut d’Autonomia de Catalunya, 2016). Because Catalan is the “vehicular” language of Catalonia, it has to be prioritized in all forms of formal communication (signs, posters, street name plates…) in Catalonia (Ajuntament de Lleida, 2014). In relation to the LL token and according to top-down language policies in Catalonia and Lleida, this particular token (graffiti) is not legal because as stated by Chapter III "Contaminacions Urbanes," Title I "Visual”, law 40, graffiti and paintings without legal authorisation are prohibited. (La Paeria, 2003).

In terms of the linguistic context of our LL token, we gathered information on; the other LLs of the area, the languages heard around the zone and the different forms of formal communication. In the first place we could observe some other graffiti in the area in different languages including Spanish (familia garcia libertad) , Catalan (llibertat presos politics)  and some Arabic words (عدالة). [justice]

They had different meanings but what they had in common is that they all expressed a message of political and social exclusion protest. This once more demonstrates the multicultural society of the area. In the second place, as we have explained previously, one of the objectives of the third visit was to collect information about the languages heard around our token. The wide majority of the people passing by our token spoke Spanish, we also listened to some people talking in Catalan and finally we were able to recognize a family talking in Arabic. Moreover, in the area we could appreciate some traffic signs in Catalan (figure 4) near the LL. We can conclude that it is a multilingual area frequented by people of different cultures although the majority uses Spanish as their matrix language.



 Figure 4. Traffic sign. 


4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 5. Linguistic language token - “Amor libre, Fuck Homophobia!”. Source: Picture taken by authors.


To start with, landscapes have both material and immaterial features. They offer us a variety of products and services, but they also play a significant role in our identification as they contribute to our natural, social, political, religious, and cultural heritage (Landscape values and perceptions, 2016). In sociolinguistics, the material part is not what interests; its aim is to see beyond the material. Consequently, in order to the values of the European Linguistic Landscape Observatory (2023) our LL token involves two values or functions to be analyzed: aesthetic and identity.


Firstly, it involves an aesthetic value because, although it seems really simple; this token transmits transgressiveness in terms of the font and style chosen for the whole token. Furthermore, it is visible a heart instead of the letter "o" in the word "amor," which makes the graffiti more appealing and sentimental for those who read and appreciate it to easily receive the message. “Amor libre” is drawn in orange in order to be more appealing and recognisable as it is a bright colour; it also includes a heart instead of the letter “o”, which represents love. Furthermore, “Fuck homophobia!!” includes exclamations marks to transmit orality and emphasize the transmission of the message, a cry against sexual orientation discrimination.


Secondly, there exists the presence of an identity value. This token meaning is to feel free to love whoever you want while putting aside humans' gender, preferences, and sexuality identification. It is a message that goes from open-minded, liberal, and flourishing minds to a part of our society that seems to have retrograde, disrespectful, and narrow-minded thoughts. This token fights against discrimination and exclusion towards those people who like other people of the same gender as they are (homosexuals/bisexuals). It is both a local sexual orientation freedom identity (written in Spanish) and also a global one, aligning with the general world protest movement against exclusion. In this sense, the use of English has the aim of internationalizing and modernizing the movement; homophobia is something that occurs all around the world. (The Landscape Observatory of Catalonia, 2005.).



5. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The principal aim of this project was to analyse the different languages surrounding our city and our perceptions on it. In addition, we have learnt that Lleida is not only a multicultural city but also a multilingual one, and there are some languages in contact due to the mixture of the local and the global languages. In order to follow with, Englishisation has had a huge impact on society, as its language and culture can be seen more introduced in our society. In our opinion this project has helped us to be more aware of the Englishisation of Lleida, commercially and also urbanly. Teenagers employ English as a tool for transmitting an international message. 

Moreover, when you give the students the opportunity to localise linguistic landscapes in their own city, they are able to apply all the previous knowledge acquired in class. Having the students as “knowledge generators” makes them more engaged with the project and more interested as they feel empowered taking part in the research with the fieldworks visits.

To carry on this project we have used innovative pedagogical tools in the language course: a Google Map map (Technology of Knowledge Acquisition) to provide an overview of the different LL tokens of Lleida and an entry on a Blogger blog (Technology of Empowerment and Participation), in which the selected token will be presented and analyzed (Sabaté, 2022). 



6. REFERENCES

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