Diasporic Landscape: A Geosemiotic Analysis of Greekness in Johannesburg
Date
2023-03
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
After a number of waves of immigration of Greeks from Greece, Cyprus, and the established Greek diaspora in Egypt, South Africa is home to a sizable Greek community – concentrated in Johannesburg – that has established its own cultural identity in the country and left indelible traces of Greekness in the semiotic landscape of the city. In this dissertation, I explore the discursive, multimodal processes employed to inscribe Greekness – the quality of being of Greek heritage – in the city of Johannesburg. The overarching aim of this study was to analyse how members of the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg negotiate and perform their Greek identity and how Greekness is inscribed in various spaces in the city. In particular, it aimed to answer the following research questions: (i) How are certain spaces in the city of Johannesburg materially constructed as Greek spaces?; (ii) How is Greekness semiotically constructed?; and (iii) How is this constructed Greekness experienced by social actors, in the context of a European diasporic community in Johannesburg, a city in the Global South?. Empirically, this linguistic/semiotic landscape study made use of multimodal data, in the form of ethnographic field notes, photographs of signs, interviews, and newspaper articles, which were analysed within Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) geosemiotics framework. Previous works by McDuling (2014) and McDuling and Barnes (2012) have examined the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg from a sociolinguistic perspective, with a focus on language shift and maintenance. This study differs significantly in approach, shifting the focus from language use to an analysis of the signs used to assert and inscribe Greekness in Johannesburg, thereby drawing this subject matter into a linguistic landscape study of the diaspora In the empirical chapters of the dissertation, I used geosemiotics as a methodological toolkit to analyse several themes that arose from my data. First, I analysed the role food plays in inscribing Greekness in Johannesburg through an analysis of the Greek foodscapes in the city, such as Greek restaurants and supermarkets, as well as the food-centric elements used in other Greek spaces to communicate Greekness. I then introduced the concept of syncretism as a term that can be applied in a semiotic sense, to describe the ways in which signs and symbols from various, sometimes incompatible, aspects of Greek history and identity are deliberately displayed side-by-side in a space and operate in aggregate to communicate homogeneous and ‘authentic’ Greekness. Finally, I took a ‘semiotic approach’ (Van Leeuwen, 2001) to authenticity and analysed how authenticity in the Greek diaspora is semiotically constructed both visually and aurally in Greek spaces in Johannesburg. This study argues that the Greek diaspora in Johannesburg seeks to construct spaces in the city as recognisably and undeniably Greek, deliberately distinguishing themselves from the rest of the city, including other South Africans and other diasporas, by using a constellation of multimodal and multisensorial signs to convey a sense of homogeneous Greekness. The types of signs that are used to inscribe Greekness are all linked to the desirability – and by extension superiority – of Greek culture, heritage, and history. Thus, the ways in which Greekness is inscribed by the diaspora in Johannesburg rely on a process of self-exoticism (cf. Iwabuchi, 1994).
Description
A thesis submitted to the School of Literature, Language and Media, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in 2023.
Keywords
Semiotic landscape studies, Linguistic landscape studies, Diaspora studies, Greek diaspora, Johannesburg, Food, Food studies, Syncretism, Authenticity, Sociolinguistics, UCTD
Citation
Vratsanos, Alyssa Vida Castrillon. (2023). Diasporic Landscape: A Geosemiotic Analysis of Greekness in Johannesburg. [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace.
https://hdl.handle.net/10539/38987