Voices in the Linguistic Landscape

Abstract This paper contributes to the emerging analytical framework of anthropo­morphized artifacts as part of Linguistic Landscapes. It describes and analyzes cases where signage, objects, or related inanimate objects are inscribed with language that includes first-person pronoun usage and thus constructs the notion of speakerhood. We analyze a corpus of over 80 such items and provide qualitative analysis that includes structural aspects such as emerging syntactic regularities as well as the prevalence of graphematic and stylistic informality markers. We identify discursive and pragmatic functions that the construction of voice has in the analyzed material. We connect the phenomenon and our findings to theories of anthropo­morphization in general and to current developments in posthumanist linguistics and the uncertain epistemic status of speakerhood more specifically.