Linguistic landscape as mediational means of collective action: a nexus analysis of Covid signs in China

Abstract Signs as Linguistic Landscape (henceforth LL) data not only reflect social phenomena but also instigate social action. This paper documents governmental signage in the pandemic and investigates how LL reflects historical and sociocultural conventions, shapes people’s understanding of pandemic life and contributes to regulating public behavior. Expounding the three dimensions of ‘nexus analysis’, i.e. ‘interaction order’, ‘historical body’ and ‘discourses in place’, this paper reveals that LL serves as mediational means to afford the government’s collective action of calling for unity and obedience in a time of national crisis. By highlighting materiality, emplacement, and historical and sociocultural connotations, this paper pinpoints mediated actions and cycles of discourse in the Chinese context at the critical time of Covid. The ‘interaction order’ is analyzed according to social relationships behind sign usage, ‘historical body’ embraces the previous histories of not only people but also their habit of using signs while ‘discourses in place’ form semiotic aggregate with the help of multimodality and materiality.