Rethinking Athens as Text: The Linguistic Context of Athenian Graffiti during the Crisis

Authors

  • Georgios Stampoulidis Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University

Keywords:

Athenian Graffiti, Crisis, Semiotics, Multimodality

Abstract

The Athenian graffiti functions as a testament of creativity and artistry occurring during the hard times of socioeconomic and political crisis in Greece the last seven years. The impact of Greece's crisis is unavoidably presented through urban art in downtown Athens. This extensive street art practice on Athenian walls as a linguistic and imagery line is approached in this work via the semiotic and multimodal perspective, as the main symbolic and representative expression generated by the crisis, contributing to the production of visual urban culture. Fieldwork research was conducted in Athens from January to July 2015. The findings of the qualitative analysis highlight that politicized wall writings constitute a modern wall language, expressing social and political messages produced mainly via text and image, reconstructing the wall slogans and murals as the fundamental means of sociopolitical reaction.

Author Biography

Georgios Stampoulidis, Centre for Languages and Literature Lund University

Georgios Stampoulidis received his Bachelor degree in Greek Language and Literature from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Throughout his undergraduate studies his main concern was the investigation of language and its intercommunication functions in public sphere through sociolinguistics and semiotics perspectives. He received his Master degree in Language and Linguistics with specialization in Modern Greek from Lund University in 2016. His Master's thesis project was an illuminating experience detecting how wall language contains some level of political and social commentary and communicates strong messages in the political scenery of each time period.

References

Avramides, K. (2012). Live your Greece in Myths: Reading the Crisis on Athens’ walls. Professional dreamers working paper 8:1-17. http://www.professionaldreamers.net/_prowp/ wp-content/uploads/Avramides-Reading-the-Crisis-on-Athens-walls-fld.pdf (retrieved 2015/02/14).

Chaffee, Lyman G. 1993. Political Protest and Street Art: Popular Tools for Democratization in Hispanic Countries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Crimp, D. (2005). Pictures. X-TRA. 8(1): pp. 17-30.

Gee, J. P. (2014). An introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. 4. Edition, London: Routledge.

Goutsos, D. & Polymeneas, G. (2014). Identity as space Localism in the Greek protests of Syntagma Square. Journal of Language and Politics, vol. 13:4, John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 675-701.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. Baltimore, Maryland: University Park Press.

Hodge, R. & Kress, G. (1988). Social Semiotics. New York: Cornel University Press.

Hodge, R. & Kress, G. (1993). Language as Ideology. London: Routledge.

Kalogiannaki, P. & Κarras, K. (2013). Glossa ton tixon. Athens: Gutenberg Editions.

Kitis, D. (2011). The subversive poetics of a marginalized discourse and culture. In E. Foust and S. Fuggle (eds.), Word on the street. London: IGRS Books, Goldsmiths Research Online, pp. 53-70, http://research.gold.ac.uk/6286/ (retrieved 2015/03/17).

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design. London: Routledge.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.

O'Halloran, Kay L. (2008). Systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA): constructing ideational meaning using language and visual imagery. Visual Communication. vol. 7, 4: pp. 443-475.

Sonesson, G. (2010). Pictorial semiotics in Seboeot, T.A. & Danesi, M. (eds.), Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics (third revised and updated edition). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Sonesson, G. (2013a). New Rules for the Spaces of Urbanity. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp 7-26.

Stampoulidis, G. (2016). HOPE WANTED. Wall Writing Protests in times of Economic Crisis in Athens. Lund University, Sweden.

Stewart, J. (2008). Graffiti vandalism? Street art and the city: some considerations. UNESCO Observatory, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne Refereed E-Journal, vol.1, (2), pp. 86-107.

Stewart, J. (2009). Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970s.

The Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, 2005; (www.oed.com retrieved 2015/03/11).

Tsarouhas, D. (2005). Explaining an Activist Military: Greece until 1975. Southeast European Politics VI, no. 1, pp.1-13.

Tulke, J. (2014). Aesthetics of Crisis. Street Art, Austerity Urbanism and the Right to the City. Institute of European Ethnology at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/7746246/Aesthetics_of_Crisis._Street_Art_Austerity_Urbanism_and_th e_Right_to_the_City (last access: 2016.03.30).

Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2008). Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory, and Methodology, pp. 1-33.

Downloads

Published

2016-05-31

How to Cite

Stampoulidis, G. (2016). Rethinking Athens as Text: The Linguistic Context of Athenian Graffiti during the Crisis. Journal of Language Works - Sprogvidenskabeligt Studentertidsskrift, 1(1), 10–23. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/lwo/article/view/23430

Issue

Section

SSK - Sprogvidenskabelig Studenterkonference