In:Occupy: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movements
Edited by Luisa Martín Rojo
[Benjamins Current Topics 83] 2016
► pp. 1–22
Occupy
The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movements
Published online: 11 May 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.83.01mar
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.83.01mar
Large-scale protests have recently transformed urban common spaces into sites of resistance. Squares and urban places, monumentally designed as political and economic centres, have been reclaimed as places for discussion and decision-making, for increasing participation and intervention in the governance of the community. Through banners and signs, open assemblies, and other communicative practices in the encampments and interconnecting physical and virtual spaces, participants permanently reconfigure the spatial context discursively. The attempt to account for on-going social phenomena from the moment they first happen, and with an international perspective, undoubtedly represents a theoretical and methodological challenge. This volume focuses on this complex interplay between social, spatial, and communicative practices, drawing on complementary and alternative methods.
References (56)
Basso, Keith H. 1988. ““Speaking with Names”: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache. ”Cultural Anthropology 3 (2): 99–130.
Belli, Simone, and Rubén Díez. 2015. “Una aproximación al papel de las emociones en la nueva ola de indignación global: la ocupación de espacios físicos y no-físicos”. Sistema 239: 83–88.
Besnier, Niko. 1995. Literacy, Emotion and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
. 2013. Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Blommaert, Jan, Jim Collins, and Stef Slembrouck. 2005. Polycentricity and Interactional Regimes in ‘Global Neighbourhoods’. Ethnography 65: 205–235.
Bulot, Thierry, C. Bauvois, and Pierre Blanchet (eds.). 2001. Sociolinguistique Urbaine (Variations linguistiques, images urbaines et sociales). Cahiers de Sociolinguistique 6. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Butler, Judith. 2011. “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street”. Trasversal. Eipcp. [URL].
Calvet, Louis J. 2005. “Les voix de la ville revisitées: Sociolinguistique urbaine ou linguistique de la ville. Dans Signalétique et signalisations linguistiques et langagières des espaces de villes (configurations et enjeux sociolinguistiques)”. Revue de l’Université de Moncton 36 (1): 9–30.
Cárdenas Neira, Camila. 2014. “Inútiles y subversivos: representación transmedia de los estudiantes chilenos en redes sociales”. Romanica Olomucensia 26 (2): 173–190. ISSN 1803-4136.
Castells, Manuel. 1983. The City and the Grassroots: A Cross Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London, UK: Edward Arnold.
. 2011. “Comunicación, poder y democracia”. In #acampadabcn (27/05/2011), Plaza de Cataluña. [URL]
Dang-Anh, Mark, and Michael Eble. 2013. ““Watch out, organize, inform yourself!”: Tracing the Dynamics of Twitter Discourse on Anti-Nazi Street Protests”. Internet Research 14. Resistance + Appropriation. Denver, 23–26.10.2013. Association of Internet Researchers (Selected Papers of Internet Research). Online verfügbar unter [URL].
De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. California, CA: University of California Press.
García Agustín, Óscar. 2015. Sociology of Discourse. From Institutions to Social Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2012. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press.
Gottdiener, Mark. 1994. The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Gutiérrez, Bernardo. 2013. “Prototype 2: The Urban Micro-utopia. Spain’s Micro-Utopias: The 15M Movement and its Prototypes (Part 1)”. [URL].
. 1993. “From Space to Place and Back again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity”. In Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, ed. by John Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, 3–29. London: Routledge.
Hatuka, Tali. 2011. “Designing Protests in Urban Public Space.” Metropolitics. [URL] 14/09/2011.
Heller, Monica. 2005. “Une approche sociolinguistique à l’urbanité. Signalétique et signalisations linguistiques et langagières des espaces de villes (configurations et enjeux sociolinguistiques)”. Revue de l’Université de Moncton 36 (1): 9–30.
Isaac, Larry. 1997. “Transforming Localities: Reflections on Time, Causality, and Narrative in Contemporary Historical Sociology”. Historical Methods 30 (1): 4–12.
Jaworski, Adam, and Thurlow Crispin. 2010. Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London: Continuum.
Kitis, Dimitris and Tommaso M. Milani. 2015. “The Performativity of the Body: Turbulent Spaces in Greece”. Linguistic Landscape 1 (3): 268–290.
Lamarre, Patricia. 2013. ““Catching Montréal on the Move” and Challenging the Discourse of Unilingualism in Quebec.” Anthropologica 55 (1): 41–56.
Landry, Rodrigue, and Richard Bourhis. 1997. “Linguistic Landscape and Etholinguistic Vitality.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16 (1): 23–49.
Lefevbre, Henry. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Edited by N. Brenner and S. Elden. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Martín Rojo, Luisa. 2010. Constructing Inequality in Multilingual Classrooms. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Mattoni, Alice. 2012. Media Practices and Protest Politics: How Precarious Workers Mobilise. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Merrifield, Andrew. 1993. “Place and Space: A Lefebvrian Reconciliation”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers New Series 18 (4): 516–531.
Milani, Tommaso. 2015. “Sexual Cityzenship: Discourses, Spaces and Bodies at Joburg Pride 2012”. Journal of Language and Politics 14 (3): 431–454.
Moustaoui, Adil. 2015. “Resistiendo el régimen sociolingüístico institucional: Nuevas prácticas lingüísticas como estrategias de comunicación en el seno del Movimiento 20 de Febrero en Marruecos”. EDiSo Working Papers. [URL] [accessed 20-01-2016]
Pennycook, Alastair, and Emi Otsuji. 2015. Metrolingualism. Language in the City. London: Routledge.
Potts, Amanda, Will Simm, Jon Whittle, and Johann W. Unger. 2014. “Exploring ‘Success’ in Digitally Augmented Activism: A Triangulated Approach to Analyzing UK Activist Twitter Use”. Discourse, Context & Media, 6 (4): 65–76. ISSN 2211-6958.
Sennett, Richard. 1994. Flesh and Stone: The Body and The City in Western Civilization. London: Norton.
Sevilla, C., Joseba Fernández, and Miguel Urbán (eds). 2012. Ocupemos el mundo! Occupy the world!. Madrid: Icaria.
Shohamy, Elana, and Durk Gorter (eds). 2009. Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. New York, NY: Routledge.
Sol encampment conceptual Map. 2011. Una línea sobre el mar. At [URL].
Sousa Santos, Boaventura. 2002. Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation. London: Butterworths.
Stroud, Christopher. In press. “Turbulent Linguistic Landscapes and the Semiotics of Citizenship”. In Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes, ed. by Robert Blackwood, Elizabeth Lanza, and Hirut Woldemariam. London: Bloomsbury.
Stroud, Christopher, and Dimitri Jegels. 2014. “Semiotic Landscapes and Mobile Narrations of Place: Performing the Local”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 228: 179–199.
Stroud, Christopher, and Sibonile Mpendukana, S. 2009. “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township”. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13: 363–386.
Tickamyer, Ann. 2000. “Space Matters: Spatial Inequality in Future Sociology.” Contemporary Sociology 29 (6): 805–813.
Wallerstein, Inmanuel. 2011. “The Fantastic Success of Occupy Wall Street”. Commentary No. 315, Oct. 15, 2011. At: [URL]; accessed 09/20/2014.
Writers for the 99%. 2011. Occupying Wall Street. The Inside Story of an Action that Change America. New York, NY: PR Books.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Sabaté-Dalmau, Maria
Martos, Isabel Molina
2021. Urban discourse and civil resistance against gender-based
violence in Madrid. In Linguistic Landscape in the Spanish-speaking World [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 35], ► pp. 135 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
