Itineraries of protest signage

The pro-democracy occupation of three commercial and retail areas in Hong Kong that lasted over two months in the fall of 2014 – known as the Umbrella Movement – created a myth of Utopia (Barthes 1984 [1954]Barthes, Roland. 1984 [1954]. “Myth Today.” In Mythologies, translated by Anette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.). In this paper, we track the itineraries (Scollon 2008Scollon, Ron. 2008. “Discourse Itineraries: Nine Processes of Resemiotization.” In Advances in Discourse Studies, ed. by Vijay Bhatia, John Flowerdew, and Rodney H Jones, 233–44. London: Routledge.) and resemiotizations (Iedema 2003Iedema, Rick. 2003. “Multimodality, Resemiotization: Extending the Analysis of Discourse as Multi-semiotic Practice”. Visual Communication 2 (1): 29–57. ) of the protest signage to show how they mythologized the Movement by “branding space”, “regulating and disciplining actions”, and “unifying the voice of protest”. We argue that the semiotic processes and effects involved in the emplacement and widespread distribution of the protest signage were not only key in the mobilization during the Movement but also the emergence and reinforcement of a “new” Hongkonger identity in the long run.