Cover not available

Article published In: Gender, Sexuality & Linguistic Landscapes
Edited by Tommaso M. Milani
[Linguistic Landscape 4:3] 2018
► pp. 214–237

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Mothering Brooklyn

Signs, sexuality, and gentrification under cover

 | John Jay College, CUNY
 | John Jay College, CUNY
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.18012.tri
Abstract
This paper examines how Brooklyn retail signage represents how gentrifying women struggle for claiming space in public and the way in which different intersectional identity formations are used and implicated in transforming urban space. In exploring different ethnographic dimensions to retail storefronts, we show how women, many of whom are college-educated, married, and new mothers, play a significant role in redefining Brooklyn and cultural norms of motherhood more broadly. Yet, as newly arriving women emerge as key players in the gentrification project, they experience backlash against their public roles. We explore how women also employ race, inequality, and patriarchal notions of heteronormative sexuality as a cover for their public challenges to patriarchal power. Drawing on visual ethnography, interviews, and digital archival material we argue that the ambiguity of word play accomplishes both the pushing of normative boundaries as well as the protective cover of public meanings.
Abstracto
En este trabajo se examina cómo los letreros de los establecimientos comerciales de Brooklyn representan la lucha de las mujeres gentrificadoras por el espacio público. También se examina la manera en que diferentes formaciones interseccionales de identidad son utilizadas e implicadas en la transformación del espacio urbano. Al explorar varias dimensiones etnográficas de los establecimientos comerciales, mostramos cómo las mujeres (muchas de las cuales tuvieron educación universitaria, son casadas y madres recientes) desempeñan un papel importante en la redefinición de Brooklyn y de las normas culturales de la maternidad en general. Sin embargo, al emerger como actores clave en el proyecto gentrificador, las mujeres recién llegadas experimentan una reacción negativa contra sus funciones públicas. Exploramos cómo las mujeres también emplean la raza, la desigualdad y las nociones patriarcales de la sexualidad heteronormativa como coberturas de sus desafíos públicos al poder patriarcal. Basándonos en etnografía visual, así como en entrevistas, y en material de archivo digital, argumentamos que la ambigüedad de los juegos de palabra logra tanto el empuje de los límites normativos como la cobertura protectora de los significados públicos.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theory, method and two types of Brooklyn signage
  • 3.“New School” mothers, language and gentrification
  • 4.Mitigating gendered public space with word play
  • 5.Discussion: Girls, girls, girls!
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (47)
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (1997). Is there a Muslim sexuality? Changing sonstructions of sexuality in Egyptian Bedouin weddings. In C. Brettell & C. Sargent, (Eds.), Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective, (pps. 167–176). New Jersey, Pearson Prentice Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Agha, A. (2011). Commodity registers. Linguistic Anthropology, 21(1), 22–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Angotti, T. (2011). New York For Sale. Boston: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bellafante, G. (2014). As shopowner, woman sees troubling sides of herself. New York Times, MB1.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Briggs, C. and R. Bauman. (1992). Genre, intertextuality and social power. Linguistic Anthropology, 2(2) 131–172. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, S. (2013). Manhattan and Brooklyn are the two most expensive places to live in the U.S. New York Daily News, April 11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, D. (2018). Cuntroversy: On Samantha Bee and the c-word. Language: a Feminist Guide. June 3. Available from [URL]
Cameron, D. and D. Kulick. (2003). Language and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Florida, R. (2017). The New Urban Crisis. Basic Books: New York.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gonçalves, K. (2018). The semiotic paradox of street art: Gentrification and the commodification of Bushwick, Brooklyn. In A. Peck, Q. Williams, & C. Stroud (Eds.), Making sense of people, place and linguistic landscapes (pps. 141–158). London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gorter, Durk (Ed.). (2006). Linguistic Landscape. Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grant, A. (2016). “I…don’t want to see you flashing your bits around”: Exhibitionism, othering and good motherhood in perceptions of public breastfeeding. Geoforum, 711, 52–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grazian, D. (2007). The girl hunt: Urban nightlife and the performance of masculinity as collective activity. Symbolic Interaction, (30)21, 221–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hackworth, J. (2002). Post-recession gentrification in New York City. Urban Affairs Review, 37(6):815–843. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hill, J. (1998). Language, race and white public space. American Anthropologist, 100(3), 680–689. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hurowitz, N. (2014). Patrick Stewart wants to ban strollers in Park Slope. New York Magazine.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Irvine, J., and S. Gal. (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P. Kroskrity (Ed.). Regimes of language. (pps 35–84). Santa Fe, New Mexico: SAR Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kasinitz, P. (1988). The gentrification of “Boerum hill.” Qualitative Sociology, 11(3), 163–182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lamarre, P. (2014). Bilingual winks and bilingual wordplay in Montreal’s linguistic landscape. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2281: 131–151.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lavine, A. & N. Oder. (2010). Urban redevelopment policy, judicial deference to unaccountable agencies, and reality in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project. Urban Lawyer, 42 (2), 287–373.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lees, L. (2003). Super-gentrification: The case of Brooklyn Heights, New York City. Urban Studies, 401, 2487–2509. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lou, J. (2007). Revitalizing Chinatown into a heterotopia: A geosemiotic analysis of shop signs in Washington, DC’s Chinatown. Space and Culture, 10(2), 170–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mathews, V. (2018). Reconfiguring the breastfeeding body in urban public spaces. Social & Cultural Geography, Available from. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Melnick, L. (2018). The luckiest MILF in Brooklyn. In Roxane Gay (Ed.), Not that bad. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mookherjee, N. (2006). ‘Remembering to forget’: Public secrecy and memory of sexual violence in the Bangladesh war of 1971. JRAI, 121, 433–450.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nerlich, B. and D. Clarke. (2001). Ambiguities we live by: Towards a pragmatics of polysemy. Journal of Pragmatics, 331, 1–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochs, E. (1990). Indexicality and socialization. In J. Stigler, R. Schweder and G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural Psychology. (pp. 287–308), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oldenburg, R. (1997). The great good place: Cafes, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts and how they get you through the day. New York: Marlowe and Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ortner, S. (1972). Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? Feminist Studies, 1(2), 67–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Osman, S. (2012). The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patch, J. (2008). Ladies and gentrification: New stores, residents, and relationships in neighborhood change. Gender in an Urban World, 103–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, D. E. (1994). The value of black mothers’ work. Faculty Scholarship. Paper 830. Available from [URL]
Schlichtman, J. J. Patch, and M. Hill. (2017). Gentrifier. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shaw, K. (2008). Gentrification: What it is, why it is, and what can be done about it? Geography Compass 21, 1–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shohamy, E., E. Ben-Rafael & M. Barni (Eds.). (2010). Linguistic Landscapes in the City. Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shostak, M. (1981). Nisa, the life and words of a !Kung woman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication. 23(3), 193–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, N. (1979). Toward a theory of gentrification: A back to the city movement of capital, not people. Journal of the American Planning Association. 45(4), 538–548. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smitherman, G. (1994). Black talk: Words and phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Snajdr, E. & S. Trinch. (2018). When the street disappears: Eminent domain, redevelopment and the dissociative State. PoLAR, 41(1), 21–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Storey, S. (2007). The Park Slope parent trap. The New York Times. Available from ([URL]).
Susser, I. (2012). Norman Street. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trinch, S. & E. Snajdr. (2017). What the signs say: Gentrification and the disappearance of capitalism without distinction in Brooklyn. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(1), 64–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thurlow, C. & G. Aiello. (2007). National pride, global capital: A social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry. Visual Communication, 61, 304–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wall, G. (2001). Moral constructions of motherhood in breastfeeding discourse. Gender & Society, (15)4, 592–610. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zukin, S. (2011). Naked city: The death and life of authentic urban places. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Trinch, Shonna & Edward Snajdr
2025. Disorienting discourses and the making of gentrifiers in redeveloping Brooklyn. Language & Communication 100 ► pp. 122 ff. DOI logo
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2023. Affective regimes on Wilton Drive: a multimodal analysis. Social Semiotics 33:1 ► pp. 168 ff. DOI logo
Strange, Louis
2023. Ní Saoirse go Saoirse na mBan: Gender and the Irish language in the linguistic landscape of Ireland's 2018 abortion referendum. Language in Society 52:2 ► pp. 215 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 november 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue