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Article published In: Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 10:2 (2024) ► pp.136–165

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Semiotic landscape in a green capital

The political economy of sustainability and environment

ORCiD logo with link | University of Duisburg-Essen
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Duisburg-Essen.

Published online: 27 October 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.23016.kos
Abstract
In the wake of the ‘climate apocalypse’ global discourse, the environmental agenda of the European Green Deal and the overarching objective for the European Union are to deliver a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. European cities are under pressure to reinvent urban environments and develop resilience to environmental risks. This paper looks at semiotic material appearing in Essen, a city in Germany awarded the European Green Capital title. Grounded in the multimodal social semiotic approach and ecolinguistics, the paper investigates strategically emplaced ‘green’ semiotic material which shape environmental values and privilege. The paper illustrates the political economy of city clean-ups which every so often result in questionable environmental choices and fail to alleviate social inequalities. The analysis ultimately shows how semiotic forms of sustainability are evidently implicated in the creation of urban eco-arenas accentuating the socioeconomic stratification and privileges of valorized places.
Zusammenfassung
Im Zuge des globalen Diskurses über die „Klimaapokalypse” besteht die Umweltagenda des Europäischen „Grünen Deals” und das übergeordnete Ziel der Europäischen Union darin, ein hohes Maß an Umweltschutz sowie eine Verbesserung der Umweltqualität zu erreichen. Die europäischen Städte stehen unter dem Druck, ihre urbane Umwelt neu zu gestalten und Widerstandsfähigkeit gegenüber Umweltrisiken zu entwickeln. In diesem Sinne befasst sich die vorliegende Studie mit semiotischem Material im öffentlichen Raum Essens – einer deutschen Stadt, welcher der Titel “Grüne Hauptstadt Europas” verliehen wurde. Basierend auf Erkenntnissen der multimodalen Sozialsemiotik und der Ökolinguistik, untersucht dieser Beitrag strategisch platziertes ‚grünes’ semiotisches Material, das Umweltwerte und Privilegien formt. Dabei wird die politische Ökonomie der Stadtaufwertungspraktiken beleuchtet, die immer wieder zu fragwürdigen ökologischen Entscheidungen führt und soziale Ungleichheiten nicht reduziert. So zeigt die Untersuchung schließlich, wie semiotische Konstitutionen von Nachhaltigkeit in die Schaffung von städtischen Öko-Arenen involviert sind, welche die sozioökonomische Stratifizierung und die Privilegien der aufgewerteten Orte akzentuieren.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Inventing Green Cities: The political economy of sustainability and environment
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Saving German(y) cities
  • 5.Making (up) the green
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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