Discussion published In: Broken: Towards a vulnerability approach to Semiotic Landscape research
Edited by Máiréad Moriarty and Maida Kosatica
[Linguistic Landscape 11:2] 2025
► pp. 198–206
Discussion
Unpacking vulnerability, agency, and resistance
Published online: 7 March 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.25013.fra
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.25013.fra
Abstract
In this paper I seek to bring together the thematic strands discussed by the contributors in this Special Issue
and situate their work in a wider conversation centred around vulnerability. This paper particularly highlights the ways in which
vulnerability is explored, problematised, and resignified across different symbolic, geographical, and embodied contexts,
following the diverse range of spatio-temporal examples put forward by the contributors. Connecting the theoretical and practical
understandings of vulnerability as discussed in the Special Issue, I follow the entangled trajectories explored throughout the
Issue that call for an expanded understanding of a Semiotic Landscape (SL) approach to vulnerability as shared, relational, and
interlinked between people and more-than-human landscapes.
Keywords: vulnerability, semiotic landscape, embodiment, agency, resistance, discomfort, positionality, more-than-human
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Situating vulnerability within theory
- 3.Reclaiming vulnerability as a Topos of agency
- 4.Positionality and vulnerability in research
- 5.Towards an understanding of shared vulnerability
References
References (19)
(2021b). CGS:
Sara Ahmed Book Launch & Panel. UC San Diego (UCSD) Critical Gender Studies
Program. Online talk. 20 October
2021.
(2016). Rethinking
Vulnerability and Resistance. In Judith Butler, Seynep Gambetti & Leticia Sabsay (Eds). Vulnerability
in
Resistance (pp. 2–27). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
(2021). A
conversation with Judith Butler. Open University of Karol Modzelewski. Online
talk. 24 March 2021.
Carter, Claire, Caitlin Jansen & Chelsea Temple-Jones (2024). In Carter, Claire, Caitlin Jansen & Chelsea Temple-Jones (Eds.) Introduction. Contemporary
Vulnerabilities: Reflection on Social Justice
Methodologies (pp. xix–xxxiv). Alberta: University of Alberta Press.
Cole, Alyson (2016). All
of Us Are Vulnerable, But Some Are More Vulnerable than Others. Critical
Horizons, 17(2), 260–277.
Gilson, Erinn (2014). The
Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice. New York: Routledge.
Grosz, Elizabeth (1994). Volatile
Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Theories of Representation and
Difference). London: Routledge.
Kosatica, Maida & Melody Ann Ross (2024). On
the skids. Mediating Anguish, Visibilising Abusive Places. Linguistic
Landscape, 11(2), 172–197.
Moriarty, Máiréad (2025). Embodied
vulnerability. Semiotic Landscapes of Suicide. Linguistic Landscape, 11(2), 156–171.
Moriarty, Máiréad & Maida Kosatica (2025). Broken.
Towards a Vulnerability Approach to SL Research. Linguistic Landscape, 11(2), 111–117.
Motta, Sara (2018). Liminal
Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Tufi, Stefania (2024). Sharing
the Vulnerable Self. LL Constructions of Narratives of Suffering. Linguistic
Landscape, 11(2), 135–155.
Volvach, Natalia (2024). Unsettling
Vulnerability in the Wake of Violence. Linguistic Landscape, 11(2), 118–134.
