Interviewed by Nicky Runge

 

Could you tell me a little bit about your research? How did you start out, and how did you get where you are now?

I did my BA and MA at Uppsala University and obtained my PhD at Stockholm University in the Centre for Research on Bilingualism. This was also where I stayed and did research for my Postdoc. As for my research, I am mostly interested in peoples’ ideas regarding language, communication and other sign-making activities. I investigate these topics through studying language politics, linguistic regimes and graffiti writing.

Before I joined the Society of Fellows in the Humanities here in Hong Kong, I focused on minority language politics and studied language activism in a rural community in Sweden. Within this community, people speak a local non-standard Scandinavian language called Övdalsk, which has become a topic of research as it raises questions over how the Swedish and European authorities deal with language policy. A lot of people are questioning the revitalization, promotion and/or official recognition of the Övdalsk language spoken by this Swedish minority. There are linguists studying the language while simultaneously becoming involved in the activism surrounding the recognition and policies of Övdalsk. I looked at the engagement between these two camps from the late nineteenth century up until the present period, conducting an ethnographic study from a historical linguistics perspective.

I was also involved in a side project that looked at graffiti from a linguistics perspective, which is how I got in touch with a number of linguists from the University of Hong Kong who are working on similar topics. The first time I came to Hong Kong was in 2015, for a conference hosted at HKU called Language and Globalization. Here, I met some of the sociolinguists at the School of English and we stayed in contact to discuss related subjects about language policies, the study of silence and the linguistic regimes dealing with these issues. Now that I am back as a Fellow, I am continuing my work on linguistic regimes and language policy.

In which way is your current research related to Hong Kong?

At the moment I am writing a paper that looks at graffiti from a semiotic perspective, for which I’m mostly interested in the semiotics of non-existence. I look at the different ways in which language can be silenced. When it comes to graffiti, there are different tactics for policing, erasing and simply covering up pieces; often the smallest traces remain and are still somehow visible to the public. Nonetheless, it’s hard to study the erasure of graffiti, as sometimes pieces do get destroyed and/or erased entirely. I am currently collecting visual material in Hong Kong for my research, which is not only meant to exhibit the subtle traces and remnants of removed graffiti pieces in the city, but also looks at the anti-graffiti signs and language regimes which are at play in regulating public space and the architecture of the city.

You’re also interested in mobile semiotics. How do you relate this to your work on graffiti and language policy? 


I use mobility as a semiotic device to look at a certain type of train graffiti called backjumps. The term refers to any fairly detailed graffiti work which is painted on trains, often during the period where the trains have reached their final stop in terminal stations. On the Stockholm metro, for example, there is a strong anti-graffiti policy in which graffiti is quickly removed from the trains, minimizing its public visibility. Alongside cleaning, there are also a range of strategies implemented to discourage anyone from spraying graffiti at all. Backjumps are primarily mobility-driven, allowing graffiti writers to briefly subvert the imposed semiotic regime through quickly creating their work before the train leaves again. As trains pass along different stations taking different routes, the graffiti becomes mobile and visible to a wide audience. In this sense, the concept of semiosis becomes inseparable from the idea of mobility.

You can visit David’s HKU Profile here, and some of his recent academic publications are available here.

 

Published on: December 3, 2018 < Back >