This course offers an introduction to official as well as unauthorized discourses of climate change and environmental communication in semiotic landscapes. Combining approaches of multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, social semiotics and linguistic landscape studies, the course aims to encourage students to engage critically with the most recent theoretical frameworks and methods to examine the semiotics of environmental change in public space.
Since environmental issues are found at the intersection of ecosystems and human social systems, we will raise questions like: How is climate change discourse realized in semiotic landscapes? How does it transform urban spaces and, reciprocally thinking, how do semiotic landscapes contribute to our understanding of environmental change? How is environmental change communicated and semioticized by different actors? How can we read environmental discourses in public space? Which semiotic practices and tactics constituting climate change discourse are used in public space? What kind of meaning-making is established by environmental activists? How does environmental activism contribute to discourses of environmental change and sustainability?
To apply the theoretical insights, students will experience hands-on fieldwork as they collect data in urban places. If you cannot be certain about committing to these activities, please do not register for this course.
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