- Central District, Hong Kong
Adam Jaworski
The University of Hong Kong, School of English, Faculty Member
The grapheme and symbol x has been documented as relatively indeterminate and polysemic (e.g. Gale, 2015). Yet, various typographic, orthographic and other design choices make it particularly salient in the contemporary semiotic... more
The grapheme and symbol x has been documented as relatively indeterminate and polysemic (e.g. Gale, 2015). Yet, various typographic, orthographic and other design choices make it particularly salient in the contemporary semiotic landscape. The paper starts by outlining briefly the history of the changing uses and associations of x in different areas of social life. This is followed by discussion of the typographic and orthographic salience of x, emphasizing its unique, unsettling, and 'foreignizing' effect on displayed language. The paper concludes by linking the salience of x with a global verbal-visual register that I have called 'globalese' (Jaworski, 2015a), and by briefly pointing to its origins in the typographic experiments of avant-garde art.
CITATION DETAILS: Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2015). On top of the world: Tourist’s spectacular self-locations as multimodal travel writing. In J. Kuehn and P. Smethurst. (eds), New Directions in Travel Writing Studies. London:... more
CITATION DETAILS:
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2015). On top of the world: Tourist’s spectacular self-locations as multimodal travel writing. In J. Kuehn and P. Smethurst. (eds), New Directions in Travel Writing Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2015). On top of the world: Tourist’s spectacular self-locations as multimodal travel writing. In J. Kuehn and P. Smethurst. (eds), New Directions in Travel Writing Studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Research Interests: Semiotics, Visual Studies, Tourism Studies, Visual Anthropology, Globalization, and 13 moreMaterial Culture Studies, Social Anxiety, Critical Discourse Analysis, Visual Communication, Cultural Capital, Social Semiotics, Discourse and Society, Tourism, Airline Industry, Profitability, Cutural Studies, Visual Discourse, and Elites Studies
... Silence in the Classroom 281 Page 10. T a b le 1 P re d ictin g silen ce in th e cla ssro o m u sin g m u ltip le reg resssio n an a ly ses D ep en d en tv ariab les P red ictor R eg . S tats S tu d en t silen ce T each er S ilen ce V... more
... Silence in the Classroom 281 Page 10. T a b le 1 P re d ictin g silen ce in th e cla ssro o m u sin g m u ltip le reg resssio n an a ly ses D ep en d en tv ariab les P red ictor R eg . S tats S tu d en t silen ce T each er S ilen ce V alu e of silen ce R u ral S ch o o l In n er-city sch oo l ...
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Oxford University Press (https://global.oup.com/) 2015, xix + 274 pp. (figures, references, index), Price £25.99. ISBN: 978 0 199 398980. What do tourists do in tourist spaces? They leave traces. Some may say that the main trace of... more
Oxford University Press (https://global.oup.com/) 2015, xix + 274 pp. (figures, references, index), Price £25.99. ISBN: 978 0 199 398980.
What do tourists do in tourist spaces? They leave traces. Some may say that the main trace of tourists' activities is their carbon footprint. For others, it may be the contribution to the local economy, or it may be the millions of photographs of tourists shared through social media. For Chaim Noy, it is the linguistic inscriptions left behind by museum-goers in the visitor book at Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site in Jerusalem. Ammunition Hill is located at the site of a battle between Israel and Jordan during the Six-Day War. The battle was won by the Israeli forces, with a loss of thirty-seven soldiers and twice as many Jordanians. Nearly 1,000 Israelis and up to 15,000 Arabs were killed during the entire war. Originating as a site commemorating the Israeli victims of the war, Ammunition Hill has established itself as one of the spaces of nation-building with a strong Zionist ethos, alongside other heritage sites in Jerusalem—the Western Wall and Yad Vashem. The approximately 200,000 Ammunition Hill visitors are almost exclusively Jewish: school tours, individuals and groups visiting Jerusalem from other parts of Israel and abroad, and local residents, predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish families. Ammunition Hill is a site where different authenticities are produced through the choice of the site itself (the place of the actual battle with its remaining military installations) and a wide range of physical and discursive artefacts, including armory, a sculptural installation featuring the names of the 182 fallen Israeli soldiers, maps, paintings, photographs and original or photographically reproduced handwritten notes, signatures, letters, and signs. This cursive landscape establishes a specific linguistic ideology that authenticates, individualizes, and humanizes the site through the associations of handwriting with spontaneity, immediacy, and literacy. Recontextualizing these apparently banal textual artefacts as museum exhibits, encased, enlarged and enshrined, turns them into secular relics indexing the hands of the military personnel that wrote them as well as that operated the guns used in the War. The cultured acts of handwriting mitigate the inhuman acts of killing. They are at once holy and heroic. Apart from gazing, reading, listening to tour guides, touching (e.g. the remaining bunkers and trenches), and walking about the site, the handwriting exhibited in the museum prefigures another mode of consumption of Ammunition Hill by its visitors—their own writing in the museum's visitor book. Although not unique to this site and dating back to the emergence of visitor books at the aristocratic, European collecting institutions and museums in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the invitation for the visitors to inscribe their names and reflections in the museum's visitor book creates a coherence in the way the museum is experienced as a site of consumption and production of the ethno-national narrative of remembrance and unity.
What do tourists do in tourist spaces? They leave traces. Some may say that the main trace of tourists' activities is their carbon footprint. For others, it may be the contribution to the local economy, or it may be the millions of photographs of tourists shared through social media. For Chaim Noy, it is the linguistic inscriptions left behind by museum-goers in the visitor book at Ammunition Hill National Memorial Site in Jerusalem. Ammunition Hill is located at the site of a battle between Israel and Jordan during the Six-Day War. The battle was won by the Israeli forces, with a loss of thirty-seven soldiers and twice as many Jordanians. Nearly 1,000 Israelis and up to 15,000 Arabs were killed during the entire war. Originating as a site commemorating the Israeli victims of the war, Ammunition Hill has established itself as one of the spaces of nation-building with a strong Zionist ethos, alongside other heritage sites in Jerusalem—the Western Wall and Yad Vashem. The approximately 200,000 Ammunition Hill visitors are almost exclusively Jewish: school tours, individuals and groups visiting Jerusalem from other parts of Israel and abroad, and local residents, predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish families. Ammunition Hill is a site where different authenticities are produced through the choice of the site itself (the place of the actual battle with its remaining military installations) and a wide range of physical and discursive artefacts, including armory, a sculptural installation featuring the names of the 182 fallen Israeli soldiers, maps, paintings, photographs and original or photographically reproduced handwritten notes, signatures, letters, and signs. This cursive landscape establishes a specific linguistic ideology that authenticates, individualizes, and humanizes the site through the associations of handwriting with spontaneity, immediacy, and literacy. Recontextualizing these apparently banal textual artefacts as museum exhibits, encased, enlarged and enshrined, turns them into secular relics indexing the hands of the military personnel that wrote them as well as that operated the guns used in the War. The cultured acts of handwriting mitigate the inhuman acts of killing. They are at once holy and heroic. Apart from gazing, reading, listening to tour guides, touching (e.g. the remaining bunkers and trenches), and walking about the site, the handwriting exhibited in the museum prefigures another mode of consumption of Ammunition Hill by its visitors—their own writing in the museum's visitor book. Although not unique to this site and dating back to the emergence of visitor books at the aristocratic, European collecting institutions and museums in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the invitation for the visitors to inscribe their names and reflections in the museum's visitor book creates a coherence in the way the museum is experienced as a site of consumption and production of the ethno-national narrative of remembrance and unity.
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CITATION DETAILS: Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2017). Mediatizing the “super-rich,” normalizing privilege. Social Semiotics, 27(3): 276-287. ABSTRACT: The argument we make here is a straightforward one: constant news-media coverage of the... more
CITATION DETAILS: Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2017). Mediatizing the “super-rich,” normalizing privilege. Social Semiotics, 27(3): 276-287.
ABSTRACT: The argument we make here is a straightforward one: constant news-media coverage of the excessive lifestyles and consumption patterns of the so called " super-rich " normalize their extreme privilege, while obfuscating the privilege of many others. We examine a series of typical news stories (" print " and " broadcast ") together with examples of popular books to show how the mediatization of the " super-rich " is ambivalently organized through a mixture of celebratory and derisive stances. In tandem with the logics of capital and the tenets of consumer culture, these lurid spectacles fuel a complex mix of anxiety and desire among target readers-viewers, while absolving us from responsibility for our own relatively and seemingly modest excesses. We are invited also to defend ourselves on the grounds of superior judgement and taste.
ABSTRACT: The argument we make here is a straightforward one: constant news-media coverage of the excessive lifestyles and consumption patterns of the so called " super-rich " normalize their extreme privilege, while obfuscating the privilege of many others. We examine a series of typical news stories (" print " and " broadcast ") together with examples of popular books to show how the mediatization of the " super-rich " is ambivalently organized through a mixture of celebratory and derisive stances. In tandem with the logics of capital and the tenets of consumer culture, these lurid spectacles fuel a complex mix of anxiety and desire among target readers-viewers, while absolving us from responsibility for our own relatively and seemingly modest excesses. We are invited also to defend ourselves on the grounds of superior judgement and taste.
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CITATION DETAILS: Thurlow, C. & Jaworski, A. (2017). Word-things and Thing-words: The transmodal production of privilege and status. In J. R. Cavanaugh & S. Shankar (eds), Language and Materiality: Ethnographic and Theoretical... more
CITATION DETAILS: Thurlow, C. & Jaworski, A. (2017). Word-things and Thing-words: The transmodal production of privilege and status. In J. R. Cavanaugh & S. Shankar (eds), Language and Materiality: Ethnographic and Theoretical Explorations (pp. 185-203). New York: Cambridge University Press.