Material narration of nostalgia: The linguistic landscape of a rural township in australia

Abstract

The issue of affect in linguistic landscapes has rarely been addressed, especially regarding the material narration of nostalgia in the rural context. In this article, I present an investigation of the linguistic landscape of a rural township in Victoria, Australia to reveal how nostalgia is ordered, narrated and accomplished by means of situated material semiotic artefacts. The study is based on ethnographic data collected through photographs, interviews and fieldnotes. Results indicated ways in which affective regimes draw on multimodal resources to create nostalgic signage for imagination and for consumption. In this light, this study contributes to an understanding of the material aspect of nostalgic affect and, more generally, points to the evocative potential of linguistic landscapes.