Heterotopic Atmospheres on West Street in Quanzhou: A Multisensory Linguistic Landscape of Commodification, Chronotopes, and Cultural Assemblages บรรยากาศต่างวิสัยบนถนนซีเจียในเมืองเฉวียนโจว : ภูมิทัศน์ทางภาษาแบบพหุผัสสะของ การกลายเป็นสินค้า การทำสินค้าให้เป็นอัตลักษณ์เชิงพื้นที่ และการปะติดทางวัฒนธรรม

Main Article Content

Hou Qinnan

Abstract

This study contributes to recent developments in linguistic landscape research by examining  the multisensory and heterotopic features of West Street, a historic commercial area in Quanzhou, China. The research investigates how visual, auditory, and spatial semiotic resources construct cultural atmospheres, shape chronotopic identities, and facilitate processes of commodification and cultural assemblage. The dataset includes 98 images of multilingual signage (Simplified/Traditional Chinese, English, Thai, Uyghur), religious and commercial architecture, graffiti, and 3 ambient sound recordings (silverwork crafting, guqin performance, Uyghur street music). Methodologically, the study combines multimodal discourse analysis, soundscape ethnography, and spatial semiotics, within a framework that integrates heterotopia, chronotopes, cultural branding, and atmospheric urbanism. Findings show that West Street functions as a layered semiotic space, where religious heritage, subcultural symbols, and sensory aesthetics co-produce a commodified and affectively charged atmosphere. These heterotopic assemblages mediate tensions between tradition and tourism, local identity and global imagination. The study highlights the value of a multisensory linguistic landscape approach in understanding how place is staged, experienced, and consumed in contemporary Chinese urban contexts.

Article Details

Section
Articles

References

Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(2), 77–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). University of Texas Press.

Banda, F., & Jimaima, H. (2015). The semiotic landscape of an African public sphere: An. ethnographic study from Zambia. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(2), 153–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.892501

Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Multilingual Matters.

Blommaert, J. (2018). Dialogues with ethnography: Notes on classics, and how I read them. Multilingual Matters.

Böhme, G. (1993). Atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics. Thesis Eleven, 36(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/072551369303600107

Böhme, G. (2013). The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of atmospheres. Ambiances. https://journals.openedition.org/ambiances/315

Cenzatti, M. (2008). Heterotopias of difference. In M. Dehaene & L. De Cauter (Eds.), Heterotopia and the city: Public space in a postcivil society (pp. 75–86). Routledge.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Degen, M. (2008). Sensing cities: Regenerating public life in Barcelona and Manchester. Routledge.

Edensor, T. (2012). Illuminated atmospheres: Anticipating and reproducing the flow of affective experience in Blackpool. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(6), 1103–1122. https://doi.org/10.1068/d12211

Foucault, M. (1986). Of other spaces. Diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648

Gorter, D. (Ed.). (2006). Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism. Multilingual Matters.

Heller, M. (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104951

Hetherington, K. (1997). The badlands of modernity: Heterotopia and social ordering. Routledge.

Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical. study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 23–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X970161002

Lash, S., & Lury, C. (2007). Global culture industry: The mediation of things. Polity Press.

Leander, K. M. (2021). Chronotopic identity work and the semiotic landscape: Tracing literacies across time-space. Literacy, 55(1), 9–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12215

Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. Routledge.

Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. Routledge.

Pink, S. (2015). Doing sensory ethnography (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. Routledge.

Shohamy, E., & Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 313–331). Routledge.

Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S. (2010). Multilingual signage: A multimodal approach to discourses of. consumption in a South African township. Social Semiotics, 20(5), 469–493. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2010.494403

Urry, J., & Larsen, J. (2011). The tourist gaze 3.0. Sage.