The writing on the wall: The Umbrella Movement, language and revolution

Abstract

‘The urban space of the street is a place for talk, given over as much to the exchange of words and signs as it is to the exchange of things. A place where speech becomes writing. A place where speech can become ‘savage’ and, by escaping rules and institutions, inscribe itself on walls’ (Lefebvre, 2003:19). Hong Kong’s on-going protests are repurposing urban space. The city is being (re)imagined, realised and inscribed on walls. In this paper I examine how this emplacement constitutes civil disobedience, resistance and revolution. Following Lefebvre (1991; 2003), I analyze posters from the occupied zones, considering space/place as a semiotic and linguistic achievement with the myriad of social, political and cultural undertones, sometimes reinforcing one another and sometimes contradicting and competing with one another. I will make the case for an emerging ‘HongKonger’ identity within the blurring of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Chinese rule—a case for resistance and ‘localisation’ in the on‐going ideological differentiation of Cantonese, Putonghua and English (Johnstone, 2010; Gal and Irvine, 1995). From the semiotic change of the chosen character for umbrella (遮) to a revolution in the dynamic use of urban space, I conclude by comparing the Umbrella Movement to notions of language-in‐motion and the sociolinguistics of mobility (Bloomaert, 2010), asking what the ‘Urban Revolution’ and the Umbrella Movement might tell us about the artefactualisation of language in the production of space.