Navigating COVID-19 linguistic landscapes in Vancouver's North Shore: official signs, grassroots literacy artefacts, monolingualism, and discursive convergence

This article describes the changing linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I present an account of the visual representation of change along the area's parks and trails, which remained open for socially-distanced exercise during the province's lockdown. Following the principles of visual, walking ethnography, I walked through numerous locations, observing and recording the visual representations of the province's policies and discourses of lockdown and social distancing. Examples of change were most evident in the rapid addition to social space of top-down signs, characterised mainly by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed in ways that encouraged local people to abide by social-distancing. However, through this process of observation and exploration, I noticed grassroots semiotic artefacts such as illustrated stones with images and messages that complemented the official signs of the provincial government. As was the case with the official signs and messages, through a process of discursive convergence, these grassroots artefacts performed a role of conveying messages and discourses of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.

Automated summary

This article describes the changes in linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, Canada during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author conducted visual and walking ethnography to observe and record the visual representations of the province's lockdown and social distancing policies. The article highlights the rapid addition of top-down signs characterized by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed to encourage locals to follow social distancing measures. Additionally, grassroots semiotic artifacts, such as illustrated stones with complementary images and messages, conveyed messages of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.