Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 769–773

Book review

Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World

Ron Scollon, Suzie Wong Scollon, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, $27.95,
xiii þ 242 pages, paperback

Ours is an Information Age. However, few of us have ever stopped for a moment to think
that information, as represented by a system of signs, including icons, symbols and indexes,
will never exist independently unless it is placed in the concrete and material world. This is
because all signs, no matter what category they happen to fall into, share a common
property of indexicality, through which the abstract meaning of a sign is turned into the
actual and lived world meaning. It is this very property of the indexicality of signs that
constitutes the substance of this fascinating and path-breaking book called Discourses in
Place: Language in the Material World by Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon. They
develop, on the strength of prior work of a wide range of disciplines such as semiotics,
linguistic anthropology and social psychology, the ‘‘first systematic analysis of the ways
we interpret language as it is materially placed in the world’’ (p. xi). This new line of
academic inquiry into the meaning systems that situate or ground language in this social
and material world of ours is termed geosemiotics by the authors. With regards to their
preference of geosemiotics over geolinguistics, the authors note that the latter is suggestive
of the sustenance of language as the focus of the study, while in fact it is ‘‘those sign
systems’’ outside of language in the world that are their primary concern (p. 111).
Discourse in Place: Language in the Material World is divided into 10 chapters. By way
of introduction, Chapter 1, ‘‘Geosemiotics,’’ provides an overview of the key conceptual
and notional frameworks of the emerging discipline of geosemiotics, serving as a point of
reference for the following chapters in the volume. The authors begin their arguments with
a close-up view of the relation between discourses, including signs, structures and place,
that is the social and material world, and how they relate to the purpose of this book. Stating
in no vague terms, the authors point out that the main concern of the book is ‘‘the study of
the social meaning of the material placement of signs and discourses and of actions in the
material world’’ (p. 2). With this title it follows quite naturally that the major task of the
book is to make sense of the ‘‘in place’’ meanings and discourses in this social and physical
world. Following on Charles S. Peirce’s (Hanks, 1990, 2001) concern with indexicality, the
authors claim that indexicality is the prominent property of signs, especially language, in
the sense that both signs and language index the world. However, it is the ‘‘indexable
world’’ rather than indexicality in language that is given the focal attention in the book. A
‘‘grammar’’ of indexability, or more precisely, the three major systems of social semiotics
that involve the interaction order (including speech, movement, gesture, etc.), visual
semiotics (including images, photographs, texts, etc.), and place semiotics (including
architecture, urban planning, working engineering, etc.), is then established as the means

0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2004.03.005
770 Book review

by which language or discourses are anchored in any form of social action. Hence the three
main systems of geosemiotics, which will be taken up in detail from Chapters 3 through 9.
Deriving from this are the four elements central to our understanding of social actions from
a geosemiotic perspective, namely social actor, interaction order, visual semiotics and
place semiotics.
As indexicality is a key property of language and all signs and the focus of geosemiotics,
Chapter 2 is devoted to an extended discussion of it. After exploring the relationship
between icons, indexes and symbols, the authors pin down the importance of indexicality
as a ‘‘lived, real-time process by which meanings are made’’ (p. 41). Although there are
many aspects of indexicality, the authors primarily consider three major indexicals:
demonstratives and deictic adverbials (such as this, that, here, there), personal pronouns
(such as I, you, he), and tense and time adverbials (such as now, then).
Chapter 3 focuses on the interaction order, the indexicality embodied in human bodies,
in the tradition of Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1983). Drawing on the pioneering work of
Edward T. Hall (Hall, 1959, 1969) on nonverbal communication but with a shifted focus on
indexicality and the ideas of Goffman (Goffman, 1959, 1963) on frontstage and backstage,
the authors elaborate on the ways human beings enact social performances as social actors
in relation to others to elicit meanings through the four main semiotic resources: the sense
of time, perceptual spaces, interpersonal distances, and personal front (pp. 45–47). By way
of illustration, the authors also give a brief introduction to the 11 types of interaction units
that emerge from the work of sociologists and social psychologists.
While Chapter 3 is devoted to the embodiment of discourses in the human body, Chapter
4 is particularly concerned with ‘‘disembodied expressions of body’’ as they are repre-
sented in images and signs all around us in the physical and real world, which, in part,
constitute the major interests of what Kress Gunther and van Leeuwen Theo (1996) term as
visual semiotics (p. 64). Complex as Kress and van Leeuwen’s ‘‘grammar’’ of visual signs
is, close attention is paid only to its four main systems as they are particularly relevant to
the interpretation of meanings couched in pictures and texts: represented participants,
modality, composition, and interactive participants.
Now that a solid foundation of analysis has been laid in terms of interaction order and
visual semiotics from Chapters 2 to 4, the authors turn their attention in Chapter 5 to the
central issues of geosemiotics, especially place semiotics or the ‘‘study of the material
world itself and the places that language finds in it’’ (p. 111). This provides the substance
for Chapters 6 through 8, with each focusing on one element of place semiotics, viz. code
preference, inscription, and discourses in time and space.
In places across the world where two or even more languages are used in road signs,
advertisements, logos, etc., there will be a choice of codes. A case in point is Hong
Kong, where the choice of codes or orthographies (English vs. Chinese, Traditional
Chinese vs. Simplified Chinese) is self-evident in many of its busy streets and shopping
malls. Underlining this choice of codes are the complicated systems of code preference
which index the geopolitical and socio-cultural world in which we live and work.
Employing the slightly modified analytical tools of basic information structures in the
sense of Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), the authors in Chapter 6 analyze the working
mechanism of code preference system as shown in a number of bilingual or multi-
lingual signs.
 Book review 771

Chapter 7 takes up the issue of inscription, which according to the authors is used to
cover ‘‘all of the meaning systems that are based on the physical materiality of language
(but also other code systems) in the world’’ (pp. 129–130). That is to say, inscription would
include a wide range of meaning systems associated with the representation of language or
other codes in the non-human world. That this apparently all-encompassing system of
inscription is certainly beyond the scope of the present book leads the authors to limit their
discussion to only four of them: fonts (letterforms), materials, layering (through add-ons or
extensions), and state changes.
In Chapter 8 the authors come to the most fundamental issue of geosemiotics:
emplacement. Where is language or any other sign placed in the concrete and material
world? Nothing seems to matter more than this question. And answers to this question seem
to vary from culture to culture and people to people. Resisting the temptation to make a
‘‘broad and binary contrast’’ between the various regions in the world, the authors point out
that the most essential consideration is ‘‘whether or not discourse in place is socioculturally
authorized’’ (p. 145). With this, the authors proceed to classify three general emplacement
practices: decontextualized semiotics (signs that appear in ‘‘multiple contexts but always in
the same form,’’ such as brand names and logos), transgressive semiotics (signs that are out
of the place, or ‘‘in the ‘wrong’ place’’, such as graffiti), and situated semiotics (signs or
notices that play a role of regulation in the physical world, such as an exit sign) (pp. 145–
146). That the latter one among the three semiotics ‘‘is shaped by and shapes’’ the world we
live in makes it the ‘‘heart’’ of geosemiotics (pp. 22, 146). Adopting an interesting
anecdotal example of the decontextualization of the name and logo of Hang Seng Bank
over a weekend, the authors also consider the interactions among geosemiotic systems and
suggest that there is a ‘‘dialectic’’ among the four sub-systems of semiotics: a text vector
system, a construction system, a preference system, and an indexicality (situated/exophoric
or decontextualized) system (p. 157).
While Chapters 4 through 8 are oriented towards the discussion of visual semiotics,
Chapter 9 explores the interface of the interaction order and the built environment which
serves as social interaction milieus. Examining the different ways that discourses organize
the material world, the authors argue that ‘‘there is a dynamic tension between the
centrifugal forces by which discourses distribute themselves across time and space and
the centripetal forces by which discourses converge in time and space to form semiotic
aggregates’’ (p. 168). Hence there are two points of view, the centrifugal and the
centripetal, from which discourses in time and space can be perceived.
The tenth and final chapter concludes the volume with a perspective on human action
which, argue the authors, arises out of the intersection of the following elements: the social
actor and his or her habitus, the interaction order, the visual semiotics and the place
semiotics. Then the three fundamental principles of geosemiotics are reiterated: indexi-
cality (signs index the world), dialogicality (‘‘all signs operate in aggregate’’), and
selection (‘‘any action selects a subset of signs for actor’s attention’’) (p. 205).
When we are reading this lucid and brief introduction to a new discipline called
geosemiotics, we cannot help but be impressed by the authors’ flair for spotting what
always goes unnoticed and what is always taken for granted in this concrete and material
world. All of sudden we realize how meaningful and significant the material and physical
world around us is. The world is as it always is. The pictures and snapshots the authors
772 Book review

present to us are, rather than the premium pictures purchased at a dear price, ordinary,
simple and day-to-day pictures and snapshots as they always are. What makes a difference
is that we are now equipped with a brand-new geosemiotic perspective, through whose
surprisingly apt lens we find that the otherwise transparent and invisible and insipid
material world becomes visibly meaningful. Ours is a multi-semiotic world. We seldom
experience the lack of works on semiotics and intercultural communication. However,
scant attention has been paid to locate meanings in language and other forms of signs in the
realm and richness of the material world and still less interest and effort has been invested
in the inquiry of how the meanings constructed from these discourses (signs) vary radically
from place to place and from culture to culture. Combining the existing theories and
concepts of intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology, social psychology,
semiotics and ethnography and modifying them to fit the extensive field work carried
out by the authors and their students in a good number of countries and territories across the
world such as China, Hong Kong, Finland, the United States, Ireland, etc., the authors
present in this volume the very first attempt at the situatedness of signs in the world. These
efforts will contribute in a very fruitful and interesting way to our understanding of
discourses, signs and language in the very world in which we live and act.
My second point about the volume concerns the appealing and reader-friendly design of
the book. Firstly, the many hand-picked pictures, posters, road signs, and snapshots
scattered here and there throughout the book not only contribute to the economy of text,
as it attests to the old saying of ‘‘a picture is worth a thousand of words,’’ but they also make
the reading experience a real delight. Secondly, as a textbook outlining a framework of the
major concerns and interests of the new line of academic inquiry called geosemiotics, this
book strikes a fine balance between theory and practice. It is neither a repelling jargon-
ridden linguistic tome that derives merely from armchair conception nor an unattractive
potboiler that is produced to be discarded. Seven out of the 10 chapters of the book has two
sections, a Theory section and a Practice section. In the theory section, the central issues
and ideas of the focal topic of the chapter are introduced in straightforward and plain
language. Furthermore, the key points are arranged in phrase précis charts, which not only
provide a succinct summary but also serve as a handy reference. In the practice section, a
wide range of activities and exercises are designed to give the students some work to do to
review, develop and expand on the points made, and which allow for some active and
critical learning. Moreover, the authors have gone all out to make the activities and
exercises stimulating, interesting, and flexible. Besides the routine assignment, camera-
work and observation, the authors allow the students the license to do optional work.
Interesting insights and observations are very likely to arise from the optional work and
contribute to any future edition of the book. Thirdly, the authors are very considerate in
their compilation of the Glossary, the References and the Index of the book. Both the
Glossary and the Index contain all the key terms in the emerging subject of geosemiotics
and they not only provide a handy reference of the major concepts but also serve as a guide
for future exploration. The compilation of the first section on notes in the References of the
book, though somewhat against the convention of academic writing, is not only convenient
and considerate, but also helps make the book reader-friendly in that it avoids excessive
footnotes and citations which may distract the general reader from concentrating on the
text. While general readers may simply skip this part altogether, potential researchers
 Book review 773

whose desire to pursue this study is whetted by the reading of the volume will still have
something to refer to.
When I was reading the text, I stumbled upon a very interesting observation. While the
authors were discussing a variety of photographs of signs taken in Hong Kong and in
several cities in Mainland China with their colleagues, a group of young people in Hong
Kong pointed out that ‘‘whatever font was used, they felt if it was of high quality it indexed
Hong Kong and if it was of low quality it indexed Mainland China’’ (p. 134). Although I do
not quite agree with the statement, it reminds me of the fact that erroneous (or transgres-
sive, to use the authors’ term) bilingual or multilingual road signs, logos, posters and
advertisements, usually in correct Chinese and glaringly wrong English, have really
become an eyesore for many practicing translators and translation scholars in China.
What do these signs index? Do they index Mainland China or nothing at all? How will
geosemiotics approach these signs? I look forward to reading more explanation of these
signs in a future edition of the book.
All in all, as a ground-breaking study on geosemiotics, Discourses in Place provides an
excellent overview of the key conceptual framework of a rising discipline. As a considerate
textbook on geosemiotics, it provides students with a first-rate introductory text to the
understanding of discourses in the world.

References

Goffman, Erving, 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, New York.
Goffman, Erving, 1963. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. Free Press,
New York.
Goffman, Erving, 1983. The interaction ritual. American Sociology Review 48, 1–19.
Hall, Edward T., 1959. The Silent Language. Doubleday, New York.
Hall, Edward T., 1969. The Hidden Dimension. Doubleday, New York.
Hanks, William F., 1990. Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space Among the Maya. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
Hanks, William F., 2001. Indexicality. In: Duranti, A. (Ed.), Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell,
Oxford, pp. 119–121.
Kress, Gunther, van Leeuwen, Theo, 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge,
London.

Shaoxiang Wang, PhD candidate, is now Lecturer of English at Foreign Languages Institute, Fujian Teachers
University, China. His main research areas include translation and interpretation studies, media and cultural
studies and applied linguistics. His recent work focuses on the theory and practice of translation and
interpretation.

Shaoxiang Wang
Foreign Languages Institute, Fujian Teachers University
Fuzhou 350007, Fujian, PR China
E-mail address: wangsx03@hotmail.com (S. Wang)
1 March 2004