A sociolinguistic and multisemiotic analysis of mobility and identities in Hangberg, Hout bay

Abstract

The thesis is titled a Sociolinguistic and Multisemiotic Analysis of Mobility and Identities in Hangberg, Hout Bay. The guiding idea of this research project is to explore the contesting social and semiotic processes of transformation in Hangberg since the transition towards post-apartheid in South Africa. One of the objectives of this study is to probe how Hangberg and its people are (re)constructed in the media and virtual spaces (Facebook, and newspaper articles) as well as in the physical linguistic/semiotic landscapes (LL) of Hangberg. The researcher uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) and conceptual tools such as resemiotisation and remediation to capture and understand the socio-ideological construction of the people of Hangberg through a mesh of verbal as well as visual language / signs in the virtual and physical semiotic landscapes.