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A compelling study of how business signs in Brooklyn neighborhoods serve as 'place-making technologies' that both signal and work in the interests of gentrification. The central argument--that 'new school' signs, while directly indexing playfulness and cleverness, indirectly index exclusivity--drives home the often subtle but profound ways that language is implicated in gentrification and exclusion, regardless of a sign author's expressed intent. --Gabriella Gahlia Modan, author of Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place--Gabriella Gahlia Modan This analysis of Brooklynites' sense of place is strikingly innovative and the ethnography utterly engaging. We see signage changing with the influx of gentrification, contrasting assumptions about whose Brooklyn it really is, and both older and newer residents invested in a sense of place as incoming chain businesses assuredly are not. --Bonnie Urciuoli, author of Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class--Bonnie Urciuoli What the Signs Say charts emerging terrains of gentrification through an acute, open-eyed, and deeply contextualized reading of Brooklyn streetscapes and the signs that shape them. This is a fascinating and textured case study in itself. It also models generative new ways of approaching the complex intersections of language, landscape, and social experience. --Donald Brenneis, coeditor of the Annual Review of Anthropology--Donald Brenneis

This analysis of Brooklynites' sense of place is strikingly innovative and the ethnography utterly engaging. We see signage changing with the influx of gentrification, contrasting assumptions about whose Brooklyn it really is, and both older and newer residents invested in a sense of place as incoming chain businesses assuredly are not. --Bonnie Urciuoli, author of Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class--Bonnie Urciuoli A compelling study of how business signs in Brooklyn neighborhoods serve as 'place-making technologies' that both signal and work in the interests of gentrification. The central argument--that 'new school' signs, while directly indexing playfulness and cleverness, indirectly index exclusivity--drives home the often subtle but profound ways that language is implicated in gentrification and exclusion, regardless of a sign author's expressed intent. --Gabriella Gahlia Modan, author of Turf Wars: Discourse, Diversity, and the Politics of Place--Gabriella Gahlia Modan What the Signs Say charts emerging terrains of gentrification through an acute, open-eyed, and deeply contextualized reading of Brooklyn streetscapes and the signs that shape them. This is a fascinating and textured case study in itself. It also models generative new ways of approaching the complex intersections of language, landscape, and social experience. --Donald Brenneis, coeditor of the Annual Review of Anthropology--Donald Brenneis

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Shonna Trinch is a sociolinguist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, CUNY. Edward Snajdr is a cultural anthropologist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, CUNY.

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