Voices out of the Wilderness: The Politics and Poetics of Linguistic Landscapes in Yakutsk

• In Event: Siberian Spatial Poetics

Abstract

This article highlights insights from linguistic landscape research—examining the presence of written language in the public, visual sphere—as it pertains to Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic. Linguistic and semiotic aspects of these LLs are discussed considering the symbolic and poetic aspects of place-making for Sakha as well as other native Siberian communities. Over the last three decades, speakers have worked to reclaim Sakha as a language of Yakutsk alongside Russian, one that became much more prominent aurally and visually in this urban center in the 2010s. However, the other indigenous languages (Chukchi, Dolgan, Even, Evenki and Yukaghir) of Sakha-Yakutia remain mostly unseen in the LLs of both smaller settlements and Yakutsk. Visual materials reveal the scalar tensions in the existent language policy of the region, while also being a space of possibility for the visual (re)claiming of urban spaces by speakers of minority/Indigenous languages.

Author

• Jenanne Ferguson, MacEwan U (Canada)