TY - JOUR
T1 - Commemorative city-texts
T2 - Spatio-temporal patterns in street names in Leipzig, East Germany and Poznań, Poland
AU - Buchstaller, Isabelle
AU - Fabiszak, Malgorzta
AU - Alvanides, Seraphim
AU - Brzezińska, Anna Weronika
AU - Dobkiewicz, Patryk
PY - 2023/3/8
Y1 - 2023/3/8
N2 - This article contributes to research on commemorative naming strategies by presenting a comparative longitudinal study on changes in the urban toponymy of Leipzig (Germany) and Poznań (Poland) over a period of 102 years. Our analysis combines memory studies, Linguistic Landscape (LL) research and critical toponymy with GIS visualization techniques to explore (turnovers in) naming practices across time and space. The key difference between the two localities lies in the commemorative pantheon of referents – events, people, and places inscribed as traces of a hegemonic national past – that are replaced when commemorative priorities change. Other patterns are common to both study sites. Notably, in both Poznań and Leipzig, peaks of renaming occur at the threshold of regime change, after which commemorative renaming activity subsides. We report on our findings and propose methodological guidelines for analyzing street renaming from a longitudinal, transnational and interdisciplinary perspective.
AB - This article contributes to research on commemorative naming strategies by presenting a comparative longitudinal study on changes in the urban toponymy of Leipzig (Germany) and Poznań (Poland) over a period of 102 years. Our analysis combines memory studies, Linguistic Landscape (LL) research and critical toponymy with GIS visualization techniques to explore (turnovers in) naming practices across time and space. The key difference between the two localities lies in the commemorative pantheon of referents – events, people, and places inscribed as traces of a hegemonic national past – that are replaced when commemorative priorities change. Other patterns are common to both study sites. Notably, in both Poznań and Leipzig, peaks of renaming occur at the threshold of regime change, after which commemorative renaming activity subsides. We report on our findings and propose methodological guidelines for analyzing street renaming from a longitudinal, transnational and interdisciplinary perspective.
KW - collective memory
KW - critical toponymy
KW - memoryscape
KW - linguistic landscapes
KW - encoding of ideology
KW - comparative analysis of Eastern Europe
KW - longitudinal analysis
KW - commemoration
KW - GIS visualization
U2 - 10.1017/S0047404523000040
DO - 10.1017/S0047404523000040
M3 - Article
JO - Language in Society
JF - Language in Society
SN - 0047-4045
ER -