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Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 4:1 (2018) ► pp.53–71

Meat, guns, and God

Expressions of nationalism in rural America

| Hong Kong Polytechnic University

A trend exists in linguistic landscape research to examine urban spaces. Interest in urban spaces is a logical expression of ongoing migratory trends. While such research is helpful in advancing scholarship, there remains a need to examine how rural areas participate in the discursive construction of society. To address the recent urbanization of sociolinguistics, this paper examines how roadside billboards in rural areas of the United States discursively construct homeland messages. Using discourse analysis and drawing from linguistic landscape scholarship, the study explores how billboards draw from banal and sentimental homeland messages to forward a contentious issue, support a political candidate, and imagine a collective American identity. These discourses feed into, and are a part of, a larger network of ideologies that fabricate authentic notions of nationhood. The findings demonstrate that roadside billboards reflect a past time that flattens the cultural diversity of a nation into a static national image.

Keywords: ruralscapes, billboards, national identity, Americanness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ruralscapes of the United States
  • 3.The study
  • 4.Roadside billboards: Doing being American
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 26 March 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.17025.jen
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