What exactly are viewers or audiences expected to appreciate when language is put on display? What kinds of ideologies about language underpin such displays? Does language operate differently when it becomes the intended object of display as opposed to when it is being used for regular communication? Language is often 'invisible' because we use it without thinking too much about it. The study of language on display makes the invisible visible. Drawing on examples of the display of language in multiple contexts: museums, exhibitions, contests, celebrations, this book analyses cases where language is deliberately offered up as an object for contemplation, entertainment, and even decoration; language as spectacle in and of itself. It provides an innovative theorisation that shows how the subjectification process involved – where people are treated more as viewers than users – entrenches an objectivist understanding of language. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
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