The temporality of commodified landscapes at events & local constructions of identity in Salzburg


 This paper presents a study of how temporary, fixed-term local semiotic landscapes in Salzburg, Austria,
 contribute to a construction of local identity. For this purpose, two main events in the city’s calendar were investigated, the
 Ruperti fair in the autumn and the Christmas market in the winter. I explore how and the extent to which semiotic resources such
 as linguistic features index local pride and become commodified, i.e., utilized for economic gain. The indexicality can be
 temporary or even volatile with some signs and creates an event-specific or non-event specific semiotic ‘register’
 (enregisterment). The analysis follows two major commodifying practices, historicizing (in particular, the use of
 blackletter) and localizing (use of non-standard Austro-Bavarian dialect), and employs a multimodal approach. A
 qualitative analysis reveals how signs add to the temporary local authentication and discusses how LL research can benefit from
 capturing event spaces and the temporality of signs.