Southern United States: Changing Spatial Cultural Codes in Urban Landscapes

Abstract

The cultural space of any country, region or city is an open book, a special text, the “reading” of which is an exciting and important professional occupation for a linguist, geographer, culturologist. Indeed, it holds, and for novice researchers withholds, deep layers of history and culture. At the same time, the history of a city or country, expressed in monuments and toponyms, always carries symbolic connotations. A monument commemorating the fallen soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, even if it does not possess high artistic merit, is a symbol of the victory of our people over the dark forces. Thus, the massive destruction of monuments to Soviet heroes in Eastern Europe means not only the erasure of an important layer of collective memory, but also – symbolically – the rehabilitation of Nazism. This work is devoted to the analysis of changes in the geocultural space during 2015–2020 in The Southern United States in relation to new interpretations of Confederate cultural heritage.

References

1. Alderman D.H., Inwood J. 2013. Street naming and the politics of belonging: spatial injustices in the toponymic commemoration of Martin Luther King. Social & Cultural Geography. Vol. 14, pp. 211–233.

2. Azaryahu M. 2009. Street Names and Iconography. In R. Kitchin (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. London, pp. 460–465.

3. Basik S.N. 2018. Kriticheskaya toponimika kak napravleniye geograficheskikh issledovaniy: problemy i perspektivy [Critical toponymy as a direction of geographical research: problems and prospects]. Geograficheskiy vestnik, no. 1(44), pp. 56–63. (In Russ.)

4. Berezovich Ye.L. 2000. Russkaya toponimiya v etnolingvisticheskom aspekte [Rus- sian toponymy in the ethnolinguistic aspect]. Yekaterinburg, Izd-vo Ural’skogo un-ta. (In Russ.)

5. Kalutskov V.N. 2020. Kontseptualizatsiya geograficheskogo prostranstva: onomasticheskiye aspekty [Conceptualization of geographic area: onomastic aspects]. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 19: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, no. 1, pp. 57–69. (In Russ.)

6. Kalutskov V.N., Ivanova A.A. 2006. Geograficheskiye pesni v traditsionnom kulturnom landshafte Rossii [Geographical songs in the traditional cultural landscape of Russia]. Moscow. (In Russ.)

7. Krasnykh V.V. 2001. Kody i etalony kultury (priglasheniye k razgovoru) [Codes and standards of culture (invitation to talk)]. Yazyk, soznaniye, kommunikatsiya: Sb. statey. Moscow. Vyp. 19, pp. 5–19. (In Russ.)

8. Lotman Yu.M. 1992. O metayazyke tipologicheskikh opisaniy kultury [About the metalanguage of typological descriptions of culture]. Izbrannyye sochineniya v 3-kh tomakh. T 1: Stati po semiotike i tipologii kultury. Tallin, pp. 386–406. (In Russ.)

9. Lotman Yu.M. 2000. Semiosfera [Semiosphere]. Saint Petersburg. (In Russ.)

10. Pastusyak L. 1978. Vneshnyaya politika Konfederatsii yuzhnykh shtatov vo vremya grazhdanskoy voyny [Foreign policy of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War]. In G.N. Sevostianov (ed.) Amerikanskiy ezhegodnik. Moscow, pp. 235–248. (In Russ.)

11. Propp V. Ya. 1969. Morfologiya skazki [Morphology of the tale]. Moscow. (In Russ.)

12. Rose-Redwood R., Alderman D., Azaryahu M. 2010. Geographies of toponymic inscription: new directions in critical place-name studies. Progress in Human Geography. Vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 453–470.

13. Smirnyagin L.V. 1989. Rayony SShA: portret sovremennoy Ameriki [Regions of the USA: a portrait of modern America]. Moscow. (In Russ.)

14. Terentyev E.A. 2016. Teoretiko-metodologicheskaya kontseptualizatsiya toponimi- cheskikh praktik (na primere Moskvy i Sankt-Peterburga) [Theoretical and methodological conceptualization of toponymic practices (by the case of Moscow and St. Petersburg)]: Diss. … kand. sots. nauk. Moscow. (In Russ.)

15. Vuolteenaho J., Berg L.D. 2009. Towards critical toponymies. In L. Berg and J. Vuolteenaho (ed.) Critical toponymies: the contested politics of place naming. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT, pp. 1–18.

16. Zagryazkina T.Yu. 2020. Konstrukt identichnosti v tvorchestve trubadurov. Ili «Drugaya Frantsiya» skvoz prizmu yazyka [Identity Сonstruct in the Works of Troubadours or «Another France» Through the Language Lens]. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 19: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, no. 1, pp. 22–38. (In Russ.)