Work

“From the Side, You Should Look like a Japanese Ham Sandwich, No Gap Anywhere”: Exploring Embodied, Linguistic, and Nonlinguistic Signs in Enregisterment Processes of Bikram Yoga in Online and Offline Spaces

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: This article analyzes the semiotic links between embodied, linguistic, and nonlinguistic signs found in a Bikram yoga studio in Oslo, Norway, and on its website, which are informed by other hegemonic sites of yoga circulation on a more global level, which include the Bikram franchise and Lululemon. Drawing on (digital) ethnographic data, I employ the analytical concepts of enregisterment (Agha 2007) and mediatization (Agha 2011), in order to trace these interlocking processes within three institutional sites that disseminate and transmit a (Bikram) yoga register through the analysis of multimodal images both offline and online. The mediated messages of flexible, embodied, and highly commodified practices that attain high cultural and social value are dialectally embedded in physical, material, and technological environments contributing to posthumanist theorization on how we understand language in relation to people, objects, and place with the aim of broadening our understanding of communication to relocate where social semiotics occurs (Pennycook 2018b).

Source: Signs and Society

DOI: 10.1086/728148

Author: Kellie Gonçalves

Institution: University of Bern

Language: English

Topic: Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,550

Funder: Norges Forskningsråd