CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Like the rest of the Humanities, empirical studies of communication have witnessed a ?spatial turn? in which the deconstruction of the time-space coordinates has spurred considerable theorizing. The present contribution focuses on the subjective constitution of place with a view to making sense of the social meanings of unsanctioned writing and graffiti on the external walls of buildings of a public university. Data collection was carried out through ethnographic fieldwork, which included a two-years observation of a large university enclave in the central area of a city and interaction with some producers of the texts of interest. The corpus consists of distinct categories of visual and linguistic texts. Along with their semantics, graphic form and foreign language origin, their emplacement, design and colors are an integral part of what must be interpreted by the audiences and by the analyst. A contextualized treatment of the data requires consideration of the social activities involved in the appropriation and the reinterpretation of the geographical area as a place for enjoyment and transgression. In addition, itinerary of movement in space turns out to be significant. The findings point to the need for conceptualizing ?agency? as collective in order to capture the room for choice and style albeit on behalf of a group, or ?crew? as the actors themselves call their social groupings. Crucial for understanding the expression and circulation of social meanings is acknowledging the key role of the ?community of reception?. The utility of the proposed notion far exceeds the research problem explored here and proves to fill a gap in the discourse analyst?s tool kit. The widened view of the relevant dimensions of communicative practices defended here is likely to be productive across the board in accounting for the meanings of texts in people?s social life.