The language roles involved in street signs
The signs of the street involve a variety of language roles outlined in Cook (2013).
- licensor: UK street signs have to be licensed by authorities either automatically with ‘deemed consent’ for signs that conform to a set of national criteria or through ‘expressed consent’ to be granted specifically by the local authority.
- owner: a street sign is owned by somebody, who does not necessarily compose it, nor have the right to change its content
- author: the street sign itself has to be composed and designed by this person, who or may not be the owner, i.e. Stella Artois do not actually write the text that appears on billboards and the billboard itself is owned by an agent.
- writer: The physical execution of the actual written form may be carried out by the author, by a printer or by a professional sign-writer or graphic designer.
- addressed readers: some signs are aimed at a particular group of people whether on foot or on wheels, such as drivers, utility workers, potential customers and so on.
- unaddressed readers: these are the rest of the population to whom the sign is not specifically addressed but nevertheless are exposed to it even if they do not attend to it - ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1963)