UCLA

While some people imagine Calle Lo�za as “an exciting dynamic place to visit” filled with trendy restaurants and bars, others perceive it as a “headache” caused by “an unmeasured and unscrupulous development”. Calle Lo�za is a distinct street in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which different class, national, and linguistic identities converge and are contested. Given its complex social fabric, I address: How is Calle Lo�za discursively constructed? What language ideologies underpin these constructions, and what subjectivities emerge? I use semiotic landscapes, or the interwoven discourses about a space, as a conceptual and methodological tool to follow the discourses that construe multiple interpretations of Calle Lo�za. Drawing from linguistic anthropological theories and grounding my analysis in the current political economic framework, this study demonstrates how Calle Lo�za is a site of ideological contestation in which differing notions of progress and sense of belonging converge.