Dialoguing through prohibitions and transgressions

Editor’s note: Mathematicians, such as the present author, continue to use the academic “we,” even if there is only one author. As regular readers will know, that’s not how we usually do things here on Language on the Move. So, I asked Rami to change first person plural in this post to first person singular throughout. Rami offered to add his cat as a co-author instead … and that’s how I learned that there is, indeed, a famous physics author who was a cat: F.D.C. Willard.

The story goes that physicist Jack Hetherington was going to submit a paper to Physical Review Letters in 1975. When told that he would need to change the academic “we” to “I” throughout or add a co-author, he chose to invent one, his Siamese cat Chester (sired by Willard). And, for legitimacy, he added two more initials, F.D. (for Felis domesticus).

When I mentioned this bizarre story to the mathematician in my family, I was surprised to learn that, actually, the most famous cat co-authorship story is not in the natural sciences but our very own discipline, linguistics!

Yuri Knorozov, the Soviet linguist who deciphered the Mayan glyphs, took so much inspiration from his cat Asya that he considered her as co-author but the editors of his papers kept removing her name prior to publication.

The academic intrigues behind the decipherment of Mayan glyphs – after their near-complete destruction during colonization – are for another day. Now, I let you get on with Rami’s examination of the disembodied communications between between the authors of prohibition signs and graffiti.

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In this work we observe the semiotic aftermath of an apparent strife between trespassers and the deontic sign authority connected to an abandoned industrial complex.

Introduction

This essay is a reflection on observations on the signage around an abandoned industrial complex in southern Finland. What started as a simple interest on the choice of signs to ward off people turned into something more complex as the year went on and we started to pay attention to the dynamic nature of sign posting and other semiotic actions.

The abandoned industrial complex in question seems to be a popular spot for graffiti work and urban exploration. This creates tensions since the owners of the complex wish to discourage trespassers, presumably for reasons of liability and property damage. This has given rise to a sort of dialogue that happens through the addition of new forbidding signs on the one hand, and graffiti or other transgressive actions on the other.

Besides fitting in the general area of linguistic landscapes, we feel that this ties to the work of Karlander (2019), in particular. Karlander discusses their topic through the lens of graffiti and its removal by “the anti-graffiti regime”. Even though we do not discuss here graffiti erasure specifically, we feel that there is in play a similar back-and-forth interaction where the effects of behavior seen as transgressive are acted upon.  Inspired by Karlander, we refer to the two sides of the dialogue transpiring here as “the trespassers” and “the anti-trespassing regime”.

We find it fascinating that even though neither “the trespassers” nor “the anti-trespassing regime” are individuals, nor presumably even permanent or stable groups of people, we still naturally conceptualize the dynamic events here as a dialogue. We acknowledge that the anthropomorphising of such vague groups into distinct actors might be colouring our reading of the events here.

The first observations

We started to pay attention to the signage in the spring of 2024. Figure 1 shows a standard “PRIVATE AREA No Loitering” sign outside the complex (literally, “Asiaton oleskelu kielletty” might be translated as “No hanging around unless you have reasonable business here”). The sign is attached to a worn-down fence, and in the background we can see a partial justification for the sign in the form of a graffiti.

We used to walk by the complex on a roughly weekly basis, and started to pay attention to these signs more and more starting from 2024. We have no images prior to the spring of 2024, but based on various streetview imagery there seems to be no signs nor graffiti on October 2022, while in August 2023 we already see the sign in Figure 1 and some graffiti as well.

A commanding tone appears

In the Summer of 2024, things escalated a bit. In Figure 2 we see not only a new sign, but also a fresh piece of graffiti on a building wall, and on the right a clearly fixed hole in the chain-link fence. Note how the new sign is a lot more “aggressive” than the previous one with this one having pa ictorial component of someone actively holding up a hand to stop the addressee. The text says “No trespassing”, though the literal translation from Finnish would be “No through-going”, which we find amusing since the fence shows signs of repair after someone having literally gone through it.

Here Figure 2 feels like a static moment reflecting a dynamical event, again similarly to what is discussed by Karlander. More trespassing and transgressions have occurred, and the reaction from the anti-trespassing regime has been to fix the hole and add a more strongly forbidding sign. Several more such signs were posted on the fence surrounding the complex, all of them having the more directly forbidding pictorial symbol, and then variations on texts like “No trespassers” / “No loitering” / “No unauthorized personnel”.

The reaction to these signs was quite swift. In a few months some of the new signs had already been defaced or tagged, presumably to challenge the authority of the signs and the anti-trespassing regime; see Figure 3. We also note that for someone who wishes to send a signal through the medium of graffiti, a chain link fence is a very challenging canvas. It surely can be painted, but the result might not be very visible. A sign attached on the fence, however, immediately affords painting as a flat surface. And thus in this case a sign from the deontic sign authority is the very thing that enables a countersign to be created.

From commands to warnings

Soon after the escalation of the messages, the strategy of the anti-trespassing regime seemed to change a bit. Figure 4 shows various signs that appeared between the Fall of 2024 and the Fall of 2025. They were usually placed close to “No trespassing” signs, and this part of their function was probably to augment their effect. But they also focused very much on warning instead of forbidding. In particular, the focus seemed to shift more towards explaining why the restrictions are in effect.

Are they a sign of a more polite approach with an explanatory undertone? “Please don’t trespass here as the place is hazardous and we don’t want you to get hurt.” Or are they a veiled threat? “I can’t actually threaten you with direct violence, but if you come here then this inanimate building might cause you direct bodily harm.” Perhaps it is both?

The dialogue continues

The “discussion” between the trespassers and the anti-trespassing authority has not stopped. Some more recent observations can be found in Figure 5. These are from a corner somewhat less visible to the nearest streets that seems to be favoured for transgressive entry. There is evidence of repeated penetration of the fence, followed by fixing the hole with a piece of plywood. We also find a very strongly disfigured prohibition sign next to a fresh hole in the fence, again clearly sending a message to the anti-trespassing regime.

We also note here that just like graffiti can be hard to completely remove, fixing a chain link fence without leaving a clear trace is more or less impossible. And to quote Karlander:

An attempt at erasure – failed or not – will accentuate the transgressiveness and undesirability of graffiti in the space where the attempt was enacted.

Reference

Karlander, D. (2019). A semiotics of nonexistence? Erasure and erased writing under anti-graffiti regimes. Linguistic Landscape, 5(2), 198-216.

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