Posting the prohibition

“No bill-posting” as performative urban governance in Hong Kong’s linguistic and semiotic landscape

Bibliographic Data

ID24213679
AuthorsGe Song (0000-0002-1118-1850)
Year2026
Publication date2026-09-25
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueApplied Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0142-6001 • E-ISSN: 1477-450X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/applin/amag086
LanguageEN
References cited22

This article examines the ubiquitous “no bill-posting” signs in the text-rich city of Hong Kong and explores how these signs govern public surfaces, invite defiance, and shape urban character. Drawing on 721 photos from fieldwork conducted in 2024–2025, it analyzes seven interacting dimensions of the signs: clean surfaces, provocation or defiance, materiality, repetition, multimodality, content, and remnants. The findings reveal that “no bill-posting” signs routinely coexist with counter-postings; materials and layouts index temporalities infused with varying levels of authority and human touch, while repetition as an urban esthetic seeks compliance but simultaneously amplifies visual noise. The article argues that “no bill-posting” signs enact a performative contradiction by prohibiting posting through posting. This phenomenon not only reflects Hong Kong’s urban dialectical tensions but also transforms walls and surfaces into contact zones of dialogized heteroglossia and negotiated conviviality. Care and prohibition co-produce an urban “(no) bill-posting” register, generating locally significant meanings through an ongoing dialogue between non-posting and excessive posting. This study reinterprets apparent urban enforcement failure as a semiotic performance that upholds the city’s distinctive linguistic and semiotic character.

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