The semiotics of Kosovo’s streetscapes

Abstract

Abstract Post-war Kosovo is characterised by strong transition processes, including in the car and service vehicle sector, and Germany, German culture, and the German language play a central role in these processes. The popularity of used vehicles imported from German-speaking countries has led to a change in the appearance of Kosovo’s streetscapes. These cars often carry signage or texts written in German and are very common in Kosovo. The spread of these cars is due both to the lower cost and to the high prestige of the German language and culture in Kosovo. Often the owners also keep the German number plates, as the registration of cars in Kosovo is not handled very strictly, or they retain the sticker that designates the country of origin of the vehicle, ‘D’ for Germany, ‘A’ for Austria and ‘CH’ for Switzerland. As a result, there is a strong German influence to be found across Kosovo’s streetscapes. Our article is dedicated to these particular semiotic landscapes on the basis of empirically collected photographic material. Data was collected outside the transmigrant season, i.e. outside the months around the turn of the year and the summer vacations, and the period of the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid as far as possible non-residential German signs.