House Signs and Collegiate Fun

Reviews / Votes

"A fascinating, surprising, and intriguing look at pervasive house signs in a Midwestern U.S. college town, this book will delight college students, appeal to those who teach them, and engage those who study them across several disciplines. It is a skillful analysis of contemporary material culture, its playfulness, creativity, and ambiguities. It is also a vivid example of the multiple ways in which people engage with signs (visual or verbal)-from assuming that they have obvious meanings to privileging particular interpretations ,and even to denying that signs have any meaning at all."-Virginia Dominguez, University of Illinois
"A very lively read, one of those rare books that brings a sophisticated interpretive perspective together with ethnographic materials that are engaging, thought-provoking, and, for many of us and especially for our students, both experience-near and surprising. Good to read and think with, and likely to become, quite deservedly, a classic for undergraduate teaching."-Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
"LaDousa presents weighty matters with intelligence and nuance, and yet always clearly, and with a wealth of data that generates a multitude of 'aha' moments."-James Collins, University at Albany, SUNY
"LaDousa makes excellent use of the formal interviews collected by his students to show that house signs are indeed a serious subject. In doing so he has provided us with a valuable text for introducing students to the field of linguistic anthropology and the process of collecting and analyzing data about textual practices in everyday life.May 2013"-Journal of Linguistic Anthropology