Rethinking Athens as Text: The Linguistic Context of Athenian Graffiti during the Crisis

The Athenian graffiti functions as a testament of creativity and artistry occurring during the hard times of socioeconomic and political crisis in Greece the last seven years. The impact of Greece's crisis is unavoidably presented through urban art in downtown Athens. This extensive street art practice on Athenian walls as a linguistic and imagery line is approached in this work via the semiotic and multimodal perspective, as the main symbolic and representative expression generated by the crisis, contributing to the production of visual urban culture. Fieldwork research was conducted in Athens from January to July 2015. The findings of the qualitative analysis highlight that politicized wall writings constitute a modern wall language, expressing social and political messages produced mainly via text and image, reconstructing the wall slogans and murals as the fundamental means of sociopolitical reaction.