Learning about the Litterati

What's the language of litter?

I found these examples of litter on the ground in one particular area of our town. The cans carry text and graphic design.

Yes, they're all cans.

And I found these cans quite close together! As if a group of people stood about, then dropped them and left.

At a junction of a residential street and back lane.

I'm guessing from the alcoholic nature of the can contents - and partly from my knowledge of what happens in my local town, and partly from my knowledge of human behaviour around the world - that the holders of (at least some of) these cans were teenagers or youths, and probably male but likely to include female.

But I'm making up that story to make sense of these cans! What about a different scenario?

The cans might have come from different points in time and the town, be blown or rolled to this point. They might be here by coincidence. Or did a recycling rubbish bag spilt open? One where a resident had dutifully put a lot of cans?

Now what do these cans tell me about language landscapes - except my ability to connect them by making up stories?

I'm sure they show me how language is mobile: constantly flowing and moving around the environment. Wherever people move, so language moves too.

These cans also tell me that written language is constantly undergoing physical change. These text and visuals are dented, crumpled, and distorted, taking on the shape almost of new-formed words. Created anew, like art!

I'm thinking about the role of international companies too. How organisations move language as goods and commodities about our world, from the global to the local. Should I be surprised that I'm seeing mostly English on these cans, and not many other languages? Or is this telling me how manufacturers organise discrete markets, differentiating and supplying markets these markets with what is a mass volume product?

Do these cans need their context of the street for me to make sense of them? Perhaps the cans are a form of mobile culture: the objects are designed to move from one context to another. Perhaps the designer's original job was to ensure that each time these words departed from one context, they must be able to carry their original messages with them, and be independent of context?

But I quite like to imagine these items as props on a stage.

As props, they would be owned by a theatre company, and not the actor. The actor's job would be to handle the prop. With this prop, they could bring dramatic tension to a scene; show a different side to a character; suggest a location or setting; position the play in a particular time; or show a mood or state, such as depression, obsession, alienation, sorrow, concentration, and so on.

The prop only belongs to the actor until that job is done, then the actor lays the prop down (or throws it in the audience), and the prop waits for another actor to come along and give it an entirely different force.

I think I could make a parallel here between stage props and these cans I find littering the street corner.

I'd say, these cans do not 'belong' to the actors who drank from them. They 'belong' to the large corporations who planned the drink location in a product line, named them (Monster is my favourite), filled them, and then paid advertising agencies and designers to produce wrap-around designs and product labelling.

The can is 'owned' for the length of time it take the actor to handle the prop. On completion (drunk the contents), the actor discards the prop and moves on.

If I extend that parallel to the language on the can, does it work the same? Language (text and design) picked up, used to try out a state, develop a character, bring drama to the moment?

I think I could imagine people who are negotiating their identities in the world using 'languages' of the can in this way - exploring graphic features, colours, shapes, presentations of images, and the name (Monster) -  trying out a range of expressions, adopting the different identities of different brands, and drinking together on the street corner (because the pubs won't let them in) and where the social event can be held at low cost.

But the end result is ... litter. Then whose responsibility is it to keep the traffic way clear of them? The state? The large company who sent these items flowing about the country? The local authorities? The 'actors' who used them?


(We pick them up as we go, and drop them into the recycling bin at home.)

ps. I focused only on cans here! But cans might be unrepresentative of other types of mobile language on litter such as newspapers, cigarette cartons, paper bags, leaflets, fliers, bottles, sweet wrappers, fast-food containers...