Visual piety in public space: Islamic aesthetics, moral messaging, and spatial authority in Indonesian streetscapes

Devita Septian Dwi Hidayati

doi:10.67490/ijls.v1i3.1063

Authors

Devita Septian Dwi Hidayati Universitas Pembangunan Nasional "Veteran" Jawa Timur Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67490/ijls.v1i3.1063

Keywords:

Islamic aesthetics, linguistic landscape, moral messaging, spatial authority, visual piety

Abstract

Background: Indonesian streetscapes increasingly display Islamic calligraphy, Ramadan banners, halal-oriented signs, sacred symbols, and public moral warnings, yet these visual forms remain insufficiently examined as spatial practices through which piety, authority, and belonging become publicly legible. Objective: This study investigates how Islamic aesthetics, moral messaging, and spatial authority are constructed through visual-textual signs in Indonesian public streetscapes. Method: This study applies qualitative multimodal discourse analysis, linguistic landscape analysis, and geosemiotic coding to a 40-item corpus, with closer analysis of 18 primary visual-text items from publicly verifiable institutional and media sources. Results: Islamic public aesthetics appear mainly through processional Ramadan visibility, regulatory banners, sacred lettering, seasonal greetings, symbolic objects, and civic-religious event branding. Moral messaging operates through invitation, prohibition, remembrance, welcome, symbolic evocation, and civic celebration, showing that public piety is both affective and disciplinary. Spatial authority is produced through layered communal, police, religious-textual, governmental, symbolic, and civic-event voices rather than through a single institutional source. Implication: These findings show that Indonesian streetscapes function as negotiated moral-visual environments where ordinary public space is temporarily and materially reorganized by religious signs. Novelty: This study advances visual piety research by integrating multimodal-geosemiotic mapping, moral-message typology, and spatial-authority analysis within Indonesian linguistic landscape scholarship.

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