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When we walk or drive through a city, we are surrounded by signs, even though we do not pay attention to all of the signs all of the time. Signs can inform us where to go, what is inside a building, what is forbidden to do, and most frequently signs present us with a product or a service to purchase. Advertisements and brand names, along with wayfinding, warning and other information signs, pervade urban public spaces in modern societies. Signs are everywhere, they permeate our daily life, and they can give us a sense of place. Many signs contain messages written in languages we know, can read and understand and this can unite us, but they are also in languages other than our own, which does sometimes lead to divisiveness. Signs can be helpful when written in a language we understand, but signs in a different language can become incomprehensible, mysterious and we may like or dislike them. Signs can thus bind us together as a group, but also can set us apart. Policies may regulate the use of languages on signs but signs usually do not represent languages equally. In other words, signs can and do influence our behaviour and language practices.

Many signs are fixed, others are mobile or transient, and the recent addition of many forms of digital screens leads to profound changes in the presence of dynamic and fluid textual elements in the public space, to which the hand-held screens of smartphones add an additional element. Such changes imply an increase in the complexity of the stream of bits and pieces of textual language that come to city dwellers moving through an urban environment.