Wheels of Meaning: A Conceptual Framework for Mobile Semiosis and Intercultural Communication in Urban African Transport Spaces

Abstract

Visual texts inscribed on commercial vehicles constitute an emergent yet underexplored domain of intercultural communication scholarship. This conceptual paper advances the notion of “mobile semiosis” as a theoretical construct for interrogating how decorated commercial vehicles such as: buses, tricycles, taxis, and trucks, function as circulating repositories of cultural identity, religious ideology, socio-political commentary, and vernacular aesthetics within urban African contexts, with particular reference to Kano State in Northwest Nigeria. Drawing on Peircean semiotics; Barthesian myth analysis; Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotic visual grammar, and Sheller and Urry's new mobilities paradigm. The paper proposes an integrated “Mobile Semiotic Framework” that systematically accounts for the triadic interaction of sign structure, cultural context, and spatial circulation in meaning-making processes. The conceptual argument positions commercial vehicle visuals not as incidental decor but as structured semiotic systems embedded in Hausa sociocultural traditions, Islamic aesthetic conventions, and contemporary popular image culture. The paper critically examines how mobility intensifies semiotic exposure, how cultural norms regulate visual production and reception, and how the decorated vehicle body constitutes a mobile public sphere for identity negotiation and ideological expression. Implications for intercultural communication theory, visual semiotics scholarship, and African communication studies were elaborated.