“Pare, pick up mo yung trash!” Official and informal prohibition signage in a Philippine city

This article explores the visual landscape of Philippine cities through the lens of regulatory and prohibitive signage. Using the framework of informal urbanism, the study examines how citizens navigate and “fix” their environments through informal communication. The work analyzes the typology and primary themes of these signs, which reflect the acute infrastructural challenges of overcrowded settlements: a lack of public toilets, waste management issues, and complex epidemiological conditions. The author compares official and private signage — focusing on handwritten notices — to demonstrate how these signs express power dynamics, the blending of languages and cultures, emotional factors, politeness versus rudeness, and the specific interests of property owners and vendors.

Linguistic aspects are examined, including the use of national languages (English and Filipino/Tagalog), regional lingua francas such as Cebuano and Ilocano, and indigenous languages such as Ifugao. The study further highlights creative orthographic strategies and ‘orthographic play’, such as the use of English numerals as phonetic components in vernacular words (e.g, “D2” for dito or “Hi2” for hitu), reflecting the influence of digital literacy and SMS conventions on physical signage. A specific section is dedicated to notices addressing traditional betel nut chewing; rather than banning the practice itself, these signs specifically target the spitting of red saliva in public and commercial spaces. This highlights the clash between long-standing cultural practices and modern urban hygiene requirements.

Special attention is given to the broader social functions of handwritten prohibitive signs: territorial marking and social control, the transmission of private discourse, and the aestheticization of prohibitions related to the “bodily lower stratum”. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the carnivalesque and grotesque realism, the author explores how humor and “laughing culture” can transform a restrictive sign into a decorative element.

The study is based on field materials collected in the Philippines between 1995 and 2026, as well as materials from a 2025 trip to Indonesia with the Russian Geographical Society. This work contributes to urban anthropology by showing how prohibitive texts become tools of private discourse in spaces otherwise dominated by the language of authority.

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