Shonna Trinch is a sociolinguist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, and Edward Snajdr is a cultural anthropologist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College. Their book, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn (Vanderbilt University Press), is the result of a decade of ethnographic research that deconstructs the public language of storefronts and the wide-ranging but often nuanced effects of these signs on a community’s inhabitants as well as on visitors, developers, and potential residents. While signage may seem like mere words, Trinch and Snajdr show how significantly interconnected signs are with so many urban issues - real estate, gentrification, race, and class.