ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the myths of the city of Liverpool can be linked to popular culture, in particular on a national level. It briefly explains how the rebranding of Liverpool in 2008 for the European Capital of Culture depended on the mythologisation of the greatness of Liverpool's past. The chapter explains the field of action and how Liverpool came to hold the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) award. The tourism industry in Liverpool prior to the ECoC year was healthy. The chapter proceeds by providing depth to the theoretical underpinning introduced above and explore how by using the notions of injurious speech and negative interpellation an understanding can be achieved of the creation of place image and, in turn, how it also leaves space for creative resignification. Linguistic violence, in the framework presented here, offers the chance for resignification of place due to the contingent, social and collective nature of how a place is constituted.
