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Servicing a heavy metal fandom posthumously: a sociosemiotic account of collective identity formation in Dio's memorial

This study is positioned in the burgeoning research field of collective memory and identity by offering a sociosemiotic account of the formation of fandom identity in the context of Ronnie James Dio's memorial. By drawing on the three major categories whereby collective memory is formed – that is artifacts, processes, places, as well as on the three key sociosemiotic metafunctions which are responsible for shaping a cultural event as sign system – the study scrutinizes the key semiotic resources that shape the experiential event of a memorial. This paper contributes to the extant literature on memory and identity by offering a nuanced, sociosemiotically informed reading of a heavy metal legend's memorial, while attending to the bespoke semiotic resources that comprise it.