English in the linguistic landscape of Suzhou

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Songqing Li
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Intergroup Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Ethnolinguistic Vitality ◽  
The Public ◽  
Road Signs ◽  
Ethnolinguistic Group

The concept of linguistic landscape (LL) covers all of the linguistic objects that mark the public space, i.e. any written sign one observes from road signs to advertising billboards, to the names of shops, streets or schools (Landry & Bourhis, 1997). Because it both shapes and is shaped by social and cultural associations (Ben-Rafael, 2009; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 6–23), the LL has proved an important area for investigating the dynamics of major aspects of social life (e.g. Backhaus, 2006; Huebner, 2006; Curtin, 2009; Lado, 2011; Papen, 2012). One strand of this research is particularly concerned with the role of LL in relation to ethnolinguistic vitality that ‘makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup relations’ (Giles, Bourhis & Taylor, 1977: 308). The higher the vitality an ethnolinguistic group enjoys, the more it will be able to use language so as to survive and thrive as a collective entity.

scholarly journals WIELOJĘZYCZNOŚĆ ZRÓWNOWAŻONA? KRAJOBRAZ JĘZYKOWY POLSKO-CZESKIEGO POGRANICZA W UJĘCIU EKOLINGWISTYCZNYM (PRZYPADEK DUSZNIK ZDROJU I HRONOVA)

1970 ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
MAGDALENA STECIĄG ◽  
ANNA KARMOWSKA
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Public ◽  
Road Signs ◽  
Public Road ◽  
Local Opposition ◽  
Made In

The aim of the article is to analyse the linguistic landscape of the Polish-Czech borderland with particular emphasis placed on the number and hierarchy of languages existing in the public space. A static study will be carried out i.e. a study of the language(s) of public road signs, names of streets and squares, public-access buildings, signs on businesses and shops, hoardings etc. The research material comes from two small towns: Duszniki Zdrój in Poland and Hronov in the Czech Republic, both aspiring to become local tourist centres. The global vs. local opposition is of importance to the assumptions made in the study because the language will be regarded as a local practice (Pennycock, 2010). In conclusion, the study will examine the thesis that the local linguistic landscape is a testimony to a transition from a monolingual paradigm towards a “post-monolingual condition” (Yildiz, 2012). It will also be very interesting to find out which configuration of the languages can be considered sustainable in terms of the area’s multilingual nature.

scholarly journals The linguistic landscape: enhancing multiliteracies through decoding signs in public spaces

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-28
Author(s):  
Margarita Vinagre
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Urban Agglomeration ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Public ◽  
Road Signs ◽  
Public Road ◽  
Multiple Languages

What is it? The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new field which draws from several disciplines such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural geography. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997), “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (p. 25). More recently, the type of signs that can be found in the public space has broadened to include the language on T-shirts, stamp machines, football banners, postcards, menus, products, tattoos, and graffiti. Despite this wider variety of signs, Landry and Bourhis’s (1997) definition still captures the essence of the LL, which is multimodal (signs combine visual, written, and sometimes audible data) and can also incorporate the use of multiple languages (multilingual).

The Historical Memory Law and its role in redesigning semiotic cityscapes in Spain

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Guilat ◽  
Antonio B. Espinosa-Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
The City

In its Historical Memory Law (October 2007), Spain recognized victims on both sides of its 1936–1939 Civil War and established entitlements for victims and descendants of victims of the war and the Franco regime that followed (1939–1975). The law requires authorities to remove Francoist symbols and signs from public buildings and spaces, rename streets and squares, and cleanse the public space of monuments and artifacts that glorify or commemorate the regime. By allowing exceptions on artistic, architectural, or religious grounds, however, the law triggered persistent public struggles over monuments, memorials, and outdoor sculptures. This article examines the implementation of the law in the city of Granada, via a case study relating to the removal of a sculpture honoring the founder of the Spanish Fascist movement, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The controversy over the statue sparked a debate in Granada about the implementation of the law in the public space and raised questions about the role of text, material and visual culture in redesigning Linguistic Landscape by articulating contested memories.

scholarly journals Research on Linguistic Landscape: Observing the Minute in the Bigger Picture

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-34
Author(s):  
Samia Tahir ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Road Signs ◽  
Public Road ◽  
Conceptual Paper

very new and fresh area where scholarly world is focusing its attention on is linguistic landscape. Linguistic landscape is ‘the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, place names, street names, commercial shop signs and public signs on government buildings of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration’ (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p.25). Linguistic landscape can be taken as observing the minute words present in the public space in the bigger picture of the landscape of an urban area. It is becoming an interesting phenomenon to uncover social realities. It can be used to observe and analyze the changing trends and discourses in a given territory. Research on linguistic landscape started in late 1970s and sped its pace from the year 2006 onwards and now has become a proper field of study in applied linguistics, having a total of more than three hundred research papers to date. Linguistic landscape has been used to analyze jargons and register of different types of institutions for example, a hospital, a disco club, a restaurant or a Church etc. It has been used to analyze the semiotics of a particular area. The study of linguistic landscape has shown which languages are popular in one area and which are getting abandoned in another area. It has also focused on the negative attitudes of people related to one language and positive perceptions linked with another language. This conceptual paper will trace its history and reach conclusions on how this thriving field of study can be further extended.

scholarly journals Exploring the linguistic landscape of Cameroon: Reflections on language policy and ideology

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-324
Author(s):  
Martin Pütz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
African State ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Public Places ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
A Minor ◽  
British Colonies

This contribution focuses on the study of Linguistic Landscapes in the Central/Western African state of Cameroon, with particular reference to its capital, Yaoundé. Linguistic landscapes is a relatively recent area of research, and can be broadly defined as the visual representation of languages in public space. This paper will show that the field of linguistic landscapes can act as a reflection of linguistic hierarchies, ideologies and acts of resistance in multilingual and multicultural communities. At the same time, the sociolinguistic situation in the country will be investigated, which is paramount to understanding the linguistic and ideological conflicts between the anglophone minority and the francophone government. Cameroon’s linguistic landscape will be explored via the various spaces that English, French, Pidgin English, Camfranglais and, to a minor degree, indigenous African languages occupy in its sociolinguistic composition. The methodological design is quantitative in nature, involving collecting more than 600 linguistic tokens (digital photos) in various public places mainly in and around the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé. It will be demonstrated that the deployment of languages on signs and linguistic tokens, apart from serving informative and symbolic functions for the audiences or passers-by they target, also has social and political implications in an ethnically heterogeneous and linguistically hybrid society such as Cameroon. Whereas in some other former British colonies there are indications that the public space is being symbolically constructed in order to preserve some of Africa’s indigenous languages (e.g. in Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania), in Cameroon the linguistic landscape almost exclusively focuses on the dominant status and role of one single language, i.e. French, and to a lesser extent English, whose speakers therefore feel marginalized and oppressed by the French government.

Race, space and commerce in multi-ethnic Costa Rica: a linguistic landscape inquiry

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (254) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louisa Buckingham
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Public ◽  
Tourism Sector

Abstract Costa Rica officially became a multi-ethnic, pluricultural nation in 2015. Representatives from the principal minorities, in particular Afro-Costa Ricans and indigenous peoples, played an important role in contesting the erstwhile dominant narrative of Costa Rican’s white European settler heritage. One of the intended consequences of the constitutional amendment was to ensure greater salience of ethnic minorities in public policy and social life. This study investigates the public display of linguistic and cultural diversity on commercial and community signage in six urban centres of Limón, the most ethnically diverse province. Undertaken in the same year as the constitutional amendment, the study examines the inclusion of languages and cultural references attributable to three main minority groups (Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and indigenous), and more recent migrant settlers, in public space. Greater salience was found in locations appearing to target a local readership; references to indigenous cultures were almost completely absent, however. Changes in the public narrative on Costa Rican identity may gradually encourage greater salience of official minority groups on public signage. An immediate challenge entails the effects of the expanding tourism sector, as this appears to favour a proliferation of decontextualized international cultural references rather than an appreciation of locality and historical rootedness.

scholarly journals PAISAGEM LINGUÍSTICA EM CONTEXTO FRONTEIRIÇO: ESTUDO DE CASO EM TABATINGA (BRA) E LETICIA (COL)

Trama ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (37) ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Luana Ferreira RODRIGUES
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Ethnolinguistic Vitality ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethnic And Racial Studies ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
Em 12 ◽  
And Migration

Neste artigo apresento um estudo de caso sobre a paisagem linguística na fronteira entre as cidades de Tabatinga (Brasil) e Leticia (Colômbia), com base nos conceitos de paisagem linguística (Bloomaert, 2012; Shohamy, 2010; Cenoz y Gorter, 2006), superdiversidade (Bloomaert y Rampton, 2012; Vertovec, 2007) e metrolinguismo (Otsuji; Pennycook, 2010). Este estudo de caso utiliza como dados de análise imagens de placas e letreiros de estabelecimentos comerciais, localizados próximo ao marco de fronteira entre Brasil e Colômbia, fotografadas durante trabalho de campo nas cidades mencionadas e tem como objetivo pensar a paisagem linguística como um dos instrumentos que podem auxiliar no diagnóstico sociolinguístico dos repertórios comunicativos dos falantes de uma determinada comunidade e o status das línguas nesses territórios fronteiriços. Além disso, proponho pensar a paisagem como um importante recurso para a promoção do multilinguismo e das línguas autóctones invisibilizadas pela hegemonia das línguas oficiais dos países onde se desenvolve o presente estudo. Essa invisibilização é perceptível, conforme aponto no estudo, não apenas na paisagem linguística dessas cidades, mas também no sistema escolar municipal e estadual ao não se observar a presença dessas línguas nos currículos das escolas regulares, revelando a ausência de uma representação identitária e linguística de grupos étnicos que vivem nesse espaço.REFERÊNCIASBEN-RAFAEL, E.; SHOHAMY, E.; AMARA, M. H.; TRUMPER-HECHT, N. Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel. In: GORTER, D. Linguistic Landscape: New Approach to Multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2006. p. 7-30.BERGER, I. R. Gestão do .multi/plurilinguismo em escolas brasileiras na fronteira Brasil – Paraguai: um olhar a partir do Observatório da Educação na Fronteira. 2015. Tese (Doutorado em Linguística) - Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2015. Disponível em: https://repositorio.ufsc.br/handle/123456789/133000 Acesso em: 14 jun. 2018.BERGER, I. R.; LECHETA, M. A paisagem linguística de um campus universitário fronteiriço: língua e poder em perspectiva. Entrepalavras, Fortaleza, v. 9, n. 2, p. 01-19, 2019.BLOMMAERT, J. Chronicles of complexity Ethnography, superdiversity, and linguistic landscapes. Tilburg: Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 2012.BLOMMAERT, J.; RAMPTON, B. Language and Superdiversity. MMG Working Paper Print. Göttingen, 2012.BOURDIEU, P. O poder simbólico. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 1989.CENOZ, J.; GORTER, D. El estudio del paisage lingüístico. Amsterdam: Journal Hizkunea, 2008. P.1-10. Disponível em: https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.293687 Acesso em: 04 abr. 2019.CENOZ, J; GORTER, D. Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages. International Journal of Multilingualism, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006. Disponível em: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.573.7767rep=rep1type=pdf Acesso em 15 jul. 2019.CRUL, M. Super-diversity vs. assimilation: how complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42:1, p. 54-68, 2016. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1061425 Acesso em 14 ago. 2019.LANDRY, R.; BOURHIS, R. Y. Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psycology, Mar., v. 16, n. 1, p. 23-49, 1997. Disponível em: https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0261927X970161002 Acesso em 14 ago. 2019.LOMBARDI, R. S.; SALGADO, A. C. P.; SOARES, M. S. Paisagem linguística e repertórios em tempos de diversidade: uma situação em perspectiva. Calidoscópio, v. 14, n. 2, p. 209-218, maio/ago., 2016. Disponível em: http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/viewFile/cld.2016.142.03/5558 Acesso em 08 ago. 2019OTSUJI. E.; PENNYCOOK, A. Metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal in Multilingualism, 7:3, p. 240-254, 2009. Disponível em: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790710903414331 Acesso em 25 jul. 2019.SCHILLER, N. G., ; CAGLAR, A. Locating Migrant Pathways of Economic Emplacement: Thinking Beyond the Ethnic Lens.” Ethnicities 13 (4): 494–514 , 2013. Disponível em: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258136583_Locating_Migrant_Pathways_of_Economic_Emplacement_Thinking_Beyond_the_Ethnic_Lens Acesso em 12 ago. 2019.SHOHAMY, E. Language Policy: hidden agendas and new approaches. Nova  York: Routledge, 2006. Disponível em: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203387962 Acesso em 23 ago. 2019.SPOLSKY, B. Prolegomena to a Sociolinguistic Theory of Public Signage. In: GORTER, D.; SHOHAMY, E. Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the scenary. Nova York: Routledge, 2009. p.25-39.STEIMAN, R. A geografia das cidades de fronteira: um estudo de caso de Tabatinga (Brasil) e Letícia (Colômbia). 2002. Dissertação de Mestrado em Geografia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2002. Disponível em: http://objdig.ufrj.br/16/teses/581220.pdf Acesso em 05 mar. 2018.VERTOVEC, S. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, v. 30, n. 6, p. 1024-1054, 2007. Disponível em: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713685087. Acesso em: 06 jun. 2019.YIN, R. K. Estudo de caso: planejamento e métodos. 2. ed. Porto Alegre: Bookman, 2001.Recebido em 29-11-2019 | Aceito em 10-02-2020

Komunistki

2020 ◽  
pp. 671-692
Author(s):  
Aga Skrodzka
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Communist Past ◽  
Status Of Women

This article argues for the importance of preserving the visual memory of female communist agency in today’s Poland, at the time when the nation’s relationship to its communist past is being forcefully rearticulated with the help of the controversial Decommunization Act, which affects the public space of the commons. The wholesale criminalization of communism by the ruling conservative forces spurred a wave of historical and symbolic revisions that undermine the legacy of the communist women’s movement, contributing to the continued erosion of women’s rights in Poland. By looking at recent cinema and its treatment of female communists as well as the newly published accounts of the communist women’s movement provided by feminist historians and sociologists, the project sheds light on current cultural debates that address the status of women in postcommunist Poland and the role of leftist legacy in such debates.

scholarly journals Restorative Design for Heritage Requalification: Selected Roman Works

2021 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Luciano Cupelloni
Keyword(s):  
Human Resources ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Experimental Research ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Technological Design ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Perspective

AbstractThe theme is the urban re-qualification, applied in particular to the architectural heritage and the public space. The goal is the ongoing challenge of outlining a new perspective aimed at “common good” and sustainability. The instrument chosen is the “environmental technological design,” understood as a cultural, scientific, and social position, that is, as a position on the role of architecture. The contribution reiterates the urgency of restoring the transformative power of the design mission to the project, too often reduced to a set of technical compilation procedures. In the best cases, a position that is lost in the complication of procedures, in the extension of time, in the waste of economic and human resources. A crisis of the project as “anticipation” of progressive scenarios, precisely in the most acute, ever more serious phase, of the urgency of the reorganization of urban systems, with a view to environmental, social and economic sustainability. Not a recent urgency, today only brought to light, dramatically, by the reality of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Among the solutions, the design experimental research, well beyond the objective of flexibility, up to the notion of “functional indifference,” understood not as shapeless neutrality, but as the maximum functionality of spatial, architectural and urban quality.

scholarly journals NYC POPS: Exploring Human Agency of the Public Sphere

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anna Constable
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Privately Owned

<p>This thesis aims to investigate, through design, spatial agency within the realm of New York City’s Privately Owned Public Spaces. The notion of agency in architecture is directly linked to social and political power. Starting in 1961, New York’s city planners introduced an incentive zoning scheme (POPS) which encouraged private builders to include public spaces in their developments. Many are in active public use, but others are hard to find, under surveillance, or essentially inaccessible. Within the existing POPS sites, tension is current between the ideals of public space - completely open, accessible - and the limitations imposed by those who create and control it. Designed to be singular, contained, and mono-functional, POPS do not yet allow for newer ideas of public space as multi-functional, not contained/bounded but extending and overlapping outward.  As public-private partnerships become the model for catalyzing urban (re)development in the late 20th century, bonus space is an increasingly common land use type in major cities across the world. The quality and nature of bonus spaces created in exchange for floor area bonuses varies greatly. In many cases, tensions in privately owned space produce a severely constricted definition of the public and public life. Incentive zoning programmes continue to serve as a model for numerous urban zoning regulations, so changing ideas of public space and its design need to be tested in such spaces.  These urban plazas offer a test case through which to examine agency, exploring how social space is also political space, charged with the dynamics of power/ empowerment, interaction/ isolation, control/ freedom. This thesis looks at one such site, the connecting plaza sites along Sixth Avenue between West 47th St and West 51st St. This is an extreme example of concentrated POPS sites in New York City. Here one’s perception and occupation of space is profoundly affected by the underlying design of that space which reflects its private ownership. Privately Owned Public Space can be designed that is capable of/ challenging the notion of the public in public space, and modifying the structure of the city and its social life.</p>

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