Complexity perspectives on linguistic landscapes

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Soler-Carbonell
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
Scalar Analysis

Linguistic landscape studies (LLS) have become popular tools to investigate multilingual settings; yet they often lack theoretical elaboration. This paper tries to contribute to filling this gap by combining the postulates of complexity theory with the concept of ‘scale’. Taking Tallinn as a case study, I conceptualise scales as nodes of complexity, dynamically produced and reproduced by the inter-connection of different agents in interaction. The results show a significant degree of language heterogeneity in Tallinn’s LL, but one that adopts different forms in different places, something that indexes the diverse types of mobility in those settings. What appears as multilingual messiness becomes logically coherent when we look at how different semiotic resources are mobilized to co-construct different scalar frameworks. In conclusion, it is argued that a scalar analysis informed by a complexity perspective can be beneficially exploited for theoretical and methodological purposes in LLS.

Commodification or shared ownership? A case study of Chinese communities in the linguistic landscape of Bendigo

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofang Yao
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Lived Spaces ◽  
Shared Ownership

Abstract Current linguistic landscape studies of tourism are primarily concerned with the commodification of languages, and less attention is focused on ownership discourses that are constructed in tourist spaces through varied semiotic resources. This study employs a spatial perspective to analyse commodification and ownership in the linguistic landscape of Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, focusing on how these discourses materialise in the conceived, perceived, and lived spaces through the semiotic resources of Chinese communities. Built on a comprehensive dataset of photographs, field notes, interviews, and archived materials, this study reveals the agency of Bendigo’s Chinese community members, who claim ownership of semiotic resources despite the institutional forces seeking to commodify Chinese cultural heritage for tourist consumption. Examination of Chinese heritage sites demonstrates the possibility of shared ownership of Chinese semiotic resources among Chinese and non-Chinese residents in an Australian cultural tourism context. This balancing act of commodification and ownership constitutes a critical part of the lived experiences of Chinese communities in today’s era of mobility and globalisation.

Change and continuity in Hurstville’s Chinese restaurants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Zhan Xu ◽  
Wei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Chinese Restaurant ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Restaurant Owners ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Sydney Australia

Abstract This paper investigates the Linguistic Landscape of Chinese restaurants in Hurstville, a Chinese-concentrated suburb in Sydney, Australia. It draws on Blommaert and Maly’s (2016) Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA) and Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotics (2003). Our data set consists of photographs, Google Street View archives, and ethnographic fieldwork, in particular in-depth interviews with restaurant owners. This paper adopts a diachronic perspective to compare the restaurant scape between 2009 and 2019 and presents an ELLA case study of a long-standing Chinese restaurant. It aims to unveil the temporal and spatial relationships between signs, agents, and place, that demonstrate how a social and historical perspective in Linguistic Landscape studies of diasporic communities can shed light on the changes in the broader social context.

A layered investigation of Chinese in the linguistic landscape

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-336
Author(s):  
Xiaofang Yao ◽  
Paul Gruba
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Language ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Block Area ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
Layered Approach ◽  
A Site

Abstract Increased attention to urban diversity as a site of study has fostered the recent development of linguistic landscape studies. To date, however, much of the research in this area has concerned the use and spread of English to the exclusion of other global languages. In a case study situated in Box Hill, a large suburb of Melbourne, we adopted a layered approach to investigate the role of Chinese language in Australia. Our data set consisted of hundreds of photographs of street signage in one square block area of the shopping district. Results of our analyses show that signage portrays a variety of code preferences and semiotic choices that in turn reveal insights into the identities, ideologies, and strategies that help to structure the urban environment. As demonstrated in our study, such complexity requires a renewed and situated understanding of key principles of linguistic landscape research (Ben-Rafael & Ben-Rafael, 2015).

Die Sprachlandschaft des schulischen Raums

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jannis Androutsopoulos ◽  
Franziska Kuhlee
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Location ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Spatial Differences

Abstract The study of signage in educational settings (‘schoolscape’) is a recent development in linguistic landscape research. Some approaches to schoolscapes focus on signs in schools of various types, which are coded for formal and functional characteristics, including language choice. Other approaches examine signs alongside spatial practices, e. g. the arrangement of furniture and classroom activities, thereby taking the viewpoints of teachers, students and parents into consideration. The research presented in this paper centers on school signs. We propose an analytical framework for schoolscape research which integrates the geosemiotic framework by Scollon and Scollon (2003), the classification of school signage by Gorter and Cenoz (2015), the notion of ‘sign genres’ from linguistic landscape studies and text linguistics, and a context-sensitive approach to spatial differences within educational institutions. Our framework includes four interlocking levels of examination: (a) discourses, i. e. knowledge-and-power configurations, indexed by a sign; (b) genres by which a discourse is materialized in space; (c) a sign’s precise spatial location, e. g. a classroom as opposed to the school foyer, and (d) the semiotic resources that are routinely deployed for various genres of school signage. Empirical evidence comes from a case study of a secondary school in Hamburg, with more than 550 signs photographed and coded. The paper presents an exhaustive analysis of this data in terms of seven discourses, each materialized by a number of genres and with a specific spatial distribution in the school. The potential of this framework for future schoolscape research is discussed.

Memories and semiotic resources in place-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nhan Phan
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Local Resident ◽  
Activity Spaces ◽  
Semiotic Resources

Abstract This paper explores how semiotic resources are used to build individuals’ place-making during a walk around the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam. Using Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad as the perceived, the lived and the conceived, the paper uses a case study of a local participant and myself to consider how our differing perspectives affect place-making. I show how the local resident makes meaning using perceived resources in the here-and-now as backdrops for the lived, presented via his recounting of memories of activity spaces. I then contrast how these memories differ from the researcher’s place-making, where the conceived affects how I perceive the significance of visual resources on signs in the here-and-now. The study shows the value of Lefebvre’s (1991) triad for explaining the conflicting generalisations researchers have made about the nature of what is seen in the linguistic landscape or about the roles played by linguistic landscape in defining place.

scholarly journals La dimension pragmatico-discursive du français en contact

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Drescher
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
African Country ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Direct Interaction ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Local Contact ◽  
Medical Issues ◽  
Mitigation Technique

The aim of this paper is two-fold : First it argues for a stronger consideration of the pragmatic and discourse level in research on language contact. Secondly it contributes to the pragmatics of a specific regional variety of French, namely Cameroonian French. Starting with a picture of the complex linguistic landscape of this multilingual African country, the paper stresses the importance of the pragmatic and discourse level by raising some of the crucial theoretical and methodological issues that a broader, usage-based view on language contact has to cope with. First it suggests that pragmatic and discourse conventions may be influenced by the local contact languages and secondly it emphasizes that they may not be specific to a language, but be shared by a much larger and encompassing community of discourse. A case study of Cameroonian radio phone-ins where callers seek advice on medical issues points out some of these conventions. Here the participants establish a specific participation framework that avoids direct interaction between caller and expert while the host is set in as a mediator. This global mitigation technique then allows for quite direct realisations of the advice at a local level.

scholarly journals Misfit? The Use of Metrics in Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Ilse Svensson de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Strategic Change ◽  
Key Performance Indicators ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Sales Organizations ◽  
Organizational Levels

Measuring innovation is a challenging but essential task to improve business performance. To tackle this task, key performance indicators (KPIs) can be used to measure and monitor innovation. The objective of this study is to explore how KPIs, designed for measuring innovation, are used in practice. To achieve this objective, the author draws upon literature on business performance in accounting and innovation, yet moves away from the functional view. Instead, the author focuses explicitly on how organizational members, through their use of KPIs in innovation, make sense of conflicting interpretations and integrate them into their practices. A qualitative in-depth case study was conducted at the innovation department of an organization in the process industry that operates production sites and sales organizations worldwide. In total, 28 interviews and complementary observations were undertaken at several organizational levels (multi-level). The empirical evidence suggests that strategic change, attributed to commoditization, affects the predetermined KPIs in use. Notably, these KPIs in innovation are used, despite their poor fit to innovation subject to commoditization. From a relational perspective, this study indicates that in innovation, KPIs are usually complemented by or supplemented with other information, as stand-alone KPIs exhibit a significant degree of incompleteness. In contrast to conventional studies in innovation and management accounting, this study explores the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) in innovation from an interpretative perspective. This perspective advances our understanding of the actual use of KPIs and uncovers the complexity of accounting and innovation, which involve numerous angles and organizational levels. Practically, the findings of this study will inform managers in innovation about the use of KPIs in innovation and the challenges individual organizational members face when using them. In innovation, KPIs appear to be subjective and used in unintended ways. Thus, understanding how KPIs are used in innovation is a game of reading between the lines, and these KPIs can be regarded as misfits.

scholarly journals Multimodal Analysis of Innisfree’s Brand History

K ta Kita ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-269
Author(s):  
Vanessa Velancia Prajogo ◽  
Setefanus Suprajitno
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Market Share ◽  
Common Method ◽  
Brand Identity ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Visual Mode ◽  
Multimodal Analysis ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
Fierce Competition

Fierce competition in increasing market share growth prompts companies to strive to create a memorable brand identity. One common method adopted by some companies is using a video advertisement, which contains the message they want to convey about their product or brand. This message is intended to persuade people who see the advertisement to buy their product. In doing so, companies usually use the visual, linguistic, spatial and other semiotic resources, often referred to as a semiotic mode. Through the case study of Innisfree’s video advertisement “Brand History,” we analyze how Innisfree uses linguistic, spatial, and visual mode for creating a message that enables consumers to remember and to persuade them buy its product. Our findings show that the message in the video advertisement is that Innisfree is a beauty product that upholds nature as its ingredients, has high quality, and preserves the environment where it takes its ingredients. Key Words: Advertisement, Persuasion, Modes, Verbal and Non-verbal expressions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document