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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; Jawors...
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Context 1
... in English is typically accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word, and only a few blends are the result of combining the beginnings of both words, such as 'telex' (teleprinter/exchange) or 'modem' (modulator/demodulator). Surprisingly, however, portmanteaus I discovered are quite inventive in that they result either from the combin- ation of the final of a Chinese syllable with an English word, or that of a Pinyin (the Chinese phonetic system) with an English word, or from the mixture of an English word, a Pinyin, and an English word. A grocery store name, wtown, paired with its name in Chinese, 梧桐 (wutong), which translates to 'buttonwood' (see Figure 1), is an example of inventive portmanteaus of the first type. Specifically, wtown is an attachment of the final of the Chinese syllable wu 3 to the English word town, but there is no semantic relation between them as would normally be expected from a port- manteau. ...
Context 2
... analyzed, Maysnow can be seen more as a case of linguistic interplay between Chinese and English than a combination of two separate English words. Figure 10 presents another salient example of exocentric compounds, Chez-Choux, a name given to a patisserie shop chain, which is juxta- posed with the Chinese text, 西树泡芙 (xishu paofu, lit. West-tree puff). ...
Context 3
... the other hand, transgressive language practice, through which the construction of Suzhou into a distinctive collective entity becomes pos- sible, actually mirrors the initiative Suzhou takes in the local practice of English as a global lan- guage. Being adopted as a new, additional resource Figure 9. Brand name of an ornaments manufacturer, Maysnow Figure 10. Brand name of a patisserie shop chain, Chez Choux for identity construction, English is locally decon- structed and reconstituted to such an extent that it has become a product of, or a variant only belong- ing to, Suzhou. ...
Similar publications
Across the world, in many places in which English is not widely spoken, English text often appears on posters, storefronts, billboards, street signs, warning signs, menus, and many other forms of publicly visible written texts. English is often featured alongside one or more additional languages. These signs are typically seen as unremarkable by pa...
Citations
... The popularity of English is also projected to the linguistic landscape of Chinese cities. In the literature, the high visibility of English language in China's cityscape has been documented and interpreted from various perspectives such as language regime (Pan, 2010), creativity (Li, 2015), globalization (Liu, 2017;Wang & Ye, 2016), language attitudes (Han & Wu, 2020a;Shang & Xie, 2020), and tourism development (Li & Xia, 2017;Lu et al., 2020). For instance, Pan (2010) examined the multilingual practices in Beijing's commercial advertisements and observed that the English use patterns revealed not only the inequality in people's capacity to access the translocal linguistic resource but also the social stratification and power disparity on the social scales. ...
... For instance, Pan (2010) examined the multilingual practices in Beijing's commercial advertisements and observed that the English use patterns revealed not only the inequality in people's capacity to access the translocal linguistic resource but also the social stratification and power disparity on the social scales. In his study of the English forms on commercial signs in Suzhou, Li (2015) found that the creative and fluid usages of English were underpinned by four linguistic tactics: inventive portmanteaus, bilingual paronomasia, transgressive romanization, and exocentric compounds. Though these Chinese cities manifest different degrees of linguistic glocality, one common feature is that English has charted its territory in the cityscape and enriched the traditionally monoglot Chinese urban life. ...
... fascination house) (Fig. 2.6). Here, the English form fascinatress is presumably an "inventive portmanteau" (Li, 2015), conflating 'fascinate' and 'mistress' to produce a neologism. In another store on Shanghai's Wanhangdu Road, the Chinese name 蜀面 经典餐馆 (lit. ...
In this chapter, we look into the language choice and uses on private or commercial signs, particularly the vogue of adopting English on shopfront signs, in the metropolitan cities in the Changjiang River Delta region in Eastern China. After a brief illustration of the linguistic landscape in this region, business practitioners were interviewed to find out the sign authors’ motivations to display English on the shop name signs. The findings may help us understand private marketers’ ways to cope with the game of linguistic symbols in the consumer society, and shed light on the commodification of English, as well as the features of vernacular globalization in China. It can also deepen our understanding of the “experiential dimension” of LL (Trumper-Hecht, 2010) and grassroots individuals’ language ideology in the context of modernization and internationalization.
... As elucidated by Backhaus (2006), data can be systematically collected within academic premises by examining various types of signage, including billboards, printed canvases, streamers, advertisements, placards, sheets, and signboards. In alignment with this, Li (2015) introduces a classification scheme that distinguishes the study of LL into two significant categories: the top-down category and the bottom-up category. ...
... The findings of the study shed light on the classification of signage into two distinct categories, as proposed by Li (2015): The top-down category and the bottom-up category. These classifications are pivotal in understanding the linguistic landscape of signage within the university context and the implications of signage ownership and purpose. ...
... The results show that English remains to be the preferred code to be utilized, as majority of the learners and individuals have good understanding and grasp of the English language. Resulting in a specified location to use for directions, information dissemination, and presentation of policies (Lu et al., 2020;Li, 2015). This finding reinforces the university's clear preference for English as the primary language for academic and scholarly activities. ...
This study offers a comprehensive examination of the linguistic landscape in a nonmetropolitan university, focusing on the dominant language used in university signage. The study primarily delves into the multilingual characteristics and nature of Western Mindanao State University, situated in a linguistically-diverse environment. The study employed analytical categories, which was utilized to serve as basis in selecting and gathering data from various signages across the university, to ensure the accuracy of the data collection. The findings of the study indicated that the university contains five (5) languages that make its linguistic landscape, specifically: English (95.51%), Filipino (7.81%), Chavacano (3.07%), Tausug (1.28%), and Bisaya (0.64%). The data was analyzed using the content analysis to accurately interpret the taken photographs in the university. The study also uncovers the inequality of the number of signages, wherein majority of the signages are monolingual nature, and only limited on the bilingual and multilingual signs. The investigation also revealed a significant result that English is the dominant language used on signages despite the locale's diverse linguistic and cultural background. The major findings of this study portray that Western Mindanao State University employs both official and non-official signages throughout the campus and in terms of linguistic diversity, local languages are not entirely prevalent and observable on the signages across the entire campus. Consequently, despite the university's focus towards internationalization and global excellence, there is observable scarcity in multilingual signages. It is imperative to acknowledge the value of multilingual signages, not only for the purpose of communication, but for the preservation of local languages, that are crucial for cultural and ethnic representations.
... Usually focusing on linguistic/semiotic signs in culturally and linguistically diverse communities, linguistic landscape (hereafter LL) has appeared as a methodological paradigm for the investigation of the representation and visibility of languages across geographical contexts (Landry & Bourhis, 1997;Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Highlighting the informative and symbolic functions of languages, this paradigm enables the combination of a quantitatively distributive lens with a refined ethnographic perspective to generate insights into the ethnolinguistic vitality of a given territory and the spread of international lingua francas -in most cases English-in localized settings (Backhaus, 2007;Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010;Li, 2015;Liu, 2023). ...
... Scholarship on LL has disclosed a bias towards the production and consumption of signage in urban settings (Backhaus, 2007;Li, 2015;Yuan, 2019). Specifically, little is known about how the English language is contested and appropriated to expand its reach in the margins of globalization. ...
As China plays an increasingly significant part in this globalizing world, English, a global lingua franca, has been recognized as a valued linguistic resource that adds to the complexity of Chinese sociolinguistic profiles (Dong, 2017). Scholarship on linguistic landscapes (LL) in the Chinese context has disclosed a bias toward the production and consumption of English signage in urban settings (Li, 2015; Yuan, 2019), yet little is known about how the English language is contested and appropriated to expand its reach in the margins of globalizing China, such as the less developed rural regions. Against this backdrop, this ethnographic study focuses on an ordinary rural township, Wucheng, in central China. We seek to examine the status of English in the rural linguistic landscape of globalizing China by drawing upon data from 286 LL photos, and 20 street interviews with passers-by or sign-creators.
The statistical and qualitative analysis reveals that English as the language with prestige and power is spreading its influence on the LL of Wucheng. With its symbolic functions, English plays a vital role in the consumption of rural spaces where imagination for a global future is allowed by creating an air of openness and internationalism. Meanwhile, the rising significance of English also brings about scenes of struggle in the Chinese rural township. By using transliteration and lookalike English as creative linguistic practices in making bilingual signs, the voices of local residents can be amplified and heard. The LL of Wucheng opens up a site of contestation between the spread of English and indigenous resistance, which functions to be, as it was, an embodiment of the sociolinguistic complexity and dynamics of rural spaces in globalizing China.
... In other words, the target text reproduces the source text's pronunciation and/or meaning. The strategies on the creative side of the continuum (transliteration punning, cultural manipulation, hybrid translation) are informed by research about creativity in LL translation and bilingual language play of Chinese and English (Li, 2015;Luk, 2013;Yuan, 2020;Zhang, 2015). These strategies are considered creative because they do not focus solely on reproducing the linguistic denotation of the source text in the target text. ...
... To some extent, such LL brings creativity and exclusivity to the cultural ecology of Langtou Village. Especially Figure 4.8, which deliberately departs from the unique effects that the ancient sociocultural system in the traditional village brings to the space (Li, 2015). ...
The tourism industry has penetrated traditional Chinese villages, where the linguistic landscape reflects a dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary culture, thereby redefining the transformation of China's rural cultural ecology. The researchers gathered 475 images of the linguistic landscape through fieldwork in Langtou Village and conducted a qualitative investigation within the context of Chinese cultural history and village history. Based on Huebner's (2008) speaking model, researchers investigated the potential influence of time elements in the linguistic landscape on the cultural reconstruction of the village. We conclude that the linguistic landscape of Langtou Village encompasses seven types of time elements, which essentially observe content time, creation time, and feature time. The commonalities or differences among these elements give rise to time trajectories that influence the cultural reconstruction of Langtou Village. One is the cultural reconstruction of cherishing memory, which perpetuates historical information. Another is the cultural reconstruction of combining moments, which amalgamates contemporary culture and poses the risk of inauthenticity in historical villages. The study suggests that the distribution of time elements in linguistic landscapes exhibits hierarchy in real settings, which is related to the spatial regularity induced by the village's historical information. We believe that adopting a time-element-oriented perspective can deliver new recommendations for the linguistic landscape planning of traditional Chinese villages. This research inspires readers to comprehend the essence of the relationship between rural linguistic landscapes and cultural ecology, specifically: what is the smallest unit of interaction between historical and contemporary culture in the context of reconstruction?
... Aside from that, the linguistic situation could also be different in Mandarin-dominating cities in which Mandarin-English puns are frequently discovered in the public space and the cityscapes. In a study conducted in Suzhou, a Chinese city located in the Yangtze River Delta, Li (2015) explored the incorporation of English in nonofficial public signage and discovered the existence of Mandarin-English bilingual paronomasia in the cityscape. Through the study findings, Li (2015) explained the nature of Mandarin-English bilingual puns whereby an English word replaced a Chinese word in displaying the overall meaning of a Chinese phrase and posited that homonyms and syntaxes were the major features of bilingual puns in Suzhou's LLs. ...
... In a study conducted in Suzhou, a Chinese city located in the Yangtze River Delta, Li (2015) explored the incorporation of English in nonofficial public signage and discovered the existence of Mandarin-English bilingual paronomasia in the cityscape. Through the study findings, Li (2015) explained the nature of Mandarin-English bilingual puns whereby an English word replaced a Chinese word in displaying the overall meaning of a Chinese phrase and posited that homonyms and syntaxes were the major features of bilingual puns in Suzhou's LLs. Similarly, another study conducted by Peng et al. (2021) in Guangzhou, a Chinese city located in the Pearl River Delta also revealed the emergence of Mandarin-English bilingual puns in the cityscape. ...
Punning, either monolingual or bilingual, is a significant action in creating literal humor and rhetorical jokes. Notwithstanding, there is a dearth of linguistic studies on punning, particularly bilingual punning. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a sociolinguistic appraisal of Chinese-English bilingual puns in Guangzhou, an international Chinese metropolis, by presenting and analyzing the data collected from the linguistic landscapes of Guangzhou. A qualitative method was employed in analyzing the data collected from 18 commercial signages with visible bilingual puns that were located in two popular commercial centers of Guangzhou. Resultantly, Chinese-English puns largely occurred at the word level with bilingual homophones as the core of the puns on Guangzhou's commercial signage. The wide use of the word Fun showed the conventionalized, context-dependent, and intertextuality features of bilingual puns. Furthermore, bilingual puns displayed an emerging feature of translanguaging in the public space. Hence, this study sheds light on the features of Chinese-English bilingual puns and contributes to existing literature by discovering the sociolinguistic dynamics of bilingualism in Chinese communities.
... The multidisciplinary nature of LL is manifested in its close relationships with other disciplines, such as semiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), linguistics (Li, 2015), sociolinguistics (Ben-Rafael, 2009), language policy and planning (Han & Wu, 2019), education (Rowland, 2013), ethnic studies (Blackwood & Tufi, 2015), and tourism (Yan, 2019). An increasing number of studies prove that it is necessary to consider LL as an interdisciplinary field instead of restricting it to a particular aspect. ...
... Similarly, a study in a Pakistani city shared similar results concerning the glocalisation of English in LLs (Manan et al., 2017). Similar findings can be identified in other Asian cities. Li (2015) summarised the features of Chinese-English language mixing and linguistic creativity in a qualitative study on Chinese LLs. A quantitative study in a northern Jordanian city revealed the English-Arabic mixing practice and the hybrid or creative linguistic forms in commercial signage (Alomoush, 2018). ...
... These statements increasingly raise the attention to multilingual adverts in the public space. Resultantly, a myriad of LL research has collected multilingual adverts as the new LL data to study multilingualism and the global spread of English in the public space (Bolton, 2012;Lawrence, 2012;Lee, 2019;Li, 2015). Case study Language choice Minority language Multilingual advertising South Africa Quantitative approach Cluster #4 is related to South Africa, a particular LL research region. ...
Linguistic landscape (LL) is a prism that reflects the linguistic dynamics, language policies, and power relations in given territories. By utilising the scientometric software, CiteSpace 5.8.R3, this paper provides a visualised overview of 654 records and 19746 references (1994-2021) on LL selected from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). The scientific network analysis, keyword network analysis, and co-citation analysis were undertaken. The leading authors, institutions, and countries in the LL field were identified through scientific network analysis. Analyses of high-frequency keywords and the cluster analysis of keywords identified the hot topics within the LL domain. Document co-citation analysis and co-cited reference clusters were determined to examine influential works and LL research frontiers. The findings indicated that LL research had been expanded from the initial focus on identity and language policy to today’s in-depth explorations of language, multilingualism, and English in the globalisation context. In addition, the research object and research approach have made a critical turn to a highly interdisciplinary way.
... However, this current research will only focus on the usage of English as the second language of a country that have multilingual society by investigating the function of bilingual and multilingual signs. Li (2015) conducted a research investigating the use of English in the linguistic landscape of Suzhou, China and found that bilingualism exist in the linguistic landscape of the city. English is now the lingua franca of the world is the fact that brought Lawrence (2012) to conduct a research investigating English-Korean by visiting different areas of Seoul and Korea that have different social status and taking pictures of public signs, and then analyzing the signs according to language, domains, and location. ...
This study deals with linguistic landscape found on Khatiib Sulaiman Street, Padang. The aim of the study is to identify the dominant language of the monolingual, bilingual and multilingual signs and to investigate the function of English displayed on the signs. Thus, this study uses mixed method, quantitative and qualitative, since the data and the analysis of this study is in the form of pictures and text and the justification is proven by the percentage. By using multilingualism approach on a linguistic landscape research, 236 pictures of signs displayed on Khatib Sulaiman Street as the data of this study were collected on July, 2021, and then was classfied to be monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual based on the languages that exist on each sign. This research found that there are 117 signs in Bahasa Indonesia-only, 14 signs in English-only, 82 signs in Bahasa Indonesia-English, 12 signs in Bahasa Indonesia-Minangnese, 6 signs in Bahasa Indonesia-Arabic, 3 signs in Bahasa Indonesia-English-Minangnese, and 2 signs in Bahasa Indoensia-English-Arabic. Monolingual signs are dominated by Bahasa Indonesia indicating that national languages still has the strongest position. Foreign language that is predominant in bilingual and multilingual signs is English. Gorter (2006) divides types of signs in linguistic landscape into two: bottom-up and top-down, type of sign that uses English the most is type bottom-up, displayed to live both informative function, which are to tell the name of shops and to do marketing and symbolic function, which are to symbolize modernity, sophistication, professionalism, and social status.
... Bilingual signs are preferred as they can reach a larger clientele. The competing group-based nature of original vitality theory as applied to a Chinese city by Li (2015), is difficult or impossible to maintain. Stall owners prefer bilingual signs expressing a double identity, Singapore and ethnic, the latter through the use of regional names such as Chaozhou, a Teochew city in China, and NMD Romanisation to express elements of their ethnic food culture. ...
This paper is a sociolinguistic study of the linguistic landscape of signboards in Singapore hawker centres. It examines the language(s) displayed on the signboards of 2,145 stalls in the 20 largest hawker centres in Singapore. Hawker centres in Singapore are open-air eating places patronised by thousands of people each day. With less government intervention in the languages that can be displayed on hawker centre signboards, the signs reflect the languages used and identities adopted by the masses in a multilingual setting. This language ecology enables us to observe how languages interact at individual and societal levels in hawker centres and how linguistic diversity is maintained despite the apparent widespread use of English in Singapore. We examine how besides the monolingual, bilingual and multilingual and hybrid signboards, hawker centres are unique habitats in this language ecology where non-Mandarin dialects are preserved, and traditional Chinese characters are commonly seen, in a globalised Singapore. The hawker centres showcase a linguistic landscape of identity, diversity, and continuity.
... LL has also been defined more broadly as "the study of writing on display in the public sphere" (Coulmas, 2009, p. 14), or "all the language items that are visible in a specified part of the public space" (Cenoz & Gorter, 2008, p. 267). LL research mostly uses photographs of public signage as data to learn about the multiliterate and multilingual ecology of cities (see e.g., Baranova & Fedorova, 2019;Fakhiroh & Rohmah, 2018;Li, 2015;Spolsky, 2009;Tufi & Blackwood, 2016). Some researchers have also explored LLs online, in a form of digital or virtual LLs, in an attempt to expand the concept to linguistic cyberecology (Blommaert & Maly, 2019;Ivkovic & Lotherington, 2009). ...
In this article, I introduce the approach that I have named languacultural landscape (LCL), which is the advancement of linguistic landscape (LL) used as a pedagogical resource. I draw on the pedagogy of multiliteracies (PoM) and explore the potential of an LCL project to bring PoM in its fullest “critical” sense to plurilingual classrooms. The paper discusses the theoretical foundations of the LCL approach and outlines the differences and similarities between LCL and LL as pedagogical resources. I also provide recommendations on how an LCL project could be conducted in a classroom, based on an LCL research project undertaken by me in my local community. I argue that such a project could be used to not only address students’ understanding of cultural diversity by critically analyzing historical and political contexts of learning, but also as a way to reimagine the reality around them with more egalitarian cultural dynamics in mind.
