Article

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic Linguistic Landscapes on Lifestyle, Health Awareness and Behavior

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Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic created a plethora of new challenges for the world and affected all aspects of human life. This research aimed to look further into the sociolinguistic aspects of the COVID-19 Linguistic Landscape (LL) and assess the extent to which public signs affected people’s behaviors and lifestyles during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Saudi context. A semi-structured questionnaire was developed to collect data related to the study. A total of 215 participants from different regions of Saudi Arabia participated in the survey. The study results provide evidence of language as a critical element in reflecting the social realities of the Saudis. The data confirmed that the COVID-19 Linguistic Landscape (CLL) served several functions at both individual and institutional levels in Saudi Arabia. Key findings emerged about the role of the linguistic landscapes set up in public spaces in changing people’s thoughts and behavior as well as how they reacted to urgent and exceptional conditions such as COVID-19. In sum, the pandemic-associated signs led to remarkable positive changes in the daily routine of people.

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... These multiple influences highlight how important it is for consumers to become health conscious, thus avoiding negative outcomes regarding their health [94,95]. With this, companies could establish clear policies that lead to capturing and achieving loyalty in a segmented manner with customers that are health-conscious consumers while having support from governments and health authorities, who maintain an important participation in the improvement of public health conditions [96,97]. ...
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Across the globe signage which conveys directives regarding appropriate behavior in public, such as ‘Do Not Enter’ signs, is made multilingual in ways that other signage is not. This paper examines two examples of multilingualism in directive signs within Seoul, South Korea in order to theorize what gives rise to multilingualism in directive signage while other signage remains monolingual. Examination of Vietnamese and Arabic on signs prohibiting the illegal disposal of household garbage on side streets in Seoul, and English, Chinese, and Japanese on mask-required due to COVID-19 signs within the Seoul subway system allows for a robust analysis of what shapes the inclusion of additional languages on directive signage. We posit the construction of a differently speaking other who is seen as likely to disobey stated regulations alongside the desire by authorities to minimize the effort required to respond to rule breaking results in a multilingual commanding urgency that shapes multilingualism in directive signage. The concept of multilingual commanding urgency emphasizes the role enforcement practices have in shaping multilingualism, an important development in understanding this form of signage. Multilingual commanding urgency is especially relevant as it shapes signage deployed in emergency contexts such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article
This article describes the changing linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I present an account of the visual representation of change along the area’s parks and trails, which remained open for socially-distanced exercise during the province’s lockdown. Following the principles of visual, walking ethnography, I walked through numerous locations, observing and recording the visual representations of the province’s policies and discourses of lockdown and social distancing. Examples of change were most evident in the rapid addition to social space of top-down signs, characterised mainly by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed in ways that encouraged local people to abide by social-distancing. However, through this process of observation and exploration, I noticed grassroots semiotic artefacts such as illustrated stones with images and messages that complemented the official signs of the provincial government. As was the case with the official signs and messages, through a process of discursive convergence, these grassroots artefacts performed a role of conveying messages and discourses of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.
Article
Emerging research has examined the role of media coverage of diseases in influencing people’s health behavior, particularly their compliance with prevention measures. This study examines whether increased media exposure to COVID-19 news and interpersonal communication about the disease positively relate to people’s abidance by prevention measures, and whether perceived knowledge and fear mediate this relationship. The study focuses on Lebanon, whose government and media responses led to a successful containment of COVID-19 in its first phase, although the country was experiencing a severe economic crisis, widespread political unrest, and a massive influx of refugees. It examines both legacy media (Television) and social media, as well as interpersonal communication, through a cross-sectional researcher-administered phone survey of 1,536 adults and a nationally representative probability sample. The fieldwork was conducted between March 27 and April 23, 2020, and resulted in a 51.6% response rate. The findings support the hypotheses that increased media exposure to COVID-19 news positively relates to people’s abidance by prevention measures and that perceived knowledge and fear mediate this relationship. However, the same hypotheses for interpersonal communication were not supported.
Article
This online survey took place on March 7, 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Participants (n = 698) completed an online survey in which they were asked to reflect on their mediated and interpersonal information consumption, in addition to reporting on risk perceptions, general efficacy perceptions, and preventative behaviors specific to COVID-19 in the past seven days. Participant age and chronic condition status were controlled for in all analyses. Time spent consuming news, social media, and health website information was not related to risk perceptions. Time spent on health websites predicted time spent having interpersonal conversations about COVID-19, as well as general efficacy levels. Following the Extended Parallel Process Model, perceived severity, perceived susceptibility, and general perceived efficacy predicted preventative behaviors. The vast majority of participants did report taking preventative action against COVID-19, most commonly in the form of hand washing, with many enacting stronger preventative behaviors that had yet to be recommended for the general population. Overall, mediated and interpersonal information exposure had minimal effects on perceived risk and perceived general efficacy, which in turn predicted 27.5% of the variance in preventative behavior. Efficacy was the most powerful among these predictors, and health websites, specifically governmental websites, appeared to be underutilized resources with the potential to promote efficacy during outbreaks. Further research is needed to understand causation in these relationships and to assist in successful message transmission.
Article
Multilingual crisis communication has emerged as a global challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Global public health communication is characterized by the large-scale exclusion of linguistic minorities from timely high-quality information. The severe limitations of multilingual crisis communication that the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare result from the dominance of English-centric global mass communication; the longstanding devaluation of minoritized languages; and the failure to consider the importance of multilingual repertoires for building trust and resilient communities. These challenges, along with possible solutions, are explored in greater detail by the articles brought together in this special issue, which present case studies from China and the global Chinese diaspora. As such, the special issue constitutes not only an exploration of the sociolinguistics of the COVID-19 crisis but also a concerted effort to open a space for intercultural dialogue within sociolinguistics. We close by contending that, in order to learn lessons from COVID-19 and to be better prepared for future crises, sociolinguistics needs to include local knowledges and grassroots practices not only as objects of investigation but in its epistemologies; needs to diversify its knowledge base and the academic voices producing that knowledge base; and needs to re-enter dialogue with policy makers and activists.
Book
This book presents a sociolinguistic ethnography of the linguistic landscape of Chinatown in Washington, DC. The book sheds a unique light on the impact of urban development on traditionally ethnic neighbourhoods and discusses the various historical, social and cultural factors that contribute to this area’s shifting linguistic landscape. Based on fieldwork, interviews with residents and visitors and analysis of community meetings and public policies, it provides an in-depth study of the production and consumption of linguistic landscape as a cultural text. Following a geosemiotic analysis of shop signs, it traces the multiple historical trajectories of discourse which shaped the bilingual landscape of the neighbourhood. Turning to the spatial contexts, it then compares and contrasts the situated meaning of the linguistic landscape for residents, community organisers and urban planners.
Book
Linguistic Landscapes is the first comprehensive approach to a largely under-explored sociolinguistic phenomenon: language on signs. Based on an up-to-date review of previous research from various places around the world, the book develops an analytical framework for the systematic analysis of linguistic landscape data. This framework is applied to a sample of 2,444 signs collected in 28 survey areas in central Tokyo. Analytical categories include the languages contained and their combinations, differences between official and nonofficial signs, geographic distribution, availability of translation or transliteration, linguistic idiosyncrasies, and the comparison of older and newer signs, among others. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the analysis yields some unique insights about the writers of multilingual signs, their readers, and the languages and scripts in contact. Linguistic Landscapes thus demonstrates that the study of language on signs has much to contribute to research into urban multilingualism, as well as the study of language and society as a whole.
Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes
  • R Blackwood
  • E Lanza
  • H Woldemariam
Blackwood, R., Lanza, E., Woldemariam, H., & Milani, T. (Eds.). (2017). Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in second language acquisition. IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
  • J Cenoz
  • D Gorter
Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in second language acquisition. IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46(3), 267-287. https://doi.org/10.1515/IRAL.2008.012
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the human behavior
  • M Hussain
  • T Mirza
  • M Hassan
Hussain, M., Mirza, T., & Hassan, M. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the human behavior. International Journal of Education and Management Engineering, 10(8), ‫.16-53‬ https://doi.org/10.5815/ijeme.2020.05.05
Language challenges of Covid-19 are a pressing issue. Language on the Move
  • I Piller
Piller, I., (2020). Language challenges of Covid-19 are a pressing issue. Language on the Move. Retrieved from https://www.languageonthemove.com/language-challenges-of-covid-19-are-a-pressing-issue
A mixed-methods linguistic landscape study on signs used in France, Italy, and the Netherlands during the covid-19 pandemic
  • M Zhao
Zhao, M. (2020). A mixed-methods linguistic landscape study on signs used in France, Italy, and the Netherlands during the covid-19 pandemic. Master"s Thesis. Institutional Repository of the Universiteit Leiden.