A study of the commodification of multilingualism in four cafés in China

Abstract

Space is constructed as a particular place by various agents and in a variety of ways, and languages play an important role in the semiotic construction of a space. This study adopts a linguistic landscape approach to explore how languages are commodified for consumption in sites of luxury, i.e., four cafés in Quanzhou, a southeastern city of China. The findings show some similarities and differences in terms of language choice for the four cafés. Despite the similarities and differences, the four shops’ landscapes feature atmospheric multilingualism, where multiple languages and scripts move into a luxury register of late-modern consumption and create the affective regime of luxury and exclusivity. Atmospheric multilingualism is driven by commercial interests and characterized by the commodification of multilingualism and a division of labor among languages in four cafés. In this division, English, other foreign languages, and traditional Chinese characters are employed for their symbolic functions, indexing cosmopolitanism, distinction, luxury, and modernity. Simplified Chinese characters are linked to the interaction order and used in daily business as the main instrument of communication.