English in the Churchscape: Exploring a Religious Linguistic Landscape in the Philippines

Abstract

As one of the official languages of the Philippines, English predominantly figures in thedomains of education, government, and the judiciary. This reality has always put English at the top of the linguistic ladder, relegating local languages to lower ranks. This scenario appears to be evident also in the domain of the church. In this paper, I investigate signs posted within the compound of a major Catholic church located in the Philippines in terms of types and language use. Informed by linguistic landscape concepts pioneered by Landry and Bourhis (1997), Spolsky and Cooper (1991), and Ben-Rafael (2009), I analyzed over a hundred signs in the religious linguistic landscape, which I call ‘churchscape’. Findings show that English dominates in the churchscape as a language of communication and language of tourism while local languages such as Filipino and Pangasinan assume a secondary role in the churchscape. This study affords us an interesting view and alternative understanding of multilingualism as a phenomenon through the churchscape in question.

Prestige, Language Politics, and The Walled City: An Exploratory Study of the Linguistic Landscape of Intramuros, Manila

“…Meanwhile, aside from neighborhoods, city districts, and HEIs, a number of interesting study locales have also been studied in the recent past. Esteron (2021), for example, concentrated on the LL of churches or "Churchscapes" in Manaoag, Bulacan, concluding that the multilingual nature of Manaoag churchscapes is a testament to the municipality's political, sociocultural, and linguistic history. So, even though "English stands on the highest rung of the church's linguistic ladder", native languages such as Filipino and Pangasinan still occupied a "supporting [… and] secondary function in the churchscapes" (Esteron, 2021, p.100-101).…”