Linguistic landscape in Singapore: what shop names reveal about Singapore’s multilingualism

Shang, Guowen; Guo, Linfei

doi:10.1080/14790718.2016.1218497

Cited by 68 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Even when specific official language policies are available, they are not always executed accordingly in the linguistic landscape. Shang and Guo () observe that ‘English is prevalent in all types of shop signs’ in Singapore, whereas ‘the other official languages are rarely presented on shop signs’ (p. 183). They attribute ‘the disparate vitality of languages’ in the linguistic landscape of Singapore to its ‘macro language policy, demographic structure, and ethnic and cultural identity’ (p. 183).…”

Section: English In the Korean Linguistic Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Multilingual advertising in the linguistic landscape of Seoul

Lee

2019

World Englishes

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This study examines commercial signs in arguably the two most visited tourism districts in Seoul, namely Myeongdong and Insadong. It focuses on beauty and food businesses and analyzes featured languages and their content and roles in signage. This article argues that business types, specialized marketing focus, and intended sales pitch influence business owners’ linguistic choices. The findings of the study suggest that the beauty industry relies heavily on English in general, but the power of K‐Beauty popularized by ‘Hallyu’ (The Korean Wave) beyond Korea inevitably invites linguistic accommodation in the form of using Chinese and Japanese. In general, the business category of beauty features a more prevalent use of English than the gastronomic business in this study. Moreover, as an area specializing in traditions and cultural heritage, Insadong shows more signs exclusively in Korean than in Myeongdong.

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Section: English In the Korean Linguistic Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

Multilingual advertising in the linguistic landscape of Seoul

Lee

2019

World Englishes

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“…As expected, Box Hill is filled with bilingual signage. As common in LL research (Backhaus, 2007;Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Amara, & Trumper-Hecht, 2006;Cook, 2013;Shang & Guo, 2017), we collected data through photography, and took a total of 387 images of the Box Hill Central Activity Area ("the shopping street") in August 2017.…”

Section: Site Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Papen (2015), however, reminds us that such a reading is from the perspective of Western cultures. Shang and Guo (2017), for example, have found that traditional Chinese signs in Hong Kong that adopt a right-to-left writing convention do not fit into such an interpretation. Apart from placement, the methods of inscription and the quality of material used in the signs may also manifest the ideology of sign-makers.…”

Section: Social Semiotic Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The aim of linguistic landscape (hereafter LL) studies is to investigate the imprint of social, cultural, and political communications on public signage to understand the behaviors and beliefs of various social actors (Gorter & Cenoz, 2015;Shohamy, 2015). As shown in a range of studies, LL researchers collect, document, and categorize language use on public signs to investigate how semiotic resources are used in specific contexts as well as to discover new semiotic resources and their innovative uses (Jarlehed & Jaworski, 2015;Lou, 2017;Shang & Guo, 2017). Arguably, much of the development of LL research has been based on studies of English as a global language (Rowland, 2015) and other European languages (Coluzzi, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A layered investigation of Chinese in the linguistic landscape

Yao

Gruba

2020

ARAL

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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).

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“…Since then, LL has expanded tremendously. Researchers have especially described urban agglomerations (Backhaus, 2006;Calvet, 1994;Huebner, 2006;Kasanga, 2010Kasanga, , 2012bKasanga, , 2014aLeeman & Modan, 2009;Lou, 2010;Manan, David, Dumanig, & Naqeebullah, 2015;Nikolau, 2016;Shang & Guo, 2016;Spolsky & Cooper, 1991;Vandenbroucke, 2004). The study of LL has moved beyond public roads, streets, shops and government buildings (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) to embrace many objects marking the space, such as: manhole covers (Tufi & Blackwood, 2010), electric poles, the wall space of a microbiology laboratory (Hanauer, 2009), the domestic and commercial waste and litter containers (Kallen, 2010).…”

Section: English In Advertising: Generalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

English in advertising in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Kasanga¹

2019

World Englishes

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In the last few decades, the linguistic landscape in Lubumbashi, the second largest and most economically important city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has grown into a big mosaic of languages and colors as many Anglophone mining and trade multinationals established themselves and implanted their foreign identities. For example, of the more than 1,000 advertisements counted in a small section of the city centre, English numbered up to more than 40% of them. Yet, English has remained alien in the country's everyday transactions. The main reason for its presence is that it has become a ‘global language’ (Crystal, 1997), spreading to ‘nearly every corner of the earth’ (Sonntag, 2003, p. xi). The main functions played by this mixture in which English plays a prominent role is to serve for cloning (or pirating), commercial purposes, corporate identity, cosmopolitanism, hybridization, imitation, and snobbism. This ubiquity of English is in sharp contrast with the infinitesimal use of English in intra‐national transactions.

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Linguistic landscape in Singapore: what shop names reveal about Singapore’s multilingualism

Cited by 68 publications

References 22 publications

Multilingual advertising in the linguistic landscape of Seoul

Multilingual advertising in the linguistic landscape of Seoul

A layered investigation of Chinese in the linguistic landscape

English in advertising in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

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