Linguistic landscapes in an era of multiple globalizations

Abstract

This paper focuses on linguistic landscapes in present-day urban settings. These spaces consist of numberless establishments riddled with versatile texts or ‘LL items’. They are foci of both the development of globalization that conquers the world through commercial globe-encompassing networks, and of massive migrations from underprivileged countries to privileged ones. In each such city, one distinguishes major ‘downtowns’ and secondary ones in neighbourhoods, whose variety reflects a complex composition. LL investigations help understand how far and in what ways dissonant cleavages divide the public space. Chaos is the rule in this urban landscape, but where it illustrates some permanence and recurrence, it becomes familiar and the feeling of disorder may leave room for a notion of gestalt. Turning from here to the empirical investigation of LLs in Brussels, Berlin, and Tel-Aviv, we ask, as far as LLs can say: (1) if globalization causes the weakening of allegiances to all-societal symbols in favour of supra-national ones; (2) if migratory movements toward megapolises express themselves in the creation of segregated LLs or, on the contrary, indicate some ‘melting’ tendencies of the new populations into society’s mainstream; and (3) to what extent these questions elicit the same answers in different places or contribute to different configurations.

A layered investigation of Chinese in the linguistic landscape

“…As such, good reasons is intrinsically linked with presentation-of-self as a way to explain the idiosyncratic choices of sign owners to differentiate themselves and highlight the uniqueness of their businesses. By projecting ethnic authenticity or other singular experiences, such presentation may in fact be seeking to attract customers for economic reasons (see also Ben-Rafael & Ben Rafael, 2015;Coluzzi, 2016). We see in the present study, however, that presentation-of-self may not simply stand alone as a distinct principle and it is thus better to be classified under the principle of good reasons.…”

“…Results show that signage portrays a variety of code preferences and semiotic choices that in turn contributes to our understanding of the textual, visual, and contextual resources used in the urban environment. As demonstrated in our study, such complexity requires a renewed and situated interpretation of key principles of linguistic landscape research, including power relations, good reasons, and collective identity (Ben-Rafael & Ben-Rafael, 2015).…”

Language visibility patterns of ergonyms in the linguistic landscape of a rural municipality in the southern Free State, South Africa

“…Locality refers to the type of suburb where the LL is situated. LL research proves that there is indeed a correlation between neighbourhoods and their LLs (Backhaus 2005a, 112-115;Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, Amara and Trumper-Hecht 2006;Gorter 2006, 2-4;Barni 2008, 18;Gorter and Cenoz 2008, 351-352;Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2015). However, it is important to note that the correlation between LL and locality does not imply a similar correspondence between the LL and the ethnolinguistic composition of the community in that locale.…”

“…Spolsky (2009, 71) argues that "the existence rather than the language of the latter [i.e. brand names] is what is most likely to be relevant, in other words, the association with what the brand represents, rather than making a specific language choice" (see also Edelman 2009;Tufi and Blackwood 2010: 205-206;Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2015). In the present research site, for example, a brand name such as "Coca-Cola" is not a language choice.…”

Tourist Notices in the Spotlight of Linguistic Landscape and Translation Studies

“…English, a high-status lingua franca, is primarily used with an emblematic function (Blommaert 1996) implying prestige and modernity, and, most noticeably, the prominent position of its users in the social, political, and economic spheres (Papen 2012) and has become an advantage for non-English-speaking countries (Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2015). English is 'imported' into the original linguacultural settings due to various reasons, such as a country's operating in global markets, hosting worldwide events (Aristova 2016), accepting foreign labor force or trying to attract visitors to tourist destinations.…”