Bourhis R. Y.

Durk Gorter

Labov W.

Sciriha L.

Tafoya S. M.

English

Gorter, D.

KNAW Repository

Introduction: The Study of the Linguistic
Landscape as a New Approach to
Multilingualism
Durk Gorter
Fryske Akademy/Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Language is all around us in textual form as it is displayed on shop windows,
commercial signs, posters, official notices, traffic signs, etc. Most of the time
people do not pay much attention to the ‘linguistic landscape’ that surrounds
them. However, in recent years an increasing number of researchers have
started to take a closer look and study the language texts that are present in
public space. This special issue of the International Journal of Multilingualism
reports on a number of case studies around the world.
According to the dictionary, ‘landscape’ as a noun has basically two
meanings. On the one hand the more literal meaning of the piece or expanse
of scenery that can be seen at one time from one place. On the other hand, a
picture representing such a view of natural inland scenery, as distinguished
from sea picture or a portrait. In the studies of the linguistic landscape
presented here, one can say that both meanings are also used. On the one hand
the literal study of the languages as they are used in the signs, and on the other
hand also the representation of the languages, which is of particular
importance because it relates to identity and cultural globalisation, to the
growing presence of English and to revitalisation of minority languages.
The concept of linguistic landscape, however, has been used in several
different ways. In the literature the concept has frequently been used in a
rather general sense for the description and analysis of the language situation
in a certain country (e.g. for Malta by Sciriha & Vassallo, 2001) or for the
presence and use of many languages in a larger geographic area (e.g. the Baltic
area by Kreslins, 2003). An overview of the languages that are spoken is then
referred to as the linguistic landscape. In this more or less loose sense of the
word linguistic landscape can be synonymous with or at least related to
concepts such as linguistic market, linguistic mosaic, ecology of languages,
diversity of languages or the linguistic situation. In those cases linguistic
landscape refers to the social context in which more than one language is
present. It implies the use in speech or writing of more than one language and
thus of multilingualism.
Sometimes the meaning of linguistic landscape is extended to include a
description of the history of languages or different degrees in the knowledge
of languages. Or more narrowly, it can refer to language internal variation in
parts of just one language, in particular in relation to its vocabulary, but also in
1479-0718/06/01 001-06 $20.00/0 – 2006 D. Gorter
International Journal of Multilingualism Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006
1other elements, even the words used in therapeutic communication (Fleitas,
2003). Sometimes it refers to the system of just one language, in other cases it
indicates the spread and boundaries of dialects (Labov et al., 1997). Linguistic
landscape has even been used for a count of non-English speakers in primary
schools in California (Tafoya, 2002).
A meaning that comes closer to the way it is used here is in reference to
signage and place-names as Hicks (2002) does for Gaelic in Scotland. He also
mentions campaigns of overpainting of signs in Wales, which can be seen as a
literal expression of the symbolic struggle for space for a language. The
definition given by Landry and Bourhis (1997: 25) is followed by all authors in
this issue:
The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names,
place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government
buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory,
region, or urban agglomeration.
Thus they are concerned with the use of language in its written form in the
public sphere. It refers to language that is visible in a specified area (Bourhis &
Landry, 2002). The number of linguistic tokens is especially high in shopping
areas in cities. Instead of calling it the linguistic landscape it could also be
named linguistic cityscape. In this special issue of the International Journal of
Multilingualism it will be used in the sense related to commercial signage and
place names.
The four papers brought together in this special issue deal with the
linguistic landscape in five different societies: Israel, Thailand, Japan, the
Netherlands (Friesland) and Spain (the Basque Country). All of them focus on
the linguistic landscape of the cities (and in that sense are more studies of
cityscapes than of landscapes).
The study of the linguistic landscape is a relatively new development. It
enjoys a growing interest in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. Backhaus
(this issue) has a series of references to recent studies of the linguistic
landscape in various places around the globe.
The introduction of digital cameras with sufficient memory for a reasonable
price allows researchers to take an apparently unlimited number of pictures of
the signs in the linguistic landscape. The technique of taking large numbers of
photographs of signs and of putting them in a database on a computer in itself
is relatively uncomplicated. But a researcher who does data collection in the
form of large numbers of photographs faces a number of general and some
special problems. The methodology of this field still has to be developed
further.
First of all there is the problem of sampling. Where do you take pictures and
how many? Is representativity for a certain city, an area or even a whole
country a point of consideration? It is very well possible for a researcher to
limit himself to one city or area, as Huebner and Backhaus do in their study of
the linguistic landscape of Bangkok and Tokyo, respectively. Inside those large
metropolitan areas they had to make a further selection. Huebner took
samples from 15 neighbourhoods in central and suburban Bangkok and
Backhaus surveyed 28 streets in Tokyo near the 28 stations of the circular
2 International Journal of Multilingualismrailroad line of the central city. Still, as Huebner states, the data are not meant
to indicate the linguistic composition of the city as a whole, but simply as an
illustration of the linguistic diversity. For Ben Rafael et al. it was important to
select localities which represent the ethnocultural and national divisions in
Israeli society; thus they sampled four Jewish localities, three Israeli
Palestinian localities and one non-Israeli Palestinian locality. Their second
step was to sample those parts of the cities where the major commercial
activity takes place and the principal public institutions are located. They only
sampled a limited number of all items in a specific site (30% of public and 70%
of commercial sites). In contrast, Backhaus only sampled those signs that were
classified as multilingual (according to his definition) and thus sampled
around 20% of the total of almost 12,000 signs that he counted. For Cenoz and
Gorter, representativity was not the most important concern. They took one
main shopping street in the major towns of the Basque Country and Friesland
and used them as a case for the exploration of the linguistic landscape. They
were careful to record a complete inventory of all texts to be seen on those
streets.
The problem of sampling points to a further issue which turns out to be a
rather complex problem, although on the face of it it may seem simple and
straightforward. One may say that the linguistic landscape refers to linguistic
objects that mark the public space. But the question is what constitutes such an
object or sign? In other words, what constitutes the unit of analysis? Different
answers can be given. It has to be determined what belongs to the linguistic
landscape. For instance, are texts on moving objects such as buses or cars to be
included? For convenience sake they are probably not. Although the landscape
may change from day to day, some posters will be removed or added, but
other signs may be fixed for many years. Backhaus defines his unit of analysis
as ‘any piece of text within a spatially definable frame’ from small handwritten
stickers to huge commercial billboards. Cenoz and Gorter decided in the case
of shops, banks and other businesses to take all texts together as a whole and
thus each establishment and not each individual sign became the unit of
analysis.
The next step is the categorisation of the signs. Each of the researchers here
distinguishes between top-down and bottom-up. That dimension refers to a
difference between official signs placed by the government or related
institution and nonofficial signs put there by commercial enterprises or by
private organisations or persons. For each, a sign coding scheme has to be
developed, where a researcher can decide to make it more or less elaborated.
This scheme includes elements such as how language appears on the sign, the
location on the sign, the size of the font used, the number of languages on the
sign, the order of languages on multilingual signs, the relative importance of
languages, whether a text has been translated (fully or partially), etc. Ben
Rafael et al. have developed a coding scheme that contains 16 variables; this
scheme was also applied by Cenoz and Gorter.
The characteristics thus coded can be quantified and analysed. The
theoretical framework in which the analyses are done differs among the
studies presented here. The approach still has to be developed further. As said,
the dimension of official or governmental versus nonofficial or nongovern-
Introduction 3mental is common to all articles because it indicates important language-
related differences for the signs placed in the linguistic landscape. Ben Rafael
et al. demonstrate the usability of existing sociological theories for the analysis
as they make use of the work of Boudon, Bourdieu and Goffman. In his paper
Huebner takes a more (socio)linguistic approach in which he looks in
particular at phenomena of language mixing and language contact.
Issues which are not raised in the papers presented here, but which can also
be of importance to the study of the linguistic landscape can be found in
related branches of knowledge, such as psychological experiments in visual
perception, studies of cityscapes in cultural geography and approaches to
design and aesthetics. These will be left for future studies.
Overview of the Issue
The cultural, socioeconomic and political circumstances in the cities and the
countries in which the studies are located, are quite divergent. On the one
hand, multimillion cities are included such as Bangkok and Tokyo, on the
other hand are small cities such as LjouwertLeeuwarden (less than 100,000
inhabitants) and DonostiaSan Sebastian (around 200,000 inhabitants). At the
same time the effect of globalisation, which might also be referred to as
McDonaldisation of the linguistic landscape (Heller, 2003), has affected each
case, which is reflected in the increasing space of the English language.
The paper by Ben Rafael, Shohamy, Amara and Trumper-Hecht compares
patterns of linguistic landscape in a number of Israeli cities and small towns,
and in East Jerusalem.
Of the eight localities, some are homogeneous and others mixed in terms of
the groups that were studied. The study focuses on the degree of visibility on
private and public signs of the three major languages: Hebrew, Arabic and
English. There are different patterns in the various communities: Hebrew/
English signs prevail in Jewish communities; Arabic/Hebrew in Israeli
Palestinian communities and Arabic/English in East Jerusalem.
Further analysis also gives expression to differences between public (top-
down) and private (bottom-up) signs. Taken together the linguistic landscape
is not a true reflection of the diversity of Israel’s languages. Three sociological
perspectives are used to develop a number of research questions. It is
hypothesised that the linguistic landscape should be explainable in terms of
power relations between dominant and subordinate groups. Further that
identity markers of communities would imprint themselves strongly on the
linguistic landscape and finally, that different languages vary in attractiveness
to different audiences. It is in this perspective that they speak of linguistic
landscape in terms of symbolic construction of the public space.
Bangkok, a major city in Thailand, South East Asia, is the background of
Huebner’s study. He examines questions of language mixing and language
dominance. He studies the linguistic landscape of 15 different neighbour-
hoods. By comparing the various neighbourhoods he makes visible the
linguistic diversity in a large metropolitan area like Bangkok. He also provides
a linguistic framework for the analysis of different types of codemixing.
English as a global language turns out to have an important influence. He
4 International Journal of Multilingualismoffers evidence of a shift from Chinese to English as the major language of
wider communication in the city. From a linguistic perspective, the paper
documents the influence of English on Thai, the state language, not just in the
form of lexical borrowing, but also in aspects of orthography, pronunciation
and syntax. At the same time, his study supplies proof of an emerging Thai
variety of English. From an applied perspective, the data presented raise
questions about the effects of the pervasiveness of English in the linguistic
landscape of Bangkok on the language proficiency, both Thai and English, of
its youngest citizens.
Also in Asia, but in quite a different socioeconomic context, the paper by
Backhaus deals with multilingual signs in Tokyo, the Japanese capital. In his
empirical study special attention is given to the distinction between official
and nonofficial multilingual signs. He wants to shed some light on the
relationship between two types of multilingual signs in Tokyo. It is demon-
strated that the two types of signs show different characteristics with regard to
the languages used and how they are arranged on the signs. The notions of
power and solidarity are used to interpret the differences. Official signs do
mainly express and reinforce existing power relations in Japan, but nonofficial
signs make more use of foreign languages, mainly English, to communicate
solidarity with non-Japanese things. Backhaus explicitly establishes links
between his study of the linguistic landscape in Tokyo and the growing corpus
of linguistic landscape research around the world.
The final paper by Cenoz and Gorter compares two regions in Europe. The
authors examine the linguistic landscape in Friesland (the Netherlands) and
the Basque Country (Spain). An analysis is given of the use of the minority
language (Basque or Frisian), the state language (Spanish or Dutch) and
English as an international language. Their study focuses on two streets in two
multilingual cities where the minority language, Frisian or Basque, is in use.
They compare both situations for the presence of the minority languages in the
linguistic landscape as it relates to differences in language policy, as well as to
differences in the spread of English. The data of language signs are analysed to
determine the number of languages used, which languages are on the signs
and the specific characteristics of bilingual and multilingual signs. Their
findings show that the official language policy regarding minority languages
is reflected in the linguistic landscape, but at the same time that there are
important differences between both regions.
References
Bourhis, R.Y. and Landry, R. (2002) La loi 101 et l’ame ´nagement du paysage linguistique
du Quebec. In P. Bouchard and R.Y. Bourhis (eds) L’ame ´nagement Linguistique au
Que ´bec: 25 D’application de la Charte de la Lange Francaise (pp. 107132). Que ´bec:
Publications du Que ´bec.
Fleitas, J. (2003) The power of words: Examining the linguistic landscape of pediatric
nursing. American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing 28 (6), 384388.
Heller, M. (2003) Globalization, the new economy and the commodiﬁcation of
language. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (4), 473492.
Hicks, D. (2002) Scotland’s linguistic landscape: the lack of policy and planning with
Scotland’s place-names and signage. Paper at World Congress on Language Policies,
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taller2/Hicks.html. Accessed 03.01.05.
Kreslins, J. (2003) Linguistic landscapes in the Baltic. Scandinavian Journal of History 28
(34), 165174.
Labov, W., Ash, S. and Boberg, C. (1997) A National Map of The Regional Dialects of
American English. On WWW at www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/
NationalMap.html. Accessed 03.01.05.
Landry, R. and Bourhis, R.Y. (1997) Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An
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Sciriha, L. and Vassallo, M. (2001) Malta: A Linguistic Landscape. Malta: University of
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