The Linguistic Landscape Of Historical And Cultural Streets

Linguistic landscape is an indispensable field of research in sociolinguistics.As a universal linguistic practice and an important symbolic resource in public space,linguistic landscape reflects,to some extent,the language use in a given area,and is also the outcome of the interaction of multiple factors and subjects at play.Code use has been an issue of major concern in linguistic landscape research.Most of the existing studies focus on the distribution characteristics of codes and the use of dominant codes in the linguistic landscape,but less on the use of minority codes such as the use of dialects.Detailed descriptions of the phenomenon of code-mixing have not gained sufficient attention,making it difficult to explore the hidden linguistic status behind the linguistic landscape.Although the formation mechanisms of linguistic landscape have been addressed,the discussion of code use in linguistic landscapes has rarely been combined with language policy and sign participants.In addition,many case studies have mostly probed into the spatial types such as tourist areas,commercial districts,and foreigner settlements,and paid less attention to historical and cultural streets,which embody the typical spatial contexts in China’s new normal of urban development.This dissertation is a case study of three typical historical and cultural streets in Guangzhou.Through a detailed analysis of the code patterns in the Chinese context,we conduct an empirical investigation along with the theoretical interpretation of language policies,sign participants and other influencing factors,and explore the formation mechanism of the linguistic landscape of historical and cultural streets.Specific research questions include:(1)What are the characteristics of code use in linguistic landscapes of historical and cultural streets? What are the functions and status relationship among codes?(2)How do the relevant policies and regulations influence code use in linguistic landscapes of historical and cultural streets?(3)How do sign participants interplay with the code use in the linguistic landscape of historical and cultural streets?To address the first research question,fieldwork was conducted to collect photographic data in the three sampling areas,namely Beijing Road,Shangxiajiu Road and Enning Road.A total of 3488 signs were collected to systematically analyze the presence of different codes and the hidden functions and status relationships.The results show that with the evolution of historical culture and the change of block governance,these streets gradually form a new pattern of synchronic and diachronic stratification,physical and virtual space superposition.The use of codes demonstrates the main characteristics of visibility,salience and hybridity,displaying an overall appearance of multilingualism,diverse subjects and high integration.The results concerning code visibility and salience verify the general tendency that the official language(mandarin Chinese)is the most dominant code,the international language(English)is the second dominant code,and other minority codes such as Japanese and Korean also show limited presence.Hybridity in linguistic landscape mainly takes the forms of intralingual and interlingual code-mixing.Intralingual code-mixing is common within the Chinese language,including the mixing of simplified and traditional Chinese characters,Pinyin and Cantonese.The interlingual mixing,on the other hand,facilitates the multidirectional interaction of different codes and fuzzy boundary of code attributes by means of a varied combination of codes or innovated code forms.Overall,Chinese is the absolute dominant language code and occupies the dominant position in the linguistic landscape of the historical and cultural streets,exerting both informative and symbolic functions,while English is the second and used as the first auxiliary foreign language,exerting mutually exclusive informative and symbolic functions.Cantonese tends to be marginalized under the wrestle with national language and foreign languages,contesting for its visibility implicitly in the public written language space by means of Chinese homophony,Cantonese pinyin,dialectal words or the spoken form of Cantonese.The findings reveal the competing tensions and dynamic integration processes among different codes in the linguistic landscape in the multilingual context,to a large extent,echoing the unique context of originality,locality,modernization and internationalization of this specific type of streets.To address the second research question,this study adopts content analysis to clarify the basic features and internal logic of the linguistic landscape policy system through the deep excavation of 70 national and local policy texts in Guangzhou,and to further explain the code use features of the linguistic landscape in the historical and cultural streets from the policy dimension.The results uncover that at the level of policy subjects,the existing linguistic landscape management is dominated by multi-departments with parallelism and intersectionality,and the policy objectives are based on both instrumental and humanistic values,with relevant provisions mainly involving the planning of subjects and status and value specification of the sign texts.;the policy tools are mainly used for flexible guidance of supervision and guidance,with emphasis on punitive and corrective regulatory measures afterwards.In terms of the mechanism of action,the relevant policy regulations provide a normative mechanism for transmitting the government’s top-down governance orientation and regulating the bottom-up sign practice of multiple subjects and constructing a binding boundary for linguistic landscape practice in historical and cultural districts: the positive effects of the policy norms are mainly reflected from the aspects of legal regulations and value specification.Policies and regulations related to linguistic landscape provide a policy basis for the code selection and word standardization while the level of value specification offers a value consensus and a framework for the implementation of language governance and linguistic landscape practice,which to a certain extent shapes the actual view of the diverse subjects in historical and cultural streets.At the same time,the lack of cohesion and integrated planning in policy norms and limitations in policy tools design and policy implementation have also constituted potential deviations and negative effects,producing obstacles to the realization of intended policy goals,which partly explains the “layering” in public signs and the heterogenous code use in non-official signs.To address the third research question,this study elucidates the mechanisms of sign writers and sign readers on the use of codes based on analyses of interviews and questionnaires with 12 official sign writers,20 non-official sign writers,and 65 sign readers,in order to provide a systematic understanding of the formation mechanism at the level of sign participants.The results show that there is a positive correlation between sign writers’ language attitudes and their self-reported language ability,and their positive evaluation of the codes used in the linguistic landscape is in descending order of Chinese – English – non-universal codes.Given policy compliance and information accessibility when choosing codes,official sign creators pay attention to normality,authority and serviceability of linguistic landscape.Non-official sign writers are more open-minded and diversified in their language attitudes,preferring to choose a prestigious and high-status official language(mandarin Chinese)or a universal language(English)in public signs,and also tend to use dialects,other non-universal foreign languages or hybridized forms of codes in a limited way to achieve economic benefits or express cultural identity.Their code choices are spontaneous and do not depend on the knowledge of policy norms.In contrast,sign readers also have a high degree of composite language identity and an open and inclusive language attitude,and their positive evaluations of different language codes are,in descending order,namely,mandarin Chinese,English,and other non-universal codes.In terms of language perception,readers tend to notice and rely on familiar codes in priority to obtain information and display difficulty in perceiving implicit Cantonese forms.Influenced by language proficiency and code preference,they may fail to fully interpret the actual occurrence of codes and tend to reconstruct the visibility and salience of the linguistic landscape psychologically via language perception.The findings provide empirical evidence for the sign participants’ active construction of the linguistic landscape in historical and cultural streets.The implications of this study are as follows: based on the unique context of the new normal of China’s urban context,this study uncovers three basic characteristics,namely,visibility,salience,and hybridity,to comprehensively describe the regularities of code use in linguistic landscape of historical and cultural streets.The analysis of linguistic landscape is extended to the macro level of language policies and sign participants,and attempts are made to tentatively build an analytical model of the formation mechanism of linguistic landscape in these urban areas.The findings of the study also provide theoretical insight and practical reference for the construction of language life,language policy and planning,and city planning of historical and cultural streets.