A Study On The Relationship Between Linguistic Landscape And Language Service In Commercial Streets In Guangzhou

Language has already been assimilated to part of landscape and its function is undeniable.In recent years,the study of linguistic landscape has been focusing on the intensity of language policy implementation and the state of language use,so that conditions of different cultures can be perceived.Most studies done in the setting of commercial streets fall into the category of the diachronic study which focuses the trend of bilingual and multilingual business signs.The symbolic meaning of this trend has been analyzed thoroughly,namely the impact of globalization,diversified customers' need and cultural strength.However,the informational function of linguistic landscape has not received enough attention.The research area accommodates many foreigners so that its linguistic landscape presents the feature of bilingualism or trilingualism.Firstly,employing a quantitative method and analysis framework proposed by Scollon & Scollon,a descriptive study of linguistic landscape has been completed.Based on descriptive results,3 types of stores with minor language salient are concluded and then,this thesis starts from the perspective of informational function of linguistic landscape to probe into the language service and customers' psychological reaction with the assistance of questionnaire and interview designed under the principle of SPEAKING model.As for the overall linguistic landscape in the research area,the frequency of Chinese and English is the highest,reaching 98 and 74 respectively.As for multilingual signs,Japanese,Korean,French and Arabic are present as well,but the frequency is relatively low.The combination of Chinese and English is the most common one,accounting for 84% of all multilingual signs.What's noticeable in the linguistic landscape of research area is the salience of foreign languages.24% of business signs in the research areas are composed by foreign languages and 10% of business signs are formed with salient foreign languages plus Chinese.Through interview and questionnaire,it can be concluded that the salient language on the linguistic landscape can affect the prejudge of language service in the store to large extend.55% customers are satisfied with the language service on the whole and 82% customers would choose store with satisfying language service with other factors unchanged.Therefore,the significance of this this lies in connecting linguistic landscape with customers' psychology so as to serve as a reminder for business owners to balance the symbolic function and informational function and to tentatively give some advice on instore language service with the aim of increasing customers' satisfaction level.Apart from that,this thesis succeeds in revealing linguistic landscape's commercial nature with the assistance of customers' psychology,which is an innovative combination between sociolinguistics and business theory.