An Empirical Study Of Linguistic Landscape In Wuhan Optics Valley Walking Streets

Linguistic landscape(LL)refers to the language signs in a given space.As one of the new developments in the field of sociolinguistics,LL research focuses on the symbolic meaning of various language signs located in public space.It investigates how the language on signs forms language power through the interaction with space.Wuhan Optics Valley Walking Streets(OVWS)is regarded as an international shopping center,which is located with numerous universities in the core area of Wuchang district.With a great number of stores and various LLs,it truly reflects the language reality,language and culture ecology of this area.Most studies of LL at home mainly focus on language normalization and translation of the signs,while quite few about the language power and status reflected by the language signs.No study of LL in Wuhan Optics Valley Walking Streets is reported in literature.With linguistic landscape and power relations as the theoretical foundation,this thesis takes language signs of four major streets of Optics Valley Waking Streets as the research object.By a method of photo taking,a total of 626 top-down and bottom-up signs are collected as the language corpus.At the same time,the attitudes of the store owners and employers towards the use of Chinese,English,and other languages are examined by rapid and anonymous observation.On the basis of data analysis of the language signs and attitudes,this thesis aims to study the LL distribution and language power reflected by these signs.This study mainly focuses on the following questions:(1)What is the distribution of the LL in Optics Valley Walking Streets?(2)What is the language power reflected by the LL in Optics Valley Walking Streets?(3)How to give theoretical interpretations to the language power in the LL in Optics Valley Walking Streets?Some major findings are summarized as follows:(1)There are two types of language signs in OVWS: monolingual and multilingual,with the monolingual taking a much larger proportion(65.65%)and the multilingual 34.35%.Four language codes including Chinese,English,French,Italian are among the monolinguals.Chinese makes up a larger proportion(87.10%)while English 11.68%.Italian(0.24%)and French(0.97%)account for a small proportion.(2)From the perspective of code preference,the language power in official signs is Chinese >English > other forms of foreign languages.English is the only foreign language appears on official signs.The official signs cannot meet individuals’ need of other forms of foreign languages.The main influencing factors might probably be the language policy that ensures the highest social status of Chinese and the English globalization that makes English enjoy the highest recognition among foreign languages.(3)When it comes to private signs,more detailed language power about foreign languages is reflected as English >Korean >Japanese >French >Italian.This might imply that : Compared with official signs,private signs show more choices or creations both in languages and forms and reflect a more colorful language fact in an area.(4)The first two principles of LL structuration “power relations” and“collective identity” are the used to explain the language power in the LL of OVWS.It is found that the social status of a language is determined by the social status of the corresponding language speakers.Based on the findings,the thesis puts up some suggestions.The proportion of bilingual signs(Chinese / English)should be improved.It is advisable for organizations to provide diverse language services for people.The LL can serve as an input for language learners.There is a need to correct the language errors on sign so as to guarantee the correctness of the input.