A Study On International Students’ Perceptions Of The Linguistic Landscape In Kunming

Linguistic landscape(hereafter LL)refers to language representation in a particular space.As a hot topic in the fields of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics,the study of LL has developed rapidly both at home and abroad in the past two decades.A huge body of research has explored topics from multilingualism in public spaces,explicit and hidden language policy,globalization of English,to minority language vitality and identity from the perspective of LL.However,little is known about international students’ perception of linguistic landscapes in China,in particular in a certain city.To address this gap,this current study attempted to investigate international students’ attitudes towards and perceptions of linguistic landscapes in Kunming,the capital city of southwest China Yunnan province.To achieve these goals,a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted in this study.More specifically,questionnaires were distributed both online and on spot to collect quantitative data that revealed the international students’ general perceptions of and attitudes towards LL in Kunming,while qualitative data was collected from the open-ended questions on questionnaires and interviews in order to have a deeper understanding of their more concrete thoughts.In total,50 international students from two universities in Kunming answered the questionnaires,32 out of them finished the open-ended questions and 2 participated in the interviews.The results of quantitative and qualitative research revealed that:(1)The international students in Kunming paid relatively high attention to the LL and they were likely to notice linguistic signs which provided information with simple and common Chinese characters,especially language on road signs,indicators,electronic display screens,billboards and banners;(2)When Chinese and English were both exhibited on linguistic signs,international students were more inclined to read Chinese first;(3)Most of the international students thought that the LL helped them in learning Chinese and understanding Chinese culture;(4)The majority of the international students believed that the LL of Kunming about creating a civilized city was quite meaningful,but some of them questioned whether they actually worked or not;(5)The international students thought that the most prominent feature of Kunming’s LL was that it expressed the national characteristics of China.In addition,the LL of Kunming was more organized and better designed in comparison with that in their hometowns;(6)When asked to put forward suggestions for the construction of LL in Kunming,most international students expressed to expect that more linguistic signs could be written bilingually both in English and Chinese.Furthermore,they especially emphasized more accurate English translations should be exhibited instead of literal translations.Some students also hoped that LLs in other forms could be replaced by electronic display screens.The results of this study may contribute to an understanding of how the international students perceive the LL in Kunming and shed light on using LL as a tool in teaching Chinese as a foreign language.It also may provide suggestions for the future construction of the LL in Kunming under the circumstances of internationalization and globalization.At the end of this thesis,the limitations of the study are summarized and suggestions for future research are presented.