A Multimodal Analysis Of Wishing Cards In The Peripheral Linguistic Landscape From The Perspective Of Intersemiotic Complementarity

As a booming research field in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics,in recent years,the study of linguistic landscapes(LL)has gradually expanded from some traditional,fixed signs in public space to some peripheral signs,such as postcards,dynamic ads,parade slogans and other non-fixed signs.Nevertheless,relatively few studies have focused on peripheral signs,such as wishing cards in tourist attractions.Therefore,this study aimed to explore the distribution and display of modalities on wishing cards in the Old Town of Lijiang and their functions,and tried to reveal the relationship between the use of Dongba script and the local economy.This study adopted a quantitative research approach.Quantitative data were collected by taking photos with smartphones.Ultimately,a total of 843 units were collected and used for the analysis.These units were analyzed mainly reference to the Intersemiotic Complementary Theory(Royce,2007).The results obtained from quantitative data analysis showed that:(1)There are three types of wishing cards,namely,blessing and gratitude,travel experience,and life perception.(2)The wishing cards mainly consist of textual and visual modalities,and the visual and textual information are interconnected through the semantic relationships of repetition,synonymy,hyponymy,meronymy and collocation.(3)The wishing cards texts have two main functions and cover two different specific functions: interaction function and cognitive function.(4)When a wishing card becomes a commodity,the Dongba script on the wishing cards becomes the commodity,thus attracting customers.This study is conducive to expanding the research scope of linguistic landscapes and providing some authentic cases for peripheral linguistics studies.The paper concludes by pointing out the limitations of this study and making suggestions for future research.