A region's identity is closely related to its semiotic landscape as well as history, economy and culture. This article explores the linguistic landscape of Jianghan Road, a historical business centre in Wuhan, P. R. China, by photographing and analysing 1308 official and unofficial signs in order to provide a snapshot of language choice and…

This study approaches multilingualism on Phuket Island by means of a linguistic landscape (LL) analysis. The data in this study consists of 185 photographs of shop signs taken from popular streets on the island. They were analyzed via a mixed-methods approach. It was found that different languages were purposely chosen to indicate or showcase the…

This study adopts an apparent-time diachronic linguistic landscape (LL) approach to investigate the vitality of an ethnic minority language in China, namely the Nuosu Yi ([foreign characters omitted]). Diachronic LL research is concerned with changes in language use on signage over time. It provides insights into phenomena such as language shift,…

Koh Lipe, Satun is a famous tourist destination along the Andaman Sea, Southern Thailand where linguistic landscape is structured mainly in English. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signage in this island displays distinctiveness of linguistic elements and linguistic diversity manifested in a variety of English lexicons. Thus, this study…

This study analyses the multilingual linguistic landscapes made up of languages, visual materials, and built environments in Seongsu-dong, where old industrial sites and new commercial places are indiscriminately juxtaposed. This study focuses particularly on (1) how languages are associated with different built environments of new commercial…

This article presents the results of a small-scale study on the linguistic landscape in the two terminals of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Thirty-one digital photos of non-identical signs out of a total of 368 'top-down' signs identified in the public space were collected, and questionnaires were administered to airport users to gauge…

This paper explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of a multi-ethnolinguistic city in China, namely Shangri-La City, where Tibetan, Han (Mandarin Chinese), English and several other minority languages are used. As one of the most well-known Chinese tourist cities by Western travellers, a city with rapid socioeconomic development, and a city that…

The Maybachufer Market is an urban street market in Berlin-Neukölln that constitutes a highly diverse urban context by bringing together people of different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Through linguistic ethnography, this paper explores the negotiation of various resources in everyday communicative practices and activities of…

The identity of a city matters in a global age. This article explores the discursive construction of the global city's identity in relation to semiotic landscape, using the construction of Shanghai as a global city as a case study. In this increasingly globalising world, Shanghai authorities have recently demonstrated the desire to establish…

Hong Kong's bilingual street signs declare a kind of correspondence, equivalence and thus translation between the English and Chinese languages. This study finds four translation phenomena among the street signs: domestication with positive connotation, foreignisation with negative connotation, bilingual incompatibilities, and cross-street…

This paper focuses on the linguistic composition of commercial signs in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Athens, Greece. Previous studies have mainly been carried out in officially multilingual and multi-ethnic areas [Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara, M. H., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). "Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of…

Linguistic landscapes have proven to be intriguing foci of sociolinguistic research in and of themselves, given language in public spaces indexes broader sociolinguistic processes, struggles, and policies. This paper, however, trials linguistic landscape as a methodological tool for research that solicits and analyses metalinguistic talk --…

After the end of the civil war in 1990, a major reconstruction effort was underway in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. With reconstruction came significant changes to the city's landscape and identity. Adopting a linguistic landscape (LL) lens, this study aims at better understanding these changes by asking what languages are used on the store…

The visibility and salience of specific languages in public spaces are important parameters of their ethnolinguistic vitality in a society. Drawing upon data from first-hand fieldwork, this paper explores the display of multiple languages in shop names presented in Singapore's neighbourhood centres in order to reveal how local shop owners address…

This article investigates the interrelationship between English used on signs and materiality in the linguistic landscape (LL) of a touristic Jordanian town, Petra. Its aim is to analyze how the materials that signs are made of reflect recurrent practices of identity formation and numerous socio-cultural norms in the Jordanian tourism context. The…