Linguistic Landscape - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2016

This article explores the potential of the LL to evaluate ethnically-defined spaces. Focusing on the area referred to as ‘Chinatown’ in central Liverpool, it examines the relationships between space, representation, and identity. Interviews with actors and passers-by indicate that the location and definition of Chinatown are interpreted inconsistently. As the article argues, however, the LL contains useful information for locating and qualifying the ethnic space. Scrutinizing both interview data and an empirical corpus of all the texts visible in the space, the article aims to define the borders of Chinatown, and the expression of ethnic identity therein. Whilst testifying to the commodification of aesthetic ideals and symbolic imagery, the LL simultaneously reveals an in-group community representative of authentic Chineseness. Exploring the dynamics of linguistic exclusion and accommodation, the data indicate not only that the identity of Chinatown is multi-layered, but also that its borders are subjective and not definable spatially.

This study analyzes the linguistic landscape of the New York City Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights to investigate the relationship between language ideologies and transnational dynamics and to observe recent gentrification and sociocultural changes in the neighborhood. It juxtaposes the linguistic landscape with the phenomenon of transnationalism to study the degree and context of the use of Spanish (the official and most frequently spoken language in the Dominican Republic but a minority language in the United States), English (the mainstream language of the United States), and other languages found within the Washington Heights urban landscape. The results confirm the dominance of the English language and reveal the inequality of Spanish and other minority languages as well as how the neighborhood reproduces and contests such ideologies.

This study provides an interpretive perspective on the linguistic landscape (LL) of ethnic Persian shops in the city of Sydney, Australia. Photographic data and ethnographic observations demonstrate how linguistic and cultural displays on ethnic Persian shops are organized in different frames which are driven by local symbolic markets. These frames are investigated through an analysis of linguistic and semiotic resources drawn on these ethnic premises. The study also illustrates that the trajectory of the Persian language and its semiotic resources as mediational tools frame the collective identity of the sign producers (social actors) and symbolic and cultural means that are activated in the LL of such ethnic shops. These framing devices promote minority languages, Persian in specific, as valuable resources and commodities in the multicultural context of Sydney, and point to the possible impact of those resources on the local political economy of language. In addition, the findings reinforce the view that patterns of multilingualism are not static and are influenced by a number of factors such as cultural, economic and linguistic resources which individuals and officials use in the public space.