Anchored within current issues and debates in the field of Linguistic Landscape (LL) scholarship, this edited volume is concerned with politics of language and the semiotic construction of space in multilingual and multi-ethnic Asian countries.
Spanning Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, the chapters explore how different individuals and collectivities use semiotic resources in different spaces – schools, airports, streets and shops as well as online platforms – to reinforce or contest existing social structures, bearing strong implications for language maintenance and cultural revitalization, construction of ethnolinguistic and national identities, and socioeconomic mobility. Part I looks into how globalization and its accompanying forces and influences – such as the importance of English in socioeconomic mobility – come into contact with local Asian cultures and languages. Part II examines minority languages, demographically and socio-politically established in the countries, shedding light on the role of LL that plays in both their minorization and revitalization processes. Part III investigates how LL is utilized as a site for constructing identities to pursue socioeconomic, political and cultural goals. It is within this perspective that the presence and salience of English in the LL of the countries along with the use of the Asian languages is analyzed and understood, shedding light on how Asian heritage languages and cultures are preserved and/or certain identities in the times of political unrest or economic development are expressed.
This fascinating insight into linguistic landscapes in Asia will be of interest to researchers, students and policy makers in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics anywhere in the world.
Introduction Section One: Globalization and Population Mobility 1. Language Ideology in the Linguistic Landscape of Hanoi 2. Multilingual Cityscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space in Taiwan: A Study of Two Urban Settings Section Two: Minority Languages 3. Constructing a visual multilingual reality in Singapore’s schools 4. Accommodating Chinese Community Languages in Penang: Evidence from the Linguistic Landscape and Local Voices 5. Landscape and the struggle for survival: The Case of Cavite Chabacano Section Three: Constructing, Negotiating and Contesting identities 6. Understanding the identities of Hong Kong people through transgressive signs 7. Semiotic practices, power and identity: Linguistic landscape at the airport in Shanghai 8. “Keep Original”: Translanguaging and Identity Construction Among East Javanese Football Supporters 9. Conclusion
Seyed Hadi Mirvahedi is a postdoctoral fellow at Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (Multiling), University of Oslo, Norway. Prior to taking up his fellowship at Multiling, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His recent publications include articles in Language in Society, Current Issues in Language Planning, International Journal of Multilingualism, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development and Linguistic Landscape.