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In:Linguistic Landscape in the Spanish-speaking World
Edited by Patricia Gubitosi and Michelle F. Ramos Pellicia
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 35] 2021
► pp. 239–266

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Chapter 9
Reframing the question of correlation between the local linguistic population and urban signage

The case of Spanish in the Los Angeles linguistic landscape

 | University of California, Berkeley
Published online: 29 July 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.35.09car
Abstract
While some scholars have argued that signage does not reflect the linguistic population of a particular community, in this chapter I argue for an empirical reexamination of this claim and posit four necessary methodological measures: a comparison of multiple cities, an exhaustive approach to data collection, an analysis of the dominant language of both the main and informative sections, and the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. I apply the proposed model to a case study of three cities in Los Angeles and a corpus of 4,664 signs. Although the LL will never be a perfect mirror of the languages spoken in a community, a nuanced analysis of sign configurations can provide insight regarding local oral languages to varying extents.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Los Angeles
  • Methodological considerations
  • Results
    • Monolingual signs
    • Multilingual signs
    • Main section
      • Monolingual main section
      • Multilingual main section
    • Informative section
      • Monolingual informative section
      • Multilingual informative section
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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