Cover not available

Article published In: Multilingual Landscapes and the Construction of Community
Edited by Leonie Gaiser and Yaron Matras
[Linguistic Landscape 6:2] 2020
► pp. 213–236

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Signage as event

Deriving ‘community’ from language practice

 | University of Manchester
 | University of Manchester
Published online: 14 July 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.19029.mat
Abstract
Our aim in this paper is to propose a framework to analyse the relationship between language choice on signs in multilingual environments, place, and notions of ‘community’. We focus on an interpretation of the goals pursued by sign owners, exploring how linguistic (and non-linguistic) resources are mapped onto communicative acts to target addressees and initiate some form of encounter or engagement. We approach signs as complex and multi-layered communicative events that are composed of different illocutionary acts, and take into account the local language ecology and place. We show how signs, as a form of practice, contribute to creating relations between sign owners and addressees, and can thus be constitutive of community.
Skurcimos
Ande kado lil kamas te sikhavas jekh metoda te šaj keras analiza: so si e relacija maškar e čhiba kaj arakhas len po semno (ande kodola thana kaj vorbil pe but čhiba), o than, taj sar dikhen pe e manuš pa peste sar grupa. Rodas so kamen te phenen kodola manuš kaj thon e semne avri, save alava von len te šaj maladen pe le avere manušensa taj te vazden peski komunikacija lensa. Pa amaro gindo, e semne si len but kotora; sako jekh lendar si les peski funkcija po divano maškar le manušen, taj pe čhiba kaj arakáhdžon ande kodo than. Ame sikhavas sar o semno si praktično buči, kaj vazdel e relacija maškar kodola manuš kaj hramon o semno, taj kodola kaj roden les; kade, o semno žutil te vazdel e identiteta le manušengi kaj train khetane ande jekh than vaj foro.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research sites and observation methods
  • 3.Spatially convergent events
  • 4.Dispersed events
  • 5.Performing participation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (36)
References
Amos, H. W. (2016). Chinatown by numbers. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2), 127–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, England: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Bridget. (2013). Us and them? The dangerous politics of immigration controls. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austin, John L. (1962). How To Do Things with Words. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Backhaus, P. (2009). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barni, M., & Bagna, C. (2009). A mapping technique and the linguistic landscape. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 126–140). New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara, M. H., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bessant, K. C. (2018). The relational fabric of community. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blackwood, R. (2018). The Linguistic Landscape creating a new sense of community: Guadeloupean Creole, the general strike of 2009. In A. Peck, C. Stroud, & Q. Williams (Eds.), Making sense of people and place in linguistic landscapes (pp 107–122). London, England: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blokland, T. (2017). Community as urban practice. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2008). Grassroots Literacy: Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa. London, England: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscape: Chronicles of complexity. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, J., & Backus, A. (2013). Repertoires revisited: ‘Knowing language’ in superdiversity. Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, 671, 1–26. Retrieved from [URL]
Blommaert, J., & Huang, A. (2010). Semiotic and spatial scope: Towards a materialist semiotics. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 621, 1–15. Retrieved from [URL]
Blommaert, J., & Maly, I. (2014). Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis and social change: A case study. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 1331, 1–20. Retrieved from [URL]
Brubaker, R. (2002). Ethnicity without groups. European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de sociologie, 43(2), 163–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2005). The ‘diaspora’ diaspora. Ethnic and racial studies, 28(1), 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2007). Reading shop windows in globalized neighborhoods: Multilingual literacy practices and indexicality. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(3). 335–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckert, P. (2006). Communities of Practice. In Brown, K. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 683–685). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gaiser, L. (2014). Reading the Curry Mile: Language Use in the Linguistic Landscape of Rusholme. Manchester. Multilingual Manchester, The University of Manchester. Retrieved from [URL]
Gaiser, L., & Matras, Y. (2016). The spatial construction of civic identities: A study of Manchester’s linguistic landscapes. Multilingual Manchester, The University of Manchester. Retrieved from [URL]
Holmes, J., & Meyerhoff, M. (1999). The Community of Practice: Theories and methodologies in language and gender research. Language in society, 28(2), 173–183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huebner, T. (2006). Bangkok’s linguistic landscapes: Environmental print, codemixing and language change. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 30–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hult, F. (2009). Language ecology and linguistic landscape analysis. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 88–104). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaworski, A. (2015). Welcome: Synthetic personalization and commodification of sociability in the Linguistic Landscape of Global Tourism. In B. Spolsky, I. Inbar-Lourie, & M. Tannenbaum (Eds), Challenges for Language Education & Policy. (pp. 214–231). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroon, S., Dong, J., & Blommaert, J. (2015). Truly moving texts. In M. Prinsloo & C. Stroud (Eds.), Language, Literacy, Diversity: Moving Words (pp. 1–15). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. An Empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 16(1), 23–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lanza, E., & Svendsen, B. A. (2007). Tell me who your friends are and I might be able to tell you what language (s) you speak: Social network analysis, multilingualism, and identity. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(3), 275–300. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matras, Y., & Robertson, A. (2015). Multilingualism in a post-industrial city: policy and practice in Manchester. Current Issues in Language Planning, 16(3), 296–314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2017). Urban multilingualism and the civic university: A dynamic, non-linear model of participatory research. Social Inclusion, 5(4), 5–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matras, Y., Gaiser, L. & Reershemius, G. (2018). Multilingual repertoire management and illocutionary functions in Yiddish signage in Manchester. Journal of Pragmatics, 1351(2018), 53–70. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pappenhagen, R., Scarvaglieri, C., & Redder, A. (2016). Expanding the Linguistic Landscape Scenery? Action Theory and ‘Linguistic Soundscaping’, In R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, & H. Woldemariam (Eds.), Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes (pp. 147–162). London, England: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. London, England: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Y., Nadel, E., Cooper, R. L., & Fishman, J. A. (1977). English on Keren Kayemet Street. In J. A. Fishman, R. L. Cooper, & A. W. Conrad (Eds.), The spread of English: The sociology of English as an additional language (pp. 179–196). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spolsky, B., & Cooper, R. (1991). The languages of Jerusalem. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Bhujel, Birendra & Sweta Sinha
2025. Linguistic landscape as a tool of identity negotiation: The case of the Nepali ethnic communities in West Bengal. Ethnicities 25:1 ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Juzeleniene, Saulute & Saule Petroniene
2025. Painting the linguistic landscape of Kaunas: a study of multilingual murals in public spaces. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Gaiser, Leonie
2023. “That’s not Arabic, ya ḥabībi, it’s Libyan!”: Negotiating language boundaries, hierarchies, and policies in Arabic supplementary schools. Journal of Arabic Sociolinguistics 1:2 ► pp. 182 ff. DOI logo
Niehaus, Konstantin
2023. The temporality of commodified landscapes at events & local constructions of identity in Salzburg. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 9:4 ► pp. 357 ff. DOI logo
Tyran, Katharina
2022. Beč Oida:Zur Sichtbarkeit südslawischer Sprachen in der Wiener linguistischen Landschaft. In Südslawisches Wien, ► pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2025. Language Attitudes in the Multilingual Linguistic Landscape. In The Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes and Multilingualism, ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue