Further Possibilities for Linguistic Landscape Research

Abstract

Globalisation and the Spread of English The study of the linguistic landscape in its own right is a relatively recent development. In sociolinguistics and applied linguistics there is a growing interest as is evident from an increasing number of publications (see Backhaus this volume for a brief overview), of individual papers and of special colloquia at conferences. There are several reasons why it can be expected that a trend for more attention will persist in the near future. In this chapter some possibilities for further study of the linguistic landscape as a means to increase understanding of multilingualism will be highlighted. In the foregoing chapters we have seen some examples of the study of the linguistic landscape in different parts of the world. We saw that although Japan is known as the prototype of a monolingual society, the linguistic landscape of Tokyo shows a surprising degree of multilingualism. Moreover, English has a high prestige there and its increasing presence in the visual scenery of the streets of Tokyo has become part of everyday Japanese life, as the study by Backhaus makes clear. The importance of English as a global language is also highlighted in the metropolis of Bangkok, in Thailand, another part of Asia. Huebner’s study demonstrates that the ‘environmental print’ of the streets in Bangkok is completely multilingual. In addition to this, his chapter documents the influence of English on the development of the Thai language system, not just in the form of lexical borrowing, but also in orthography, pronunciation and syntax. He thus provides evidence of a nascent Thai variety of English. The chapter by Ben-Rafael and others on Israel shows that this country with relatively many recent immigrants also has a strong multilingual appearance. The Jewish population originates from many different countries whereas Palestinians constitute about 20% of all citizens. Hebrew is the official state language and it is omnipresent in the linguistic landscape in both Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian areas, except for the disputed locality of East Jerusalem. Arabic is the second official language and it dominates in East Jerusalem, but not in other parts. A Hebrew-Arabic pattern predominates among Palestinian-Israelis. English is also well-represented in the signs in the streets, mainly in a bilingual combination with either Hebrew or Arabic. The geographic distribution of the different population groups is reflected in a stronger or weaker presence of the language (Hebrew or Arabic) in the street image according to which group inhabits a certain area. English is overall gaining importance due to globalisation. According to Ben Rafael et al., English can better be called a ‘non-foreign language’. Multilingualism is an important aspect of all these studies, and at the same time the process of globalisation is made visible through the presence of English in the linguistic landscape. Next to globalisation there is also a process of