Linguistic landscaping in Tabriz, Iran: a discursive transformation of a bilingual space into a monolingual place

Abstract

AbstractA growing body of research highlights the significance of visual language use in public sphere in discursively transforming geographical spaces into places. This symbolic construction of places plays a paramount role in the vitality of minority languages by increasing the prestige of minority languages and thus redressing the balance between minority and majority groups. The present article explores the symbolic construction of Tabriz, a Northwest metropolis in Iran which is home to nearly two million Azerbaijani-speaking people. Despite the rich bilingualism in Azerbaijani and Farsi in the city, Farsi, the official language of the state, continues casting a shadow over Azerbaijani through various language policy mechanisms. Drawing upon language policy and planning theories coupled with the principles of geosemiotics, the research examines linguistic landscape data collected in three main streets in Tabriz. The analysis demonstrates what types of discourses mediate and are created by language choices on governmental and private signs. Farsi is normalized for both governmental and private signs reflecting and reproducing national ideologies. The absence of Azerbaijani as the native language of the people in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Tabriz is noticeable. In its entirety, the findings suggest that the linguistic landscape is not always a fair representation of the linguistic repertoire of the people living in a geographical space, but rather language choice in the LL is deployed by the state and/or people to portray an image of a place they desire and aspire to.