Monuments in linguistic landscapes and the semiotics of public memory in northern Zambia

This article problematises the names of two spaces of public memory in northern Zambia (South-Central Africa), the Moto Moto Museum and the Kalambo Falls Heritage Site, to illustrate the unequal power dynamics in place. It argues that both names are rooted in coloniality, perpetuating the erasure and downscaling of local historical voices and narratives. Moto Moto upscales the legacy of White religious figures while erasing the contribution of indigenous actors. Similarly, Kalambo reflects colonial control through the normalisation of mispronounced African words, stripping them of their original meaning and diminishing local cultural heritage. The article concludes with an exploration of how names of spaces of public memory in the linguistic landscape may carry a colonial heritage that surreptitiously reinforces the dominance of colonial narratives while diminishing local historical narratives and voices, resulting in the distortion of history and the sentiments of local people.

This publication examines which languages were represented in the inscriptions of different series of banknotes issued between the First and Second World Wars (1919–1938) in the Czechoslovak Republiс. Along with portraits of historical figures, images relating to the culture and history of a particular nation, the presence (or absence) of banknotes of languages is also an element of symbolic politics and part of the manifestation of the language policy of a particular state. Banknotes are seen as an element of the linguistic landscape, and the linguistic landscape is understood as a reflection of language policy, its peculiar public expression. The main purpose of the study was to show why the Polish language appeared on the banknotes of Czechoslovakia, which were in circulation between 1919 and 1925, and to analyse why the Polish language disappeared from paper money after 1926. Placed languages on banknotes are subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis, examines the location of languages, the relationship between them. It is shown that the concept of "linguistic landscape" is not only an analysis of signs in public places, it can be interpreted and investigated in various ways. We believe that part of the increasingly interpreted linguistic landscape may also be the analysis of languages used in monetary units. It is noted that the historical approach to the analysis of the linguistic landscape helps to clarify aspects of language policy and linguistic ideologies. The authors conclude that even states that issue multilingual banknotes guarantee that the state language should be in a dominant position. The article shows why the Ukrainian, German, Polish and Hungarian languages appeared next to Czech and Slovak on the banknotes of the first issue of the Czechoslovak Republic. The Polish language was reflected on Czechoslovak banknotes that were in circulation between 1919–1925, but Prague removed the Polish language from paper money after 1926. The article analyses the reasons for the appearance and disappearance of the Polish language on the banknotes of the Czechoslovak Republic. Keywords: banknotes, language policy, linguistic landscape, polish language, Czechoslovak Republic.

The present article develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of the semiotics of the English of mixed-language texts as are found worldwide in various domains of public and private communication. The social meaning of such anglography, it will be argued, must be interpreted as a result of the bi-modality (verbal and visual) of its material realisation. Drawing on a range of relevant contexts (e.g. ‘linguistic landscapes’, print advertising, print journalism and social communication via the digital media), the article proposes an integrated framework of analysis, incorporating and expanding tenets of both Systemic Functional Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis, which shows that the employment of ‘English as a visual language’ directly enhances the social semiotic impact of such texts by mediating between them as linguistic products and social events. Close empirical analysis of representative texts (public signage, print ads and private e-communication) illustrates the proposed theory at work.

A visual programming language allows users and developers to create programs by manipulating program elements graphically. Several studies have shown the benefits of visual languages for learning purposes and their applicability to robot programming. However, at present, there are not enough comparative studies on the suitability of textual and visual languages for this purpose. In this paper, we study if, as with a textual language, the use of a visual language could also be suitable in the context of robot programming and, if so, what the main advantages of using a visual language would be. For our experiments, we selected a sample of 60 individuals among students with adequate knowledge of procedural programming, that was divided into three groups. For the first group of 20 students, a learning scenario based on a textual object-oriented language was used for programming a specific commercial robotic ball with sensing, wireless communication, and output capabilities, whereas for the second and the third group, two learning scenarios based on visual languages were used for programming the robot. After taking a course for programming the robot in the corresponding learning scenario, each group was evaluated by completing three programming exercises related to the robot features (i.e. motion, lighting, and collision detection). Our results show that the students that worked with visual languages perceived a higher clarity level in their understanding of the course exposition, and a higher enjoyment level in the use of the programming environment. Moreover, they also achieved an overall better mark.

During the First and Second World Wars, women’s wartime service became increasingly important for the functioning of the home front and battlefront in Britain, Germany, Russia, the United States, and other war-powers. Hundreds of thousands of women served in the militaries of the belligerents during World War II. Scholars estimate that the percentage of women in the Allied armed forces reached up to 2–3 percent. The number of women in military service in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was especially high, but only in the latter were they officially enlisted as soldiers. Despite their numbers and importance, until recently, mainstream historiography and public memory have largely ignored women’s military service. This chapter takes a closer, comparative look at women’s wartime service in the Age of the World Wars in history and memory and explains the paradox that while it was increasingly needed, it has long been downplayed and overlooked in public perception and memory in all war powers and across the ideological divide of the Cold War.

Memorials and the Mine Disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: From Trauma to an Italian Global Memoryscape

This article examines the construction of the Monument to the Martyrs of the Railway Protection Movement in Shaocheng Park, traces the formation of public urban memory, and discusses the physical and psycho-cultural processes by which the revolutionary memory of the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement was concretized and visualized. This article describes the establishment of Shaocheng Park in Republican-era Chengdu and the construction of the monument, introducing how it was designed and shaped as a repository for public memory. It analyzes how the political practices of official and popular forces remolded Shaocheng Park as a space for public memory during the Republican era, revealing the complex power struggles and social relationships surrounding the control and use of this public space, against a backdrop of shifting political regimes. Within this context, it reviews how the historical memory of the Railway Protection Movement has been forgotten or passed on over the last century and illustrates the symbolism of the defined landscape of the park and its monument, as well as the function of the latter as a visible conceptual landmark and a link between historical events and local public memory.

As an open social recourse and special language text, linguistic landscape, visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region Landry and Bourhis (1997), and presented on various signs or billboards publicly, can be used as a useful recourse in language learning. Shenzhen, the first Chinese special economic zone, has developed into a fast-growing innovative city. Compared to other cities, Shenzhen has more frequent communications with worldwide visitors. Therefore, its education should be more international and advanced, especially English learning, since English, the most widely used language, is being used in linguistic landscapes increasingly. However, nowadays tedious English learning content and learning methods are unable to meet training requirements of students’ English level in society. Therefore, considering the significance of linguistic landscape in humanities construction and English learning, the government and schools give great importance to the construction of campus linguistic landscape. Through reference to representative research literatures and comparative analysis, this study intends to explore the importance of linguistic landscape in English learning by analyzing differences in campus linguistic landscape between middle schools and universities within Shenzhen from the form and content by introducing the way in which linguistic landscape is presented. And different purposes of its application are introduced in order to understand the application and design of linguistic landscape in different campuses more comprehensively. The research also explores the influence of campus linguistic landscape on students’ English learning, from the perspective of informal environmental penetration, learning material, stirring interest, broadening vocabulary and knowledge and its close relationship with life. This paper adopts the Constructivist learning theory of Piaget (1970). Students establish knowledge about the external world in the process of interaction with the surrounding environment to develop their cognitive structure. This paper concludes that the integration of linguistic landscape can benefit from its educational function to conduct a practice-oriented, teacher-led and student-centered pattern of English learning and improve students’ English learning ability.

This study investigates the linguistic landscape (LL) of Akademi Pengajian Bahasa (APB), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam, focusing on how language use and text composition reflect institutional priorities and inclusivity. APB is a key faculty offering courses in Bahasa Melayu (BM) or Malay language, English, Arabic, and other languages, yet questions remain on whether its signage embodies the faculty’s nature. Using a mixed-methods design, the study documented 174 signs in APB. Semi-structured interviews conducted with students provided insights into readers’ perceptions of the faculty’s LL. Findings revealed that APB’s LL is dominated by monolingual signs with 68%. Among bilingual and multilingual signs text composition, partial translation, with BM and English, was the most prevalent. Other languages taught and offered by the faculty were almost entirely absent, despite their curricular significance. The students, during the interview, agreed that the signs do not really reflect the focus of the faculty and they believed that the language courses offered should be reflected in the faculty’s LL. From the findings it could also be concluded that LL of the faculty does not promote other languages besides BM and English. This could be due to the fact that more than 95% of the students in the faculty comprise of local students whose native language is BM and are able to understand English. However, given the fact that the faculty focuses on language courses, it should realise the potential of promoting the use of the languages it offers in its linguistic landscape.

This chapter provides a critical review of the blossoming of Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a research field in the early 21st century. Arguing that the LL itself is at least as old as written language, the chapter examines the multiple sources of contemporary LL research in such fields as onomastics, the visual arts, language policy and planning, and examinations of the social and linguistic outcomes of multilingualism, globalisation, and population movement. The chapter argues that the field of LL research did not stem from any one source, but instead developed from bringing together researchers from different interests and parts of the world. The chapter reviews terminology in the field from English and French, and argues for the use of LL as one which is broad enough to include a wide range of modes of expressing meaning, but retains a focus on language that gives it a distinct conceptual identity.

The research described in this chapter is intended to contribute to a critical and inclusive language education in multilingual contexts resulting from migration. Our results demonstrate the visibility and invisibility of languages and their varieties in and around a secondary school in Arteixo (Galicia) and permit us to analyze, from a qualitative and emic perspective, youth perceptions, and values concerning linguistic diversity in these new multilingual contexts. Our analysis also reveals evidence of the ways in which languages are distributed and commodified in the linguistic landscape of the town, and how prejudices concerning local language varieties and migrant languages are rooted in a community that has naturalized the de-capitalization of local and authentic voices. In particular, the hegemony of English and the capitalization of standard language varieties are visible in the linguistic landscape, and they influence young people’s language ideologies.

ABSTRACTAt the end of 2016, Taiwan witnessed a string of massive protest demonstrations held by both ends of the ideological debate on marriage equality. These public demonstrations can be seen as linguistic landscapes where the mass employment of signs, banners, flags, and other genres of protest signs discursively construct a highly visible socio-political space for public conversation around marriage equality. This study looks specifically at the protest signs from the 10 December pro-marriage equality demonstration in Taipei and applies critical discourse analysis to examine what identities and ideological positions are represented in the linguistic landscape. I argue that the protest signs construct a linguistic landscape that strongly emphasizes sameness with heterosexuals as a key characteristic of LGBTQ individuals, thereby depicting equality as taking part in the social practices and gender roles of heterosexual relationships and excluding a cross-section of the LGBTQ community who do not support the assimilationist ideology underlying marriage equality.

Linguistic landscape (LL) labels a highly fruitful interdisciplinary discourse on visible language and the ways in which written language articulates with the social and physical public landscapes in which it appears. Linguistic landscapes consist most obviously of publicly visible signs (street, commercial, informational, etc.) but the context has extended to other meaningful elements of public space, sometimes with the broader label of semiotic landscape. This work initially focused on diverse urban contexts, but it has since come to include rural and monolingual contexts as well. The focus on linguistic landscapes has facilitated the extension of many central topics in linguistic anthropology into public physical spaces. These topics include indexicality, voice, language ideology, linguistic hierarchy, language revitalization, entextualization, multimodality, linguistic geography, globalization, the materiality of language, semiotic mediation and mediatization, chronotopic phenomena, the cultural contingency of literacy, and the nature of participant structures and communities of practice.

This study analyzes the linguistic landscape of the city in order to understand the relationship among Kyrgyz, Russian, and English, and society in post-Soviet Bishkek. The linguistic landscape is the visible language on public and private signs in a given territory. In Bishkek, the capital of the Kyrgyz Republic, the linguistic landscape not only includes the two languages given elevated status through the state’s official language policy, Russian and Kyrgyz, but also comprises the English language. My study is based on 104 photographed signs, 15 interviews with young residents of Bishkek, and 40 hours of participant observation. I argue that the status and function of Kyrgyz, Russian, and English in Bishkek society are closely tied to language ideologies resulting from globalization, social and linguistic hierarchies, and nationalistic and educational legacies of Soviet state-building. My findings have implications for the creation and adoption of multilingual nationalism in post-Soviet space.

This essay explores the relation of authority to legitimacy through the social construction of local histories that validate claims to 'authentic' rulership. Using the historical example of the Chiefdom of Uyombe in northern Zambia, I intend to argue that the construction of these local histories has been a crucial element in the process of domination, subjugation, resistance and collaboration between rulers and those they would rule. Exploring specific Gramscian concepts, I will also argue that historical narratives contain hegemonic and ideological components that are critical to relating authority to legitimacy in an active manner. These narratives contain African voices, which express varied local interests. Through the narratives, Africans may be seen as active agents in contributing to the making of their own local histories of rulership. Thus, authority and legitimacy are conjoined through the fabrication, inscription and recitation of historical narratives and are an essential part of governance.