Abstract
As an approach to multilingualism, the study of linguistic landscape (LL) in educational settings is still underexplored. LL study is significant to disclose various aspects of language existence and use. In the school context, it might reveal what and how languages are used among school members and their relevance to education. This article aims to examine the emerging themes of signs’ messages in school LL and the contribution of multimodal social semiotic elements to the signage social meanings. It studied 890 signs from five senior high schools in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and used a geosemiotic approach to analyse the verbal and visual texts. The findings reveal eight major themes of messages: (1) location or place direction, (2) morality and religion, (3) environment and energy, (4) school identity and information, (5) activities, (6) how to comport oneself, (7) science and knowledge and (8) rules, regulations and acts. The three main modes (language, image and colour) in the school LL serve the functions to communicate and to represent the schools’ social reality relevant to the emerging themes through iconic and symbolic semiotic systems. The school LL is a multifaceted social construct that also reveals the relationship between the sign makers and the addressees.
Highlights
Since it was firstly introduced as “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, commercial shop signs and public signs on government buildings” (Landry and Bourhis 1997, 25), linguistic landscape is commonly defined as the use of written language for public communication (Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Gorter 2006a; 2013)
As “a verbal-visual amalgamation” (Malinowski 2010), both language and image in linguistic landscape (LL) contribute to the meaning-making. This present study focuses on the social meanings in senior high school LL in multilingual Yogyakarta
Following are the results related to meanings or messages based on the emerging themes and the contribution of modes to the social meanings in the school LL signs
Summary
Since it was firstly introduced as “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, commercial shop signs and public signs on government buildings” (Landry and Bourhis 1997, 25), linguistic landscape (hereafter LL) is commonly defined as the use of written language for public communication (Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Gorter 2006a; 2013). LL might vary and even though language is primarily used in LL, the use of other modes such as images, colour, as well as font size is important to be considered to understand the messages conveyed through the signs. LL is both multilingual and multimodal (Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Hewitt-Bradshaw 2014; Lotherington 2013). The fast-growing body of LL research has revealed numerous aspects of language use and existence in particular public space as well as its potential benefit (Backhaus 2006; Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Huebner 2006). Besides functioning as a means of communication, LL can be used positively as language learning and literacy resource and exposure to increase language sensitivity and awareness (Cenoz and Gorter 2008; Hewitt-Bradshaw 2014; Lotherington 2013; Sayer 2010)
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