Translanguaging in Linguistic Landscape of Historical and Cultural Streets

Abstract

Under the influence of globalization, multilingualism has become the way of social communication. Linguistic landscape in public space is complex and diverse with blurred boundary of languages. The interaction of multimodality and languages increase complexity of linguistic landscape. From the perspective of translanguaging, language practice on linguistic landscape not only transcends individual languages, but also goes beyond words, involving diverse semiotic resources. Through application of the concept of translanguaging, we can explore how different linguistic forms, signs and modalities co-occur to express meaning. Linguistic landscape in historical and cultural streets is an important window of the identity of the city. The linguistic landscape of historical and cultural streets shows a common diversity of language, culture and identity, reflecting obscure boundary of languages. The multilingual hybridity implies the conflicting and complex negotiation of multiple identity in the new stage of seeking for local development under economic globalization and urbanization. It is worth analyzing how the linguistic landscape of historical and cultural streets transcends semantic resources of different languages, varieties and multimodality to build a local identity.