Public Signs Research Articles

The ability to interpret social signs by individuals with intellectual disturbance

The article is devoted to the specifics of adaptive navigation of individuals with intellectual impairments in the social environment. Characteristics of the cognitive sphere of intellectually impaired affect the perception and interpretation of public signs. The subject of the study is social navigation sign decoding. The object of the study is the ability to interpret social signs of young adolescents with intellectual impairments. The author considers such aspects as a social adaptation of persons with disabilities, navigation aids for people with special needs, features of visual perception of graphic images as elements of the public space sign environment of people with intellectual impairments. The main conclusion of the study is the confirmation of a lower ability of students with intellectual disabilities to decode public signs correctly compared with the control group. The general relevance of the navigation signs comprehension is highlighted, which is because of the studying the graphic navigation rules as a part of the educational process. The author's special contribution to the research field is the empirical validation of the fact that the combination of complex sign elements has a negative effect on the decoding of informative stimuli for orientation in the social environment. Effective sign navigation is conditioned by commonly accepted standards and considers cognitive limitations of persons with intellectual disturbances.

J-C Public Signs Contrast and Translation

Public signs are special texts that are common in public places. And functions of them are to provide information or to remind readers of some requirements. As China strengthens exchanges with other countries in economy and culture, the translation of public signs was born at the right moment. The public sign translation is an important link in building a harmonious society, establishing an international metropolis and promoting economic development. Nowadays, the translation of English signs in China tends to be mature, but there are still many mistranslation and misinterpretation of Japanese signs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the research progress and contrast of Chinese and Japanese public signs.

“Let’s … together”

Abstract This study, drawing on a modified version of Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management Model (2008), attempts to probe into the underexplored phenomenon of apparent rapport management in Chinese directive public signs in terms of face, sociality rights and obligations, interests, and interactional goals. Based on the analysis of data collected from four cities in China, this study demonstrates how some Chinese producers of directive public signs make varying and various discursive efforts to enhance rapport with the general public. It is argued that this “personalization” characteristic of Chinese directive public signs suggests their producers’ attempt at doing rapport with the public. This research, while extending the scope of discussion on rapport management from the interpersonal to the public sphere, might serve to explain why some Chinese directive public signs (directives in particular) are not terse.

MKL-SING: A data-driven approach of sign recognition for managing and improving public services

The detection and identification of traffic signs is a fundamental function of an intelligent transportation system. The extraction or identification of a road sign poses the same problems as object identification in natural contexts: conditions of illumination are variable and uncontrollable, and various objects frequently surround road signs. These difficulties make the extraction of features difficult. The fusion of time and space features of traffic signs is important for improving the performance of sign recognition. Deep learning-based algorithms are time-consuming to train based on a large amount of data. They are difficult to deploy on resource-constrained portable devices and conduct sign detection in real time. The accuracy of sign detection should be further improved, which is related to the safety of traffic participants. To improve the accuracy of feature extraction and classification of traffic signs, we propose MKL-SING, a hybrid approach based on multi-kernel support vector machine (MKL-SVM) for public transportation SIGN recognition. It contains three main components: a principal component analysis for image dimension reduction, a fused feature extractor, and a multi-kernel SVM-based classifier. The fused feature extractor extracts and fuses the time and space features of traffic signs. The multi-kernel SVM then classifies the traffic signs based on the fused features. Different kernel functions in the multi-kernel SVM are fused based on a feature weighting procedure. Compared with single-core SVM, multi-kernel SVM can better process massive data because it can project each kernel function into high-dimensional feature space to get global solutions. Finally, the performance of SVM-TSR is validated based on three traffic sign datasets. Experiment results show that SVM-TSR performs better than state-of-the-art methods in terms of dynamic traffic sign identification and recognition.

The Personal is Linguistic: Personal Pronouns in the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca

Personal pronouns occur repeatedly in the works of Italian artists Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca. Both artists were significantly shaped by visual poetry in the late 1960s, and continued their exploration of language in the visual arts throughout the 1970s. Notably, their engagement with personal pronouns centered the first-person singular “I.” As the key site of subject-constitution in language, this linguistic category is crucial to a great number of early feminist writings. In recourse to these writings, I argue that Bentivoglio and La Rocca negotiate the personal pronoun “I” as a predetermined linguistic category and make use of it to introduce alterity into the constitution of the gendered subject. They do so by engaging with public signs. Considering the works of these artists as cornerstones of a feminist critique of language in the visual arts, the article explores the critical potential of personal pronouns for this very critique.

Disscussion on the Translation Strategies of Public Signs

Signage is not only a linguistic phenomenon, but also a cultural image. Public signs refer to signage used in public places, such as road signs, warning signs, and park signs. These signs play an important role in ensuring public safety and maintaining social order. However, due to cultural and linguistic differences, public signs are prone to mistranslation during the process of internationalization and cross-cultural communication, which may pose a threat to public safety and health, and even affect cultural dissemination and exchange. Therefore, in translating public signs, the translator should first understand the language habits and cultural characteristics of the target country. Secondly, during the translation process, some translation strategies should be applied to help readers better understand its meaning. This paper analyzes the current situation of public sign translation, collects and discusses some mistranslated cases, and provides corresponding translation strategies to help readers better understand the cultural differences and overcome the language barriers, thus promoting globalization and cross-cultural exchange and providing guidance for future translation practice.

Connotation and Denotation of 公示语 (Public Sign) and 语言景观 (Linguistic Landscape)

Terminology is the crystallization of human scientific knowledge in language, and its standardization directly affects the development of a discipline. The correct and standardized use of terminology plays an important role for a discipline. The four basic features of a term are professionalism, scientificity, monosemy and systematicness. The form and content of a term must correspond to each other, that is, a term only represents one concept (monosemy); a concept has only one reference (single name). The practical significance of this study embodies Chinese scholars’ interest in the study of public signs and linguistic landscape because these two terms are similar, overlapped and confused. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between these two terms and their concepts. This paper analyzes the conceptual similarities and differences between public signs and the linguistic landscape from many angles. These two concepts are similar in content, but not identical. The purpose of this study is to clarify the vague understanding of public signs and language landscape in academic circles, standardize the use of academic terms, and provide correct definitions for the compilation of terminology dictionaries.

A Study of Linguistic Landscape of Hankou River Beach from Cultural Perspective

The Linguistic landscape, referring to language application in public spaces, generally serves to represent an image of urban language and create renowned scenic sites. As the deepening of globalization, more and more linguistic learners and researchers become interested in the study of linguistic landscape. Under the guidance of sociolinguistics theory——place semiotics, this paper aims to investigate the public signs of Hankou River Beach from three subsystems——code preference, inscription and emplacement respectively. Meanwhile, symbolic function and informational function will be analyzed in depth with cultural connotations. By field photographing, collected samples will be categorized into different groups and further analyzed from cultural perspective. In order to promote linguistic landscape and cross-cultural communication, this paper tends to put forward three feasible proposals in the end: combination of domestic culture and foreign culture for globalization; standardization and diversity of linguistic landscape; entailment of regional features of Wuhan city culture.

The Next Normal Terminologies in Malaysia: Morphological Landscape in the Future of Work

This paper analysed the Morphological Landscape in the perceptibility and prominence of word formation on commercial and public signs in the digital platforms during the next normal in Malaysia. The surge of new terminologies accompanying the next normal created new lexical and sociolinguistic changes that have become part of our lives. It can’t be denied that many Malaysians are having problems understanding the new terms used in digital platforms during the pandemic. If someone occasionally struggles to understand the terms and their importance, they are not alone, a quote from a daily newspaper. This study aimed to 1) record new terminologies of the future of work in Malaysia and 2) analyse the headedness of compounds and blends to determine their meaning. It can be hard to keep up with the next normal terminology used in media reports and official statements about employment and employability, such as acronym (WFH), blend (workcation work + vacation), compound (remote work) and an alphabet-and-numbers blend of virus (COVID-19). The researchers used a descriptive qualitative approach to gather samples from various digital platforms (online advertisements) to identify new terminologies and adapted Yule’s and Lieber’s theoretical frameworks to analyse the concepts morphologically. It also identified compounding contributed to the rise of these new terminologies. The analysis revealed that new terms are coined from word-formation processes of acronyms, blending, compounding, and multiple processes.This study will educate the public about the new terminologies of the next normal in the future of work in Malaysia. regarding its meanings and function in daily life.

Japanese governmental agencies and gendered representations in public and warning signs

To counter Japan’s low birth rate, labor shortage, and economic stagnation, their government has adopted policies, such as the ‘womenomics,’ and ‘The Ikumen project,’ so that more women can join the workforce, and men can enjoy a healthier work-life balance. However, this study shows that governmental agencies employ gendered representations in public and warning signs, which contradict such policies. For instance, this study found that most public signs depict women predominantly as the caretakers of children, while men are predominantly seen as suit-wearing ‘salarymen’ who prioritize work over home. Additionally, men are almost always represented as law-breaking individuals, while women are frequently shown as helpless victims. Since such signs carry official government insignias, this study suggests conceptualizing public signs through Foucault’s ‘dividing practices,’ as signs divide society into gendered groups to create social order. Furthermore, this study argues that gendered representations in public signs possibly reflect that the government’s view regarding gendered roles in Japan has not fundamentally changed. Lastly, since the gendered representations of signs are similar to other media representations, this study argues that these representations should be viewed as part of a wider network of ‘systems of representations,’ which repeat the hegemonic gender representations in Japan.

Tourism, commodification of Dongba script and perceptions of the Naxi minority in the linguistic landscape of Lijiang: a diachronic perspective

Abstract Ongoing debates in the field of sociolinguistics are centred around the implications of the commodification of the languages and cultures of ethnic minorities. Previous research has adopted synchronic approaches to describing how ideologies of tourist consumption shape language choices in the linguistic landscape. However, such snapshot analyses have proved to be inadequate in revealing changes in the linguistic landscape over time, especially the nuanced perceptions of minority communities who are subjects to ethnic tourism. This paper examines the use of Dongba script in the linguistic landscape of the Naxi minority in Lijiang under the conditions of commodification in tourism. A diachronic comparison of photographic data collected in 2016 and 2021 revealed the increasing visibility and prominence of Dongba script on public signs; interviews with ordinary inhabitants, tourism industry practitioners and Dongba priests within the Naxi community further demonstrated the evolving attitudes towards linguistic commodification, from hesitation and objection to integration and creative accommodation. The study provides new insights into how a diachronic perspective can help reveal the dynamic between packaging languages as commodities and retaining signs of identity, religion and culture.

Study on the Current Situation of Japanese Translation of Public Signs in Tourist Attractions

The public signs of scenic spots are the name cards of scenic spots and play an important role in promoting the international image of cities. This paper takes the Japanese public signs in the scenic spots of Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province as an example, through the collection and analysis of the public signs in the scenic spots, studies the standardization and accuracy of their translation, and probes into the development maturity of Zhenjiang scenic spots. The survey results show that there are three problems in the Japanese public signs in the above survey scenic spots: First, the Japanese public signs are missing. Second, the translation is not standardized enough. Third, the translation lacks accuracy. In view of the above problems, the corresponding solutions are proposed.

Complicating solidarity

Abstract Prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, there had been an extended period of civic unrest which began as opposition to an extradition bill but which later grew into a larger socio-political movement. We consider the relationship between ongoing political sentiments and the Covid-19 pandemic as evident through public signs; particularly, how commercial signage aligns and disaligns with government discourse on solidarity evident through recontextualization of the official tagline “Together, we fight the virus!” We suggest three analytical categories: (1) signs which demonstrate an alignment stance with the institutional sense of solidarity; (2) alignment with the pro-democracy movement, and thus disalignment from the institutional sense; and (3) politically ambiguous stances appealing to a broad understanding of solidarity for commercial gain. The pandemic occurring at a politically sensitive time has caused and made evident fractures in the way solidarity is construed, resulting in (dis)alignment and differing stances arising from the various social actors who have emplaced signs.

Pedagogical Potential of Linguistic Landscape for English Teaching and Learning: An Analysis of Pre-Service Elementary School Teachers’ Activities in a Multimedia English Course

With the growing interest in linguistic landscape in sociolinguistic studies, many language educators and researchers have begun to consider how the sociolinguistic concept and analytic methods can be mobilized for language learning and teaching. To explore the pedagogical potential of linguistic landscape, this study examines how pre-service teachers understand the concept and implications of linguistic landscape for English education. For this purpose, 35 South Korean pre-service elementary school teachers taking a multimedia English course attended a session about linguistic landscape and engaged in two activities using multimedia resources and online platforms: a virtual linguistic landscape task and a linguistic landscape fieldwork project. The analysis of the learning outcomes of these two activities revealed that linguistic landscapes helped pre-service teachers increase their language awareness of public language use. However, their engagement with language awareness was affected by the spaces they chose to collect public signs. In their reflections on the activities, the pre-service teachers indicated that linguistic landscapes could be valuable resources for authentic English and cultural learning. They also stated that the levels of linguistic difficulty and cultural contents of public signage should be controlled. This article concludes by discussing how linguistic landscape can contribute to improving English teachers’ critical language awareness.

Covid-19 WhatsApp sticker memes in Oman

In this paper, the form and function of personalized Covid-19 WhatsApp sticker memes created and shared as social laments by citizens in Oman are examined. The compiled data set of 288 WhatsApp stickers was taken from a larger ethnographic project on Arabs and Covid-19. To collect and analyze the data, perspectives from visual semiotics were integrated with participatory and geosemiotic approaches to ground the stickers socially and globally. Six functions of Covid-19 WhatsApp stickers in Oman were identified: expressing political dissent, creating public signs, promoting religious agenda, indexing frustration, expressing levity, and constructing counter-discourse. Based on this analysis, it is suggested that by creating and using WhatsApp stickers during the 2020–2021 Covid-19 pandemic, Omani citizens positioned themselves as agentive participants in charge of their own lives, thus, solidifying a decade-long request for a new form of public-government relationship. The paper adds to research on Arabic digital communication and pandemic discourse.

Linguistic landscape, critical language awareness and critical thinking: promoting learner agency in discourses about language

in English There is now increased awareness of the need to challenge ‘common sense’ ideologies of language in education, turning language classrooms into spaces of analysis and liberation. Key to achieving this goal is equipping students with the skills needed to navigate diverse, complex discourses about language (critical thinking), as well as fostering an agentive disposition among them (critical language awareness). This article reports on research which examined how these qualities can be developed by involving language learners in analysis of public signs (linguistic landscape). 33 undergraduate students at a public university in Bhutan were recruited to participate in an extra-curricular activity in which they were asked to independently collect examples of public signs from the capital Thimphu and engage in guided analysis and discussion of the linguistic and visual features of the signs. Analysis of video recordings of learner interaction as well as of the textual data produced during and after the activity indicated that critical thinking processes were activated with relative regularity. In combination with pre- and post-activity interviews, these data also indicated that activating critical thinking through the activity also allowed several of the learners to take up a more agentive position in discourses about language in Bhutan.

The Construction of Public Space through Language

Among countries have all had an impact on how language is regarded. When considering the linguistic landscape in the modern time of scientific-linguistic studies, multilingualism, various discursive acts, sociolinguistic frames and affordances all complicate the process of viewing and placing it. In small-scale research of Odiongan, a municipality of Tablas Island, a rapidly rising administrative and commercial centre in Romblon, visual analyses of discourses, as indicated by the linguistic landscape, were done. In addition, the study summarizes some of the studies that have dealt with the linguistic landscape. It also outlines the theoretical framework that was employed in the current investigation and presents the question that this study seeks to solve. Among the organizations that have been selected as the study's specific resources are a community-governmental office, which represents a government body, a state university, which represents the educational sector, and a church, which represents a religious entity. The public signs chosen to reflect the linguistic landscape practiced in these societal components were also chosen to represent the linguistic landscape practiced in each of the institutions studied.

The Use of Linguistic Landscape as a Training Resource for Developing Students’ Translation Competence

This study is an attempt to investigate the efficacy of using linguistic landscape scripts as a training material to develop student translators’ translation competence. Focusing on the sub-competences stated in PACTE’s model of translation competence, namely the bilingual, extra-linguistic, strategic and knowledge about translation sub-competences, the study, based on the participants’ reflective feedback and instructor’s observations, aims to determine whether the use of bilingual public signs with translational content can help translation students develop their translation competence. The qualitative data used in the study were collected via focus group discussions, instructor’s observations and a survey to obtain students’ perspectives. The study found out that through discussion, evaluation and reflection on authentic materials taken from students’ environment, students can raise their bilingual, procedural and strategic awareness, which contributes to development of self-confidence in decision-making and problem-solving skills in the translation process. Furthermore, the study revealed that the use of such authentic experiential materials can provide students with a range of practices, actors and factors related to the process of translation that enhances their extra-linguistic competence and knowledge about translation, which eventually enables them produce translations that conform to the standards of meaningfulness, appropriateness and correctness required by the target audience.

Contrastive language policies: a comparison of two multilingual linguistic landscapes where Spanish coexists with regional minority languages

ABSTRACT This study compares two linguistic landscapes and the concurrent language policies of two scenarios where minority languages coexist with Spanish. On one hand, in the Archipelago of San Andres, Colombia, Spanish is in contact with an English-based Creole (Raizal Creole). Similarly, Valencian (Spain) coexists with Spanish as a national language. This work examines over 1200 pictures of public signs to reveal the extent to which these regional languages are represented in the public sphere by their main social actors in comparable domains: touristic sites and urban centres. Results showed that Raizal Creole is associated with signs authored by the community, while Spanish is the language of choice of the government and private sector. In contrast, Valencian is maintained in written signs in both settings. Despite having analogous language laws, only Valencian enjoys substantial governmental recognition. This situation sheds light on the de facto language policies and language maintenance in multilingual settings where Spanish is the national language.

The Integration of "Three Worlds" in Translation from Phenomenology — Take the Translation of Public Signs in Eco-translatology as an Example

This paper will analyze the "three worlds" in translation, namely the symbolic world, the objective world, and the spiritual world and their integration by making full use of phenomenological reduction, the fundamental method of phenomenological analysis. In this paper, the author tries to analyze the integration of the three worlds in translation and the ultimate meaning of translation practice by using the method of phenomenological reduction with the example of the public signs in eco-translatology. There will be four parts in this paper. The first is to explain phenomenology and its fundamental method of phenomenological analysis, phenomenological reduction. The second is to introduce eco-translatology and its influence and significance. The third is to take the translation of public signs in eco-translatology as example, and analyze the significance of the integration of these three worlds, namely, the symbolic world, the objective world and the spiritual world. And the fourth part is to summarize this paper.