Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1374

Part of Session 132: Re-writing and Engaging with Urban Spaces via Linguistic Landscape (Other abstracts in this session)

Interpreting the interplay between languages and scripts in the linguistic landscapes of Kuwait and the UK

Authors: Mayor, Barbara Madeline (1); Hannawi, Nay (2)
Submitted by: Mayor, Barbara Madeline (Open University (UK), United Kingdom)

This presentation examines the creative interplay between languages and scripts on display in the streets of Kuwait and the UK, and specifically some of the ways in which one language is represented via a script conventionally associated with another. It goes on to explore how such signage is interpreted in context by a diverse range of readers/receivers.

Much work in the field of linguistic landscape has concentrated on the quantification and classification of languages and scripts in the multilingual environment. Previous research has identified challenges in the classification and interpretation of such signs, including the complex semiotic relationship between the contextual and spatial distribution of languages (Spolsky, 2009). This presentation will argue that conclusions about the ‘language’ in which a sign is written based solely on the choice of script are likely to misrepresent the often complex semiotic processes involved in the production and reception of signs.

Previous research (see Seargeant forthcoming) has identified three creative processes involved in the production and addressivity of signs in a multilingual environment (specifically, the way the linguistic practices of the intended audience influence the composition):

the use of ‘simulation’ typefaces which may represent English words but, through the use of fonts drawn from non-Roman scripts, serve to index other cultures stereotypically in the manner of ‘foreign accents’;
product and company names which use typographical distinctiveness or diacritical marks for similar purposes;
the transliteration of English words into another script, akin to lexical borrowing.

Depending on the knowledge and experience of each reader/receiver, such multimodal and/or metaphorical signs may or may not be interpreted as ‘English’, or as indexing Anglophone culture. There is no guarantee that any ideational meaning will be recognised beyond the symbolic idea of ‘Englishness’ or, in some cases, ‘Frenchness’. Indeed what is verbal to some may be interpreted as simply visual or decorative to others.

Scollon and Scollon (2003) were amongst the first to argue for an ethnographic approach to the interpretation of signs in the linguistic landscape. In this tradition, we examine the responses to a diverse range of signage in our two contexts by subjects of different ages, genders, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, drawing on three levels in the reception of signs identified by Smith (1992), namely intelligibility, comprehensibility and interpretability.

References

Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London, Routledge

Seargeant, P. (forthcoming) ‘Between script and language: the ambiguous ascription of English in the linguistic landscape’ in Helot, C., Barni, N., Janssens, R. and Bagna, C. (eds) Linguistic landscape, multilingualism and social change: diversite des approches, Frankfurt, Peter Lang

Smith, L. E. (1992) ‘Spread of English and issues of intelligibility’ in Kachru (ed) The Other Tongue: English across cultures, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, pp.75-90

Spolsky, B. (2009) ‘Prolegomena to a sociolinguistic theory of public signage’ in Shohamy, E. and Gorter, D. (eds) Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery, New York, Routledge, pp.25-39

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Interpreting the interplay between languages and scripts in the linguistic landscapes of Kuwait and the UK