Aiestaran Etxabe Jokin, Cenoz Jasone, Gorter Durk, Hanenburg Marieke

(Faculty of Philosophy and Education Science, Department of Research Methods and Diagnosis in Education, University of the Basque Country, Spain / Ikerbasque / Fryske Akademy)

Multilingual cityscapes: preferences of the inhabitants of SanSebastian/Donostia

In a study we carried out in the framework of SUS. DIV (Sustainable Development in a Diverse World), a European network of excellence, we investigated preferences about the languages on the signs around them and what it is worth to them to get it that way (monolingual, bilingual, multilingual). An innovative approach was chosen to study the linguistic landscape (Cenoz & Gorter 2008).The central question concerns the way people indicate they prefer to have the signs in the linguistic landscape and their 'willingness to pay' for it. The study was carried out in the city of Donostia/San Sebastian, the Basque Country. We used a research technique that has been used before in environmental and cultural economics to estimate the non-market economic value of the language signs. The local inhabitants of the city were interviewed on the streets. The results of the questionnaires will be discussed for Donostia and will be compared on the main variables. The paper will draw some conclusion for future studies of the linguistic landscape.

Barni Monica, Bagna Carla

(Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy)

Italian language and LL in the market of languages

In this paper we look at Italianisms used around the world in the interaction context of public/social communication, and analyse the phenomenon using an LL approach. Our topic lies at the meeting point between several levels of analysis, and this convergence demands an innovative approach to investigation relative to more traditional methods: analysis of current diffusion processes of Italian amongst foreigners in the global linguistic market; analysis of the presence of elements of Italian in other languages (in their form or systematic usages); and finally, investigation into the domains of social exchange in which Italian proves able to exert a strong force of attraction on foreigners due to the sense values ascribed to it.Our reasoning is based on a theoretical model that interprets the presence of Italian around the world or its contact with other languages within the global linguistic market (Calvet 2002; De Mauro, Vedovelli, Barni, Miraglia 2002) and within the "new global linguistic order" (Maurais 2003; Crystal 1997).

A second component of our interpretative proposition is more generally semiotic in nature: we believe that, in order to explain the attraction factor of Italian for foreigners, we need to consider the sense values ascribed to our language and culture. As we shall see, Italianisms bear witness to the prevalence of positive traits, linked to the perception of aspects of Italianness such as quality of life, well-being, dynamism and creativity. This last trait in particular appears to open doors to new meanings for foreigners, who take our language into their own communicative structures. We are even more deeply struck, however, by the creative relationship that foreigners have with Italian, which they see as a language that can be re-elaborated, adapted to suit their needs, and taken as a source of models for the formation of meaning. Thus, contact between Italian and other languages becomes another area of intensification of creative processes - one of the fundamental semiotic traits of spoken language: the presence of Italian becomes the sign of a semiotic effort to recreate meaning, an attempt to regain possession of meanings that would otherwise be lost or remain unformed.

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Barton David

(Lancaster University, UK)

What ethnographic studies of literacy contribute to linguistic landscapes research

Over the past twenty years researchers in Literacy Studies have been working to understand the role of written language in everyday life. A crucial part of the data for this research comes from observing and photographing images of written language in the environment. This ecological approach to understanding written language directly parallels much linguistic landscape research, with a different initial question but a great deal of overlap. I will use examples from two studies to cover some issues which literacy studies has addressed which have some bearing on linguistic landscape research. The two studies were carried out in the early 1990s: firstly a study of what we have referred to as the ‘visual literacy environment’ (actually the literacy landscape) of Kathmandu, Nepal; and, secondly, a study of everyday literacies in Lancaster, England.

The main question about the role of written language in social practices quickly gets to issues of multilingualism, as in the Kathmandu example, and to other issues about the ecology of language. The paper will make a set of points from the literacy studies research, examining the ways in which language and meaning are situated:

1. Situated in the text. The materiality of language draws attention to other aspects of the text: script, design, layout, etc. It brings up issues of multimodality and semiosis, particularly the many relations of language and visuals (Kress).

2. Situated in place, meaning the immediate context, often the city or the part of the city. (including Scollon & Scollon’s notions of discourses in place and nexus of practice).

3. Situated but not static, covering the circulation of texts and that texts are coming from someone/somewhere and are going somewhere/to someone. There are institutional sponsors of literacy (Brandt).

4. Situated in practices. The purpose and the meaning are not in the text, but in the social practices (Barton).

5. Dominant and vernacular practices (Street; Barton & Hamilton).

The paper will also consider current work by addressing issues of methodology:

1. What is the public sphere? Does it include the internet? Often the work is in terms of public shared spaces, but can also include newspapers, the internet. Our research includes methodologies such as giving cameras to people so they can photograph less public spaces in their homes or workplaces.

2. Who’s looking? Including the role of the observer. Our research includes different people’s perspectives and how practitioners, for example, may see a different literacy landscape from researchers.

Ben-Rafael Eliezer, Ben-Rafael Miriam

(Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Israel / Independent Researcher, Israel)

The linguistic-landscape dimension of dual homenes

Dual homeness is a major concept in the investigation of contemporary immigration and the formation of transnational diasporas in this era of globalization where transportation, worldwide communication and global instant media coverage have transformed the relation of time and

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distance. This concept of dual homeness emphasizes the principle of continuity vis-à-vis families, relatives and friends left behind illustrated by present-day immigrant groups. Though, another major preoccupation of this body of research concerns the extent that, as a result of dual homeness, such diasporas tend to remain foreign to their hostland and to form enclaves alienated from their environments. This paper focuses on these questions by considering a specific group of recent immigrants – French Jews who immigrated to Israel since the 1990s – and comparing it to people of their community of origin in France. French Jews in Israel show by many signs their determination to illustrate dual homeness in the very sense that this notion is used in the literature regarding transnational diasporas. On the other hand, many Jews in France also illustrate an allegiance to symbols of their own and tend to form distinct communities. Hence, the questions of interest that such a case arises also include the extent that immigrants to Israel remain loyal to the same kind of particularism that they exhibit in their homeland. In view of bringing about elements of answers to these questions, we use the linguistic-landscape methodology that refers to all written linguistic objects that mark the public space. In Israel, we choose to concentrate on Natanya where recent French immigrants are numerous, and in France, we investigated a typical Jewish concentration in the vicinity of Paris – Sarcelles. In both spaces, we focused on the uses of French, Hebrew and other languages in LL. The patterns that come out show significant features of convergence and divergence which throw light on the dialectics of similarity-dissimilarity of diasporas and communities of origin.

Blackwood Robert, Tufi Stefania

(French Section, School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Liverpool, UK)

Similarities and differences around the Mediterranean coast; a contrastive study of the LL in French and Italian urban centres

The linguistic landscape facilitates a number of different approaches to the study and analysis of multilingualism. Within the context of the European Union, member states are moving towards greater harmony in a number of fields, including language rights, and with a common land border, as well as considerable contact across the Mediterranean Sea, Italy and France constitute an interesting case study for extending linguistic landscape research beyond national borders. This investigation into the linguistic landscape of four Mediterranean coastal towns has brought to light the complexity of their linguistic compositions. Perpignan and Cagliari on the one hand, and Marseille and Genoa on the other, are of broadly comparable sizes in terms of population. France and Italy, however, are characterized by different linguistic histories and different patterns of immigration. The linguistic landscapes of the four urban centres reflect some of these differences, but they also present some similarities. Given the framework of European law and agreed protocols, this exploratory investigation seeks to identify four principal contexts, namely the degree of visibility of the national languages, of the heritage languages, of immigrant languages and of English as a global language within the four coastal sites. The paper will also address the presence of French in the Italian LL and Italian in the French LL, focusing on the permanence and/or evolution of cultural stereotypes.

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Bogatto François-Xavier, Hélot Christine

(Groupe de Recherche sur le Plurilinguisme Européen: EA Lilpa 1339, Université de Strasbourg, France / Professeur des Universités, Strasbourg, France)

What does the Linguistic Landscape tell us about Language Diversity in Strasbourg (France): A case study of the area called “Quartier gare”

The linguistic landscape can be broadly defined by as being made up of all the signs which are displayed in the public sphere and which can be read. In this contribution, we propose to analyse the linguistic landscape of a specific area called “Quartier Gare” around the main train station in Strasbourg, a city of approximately 300.000 inhabitants situated on the border between France and Germany. Although officially monolingual, the city of Strasbourg can be described as an urban space marked by cultural and linguistic diversity where several endogenous and exogenous linguistic varieties are in contact.

In order to analyse this diversity and the link between languages, the urban space and the notion of identity, our research project focuses on the way commercial signage in this specific area of the city can be read and interpreted. Based on data collected in several streets, we will explain how these examples of urban writing stand as an illustration of linguistic and cultural diversity and also represent discourses which can be envisaged as markers of identity. Thus we shall define the concept of linguistic landscape in terms of a symbolic construction of the public space.

Garvin Rebecca T.

(Teaching Associate - C&T program - English Department Indiana University of Pennsylvania, US)

The postmodern Walking Tour interview: a Method for Exploring Local and Transnational Responses to the Linguistic Landscape in Memphis, Tennessee

This paper presents interview data and analysis of the self-reported emotional understandings and visual perceptions of local residents in response to minority and migrant discourses on community and commercial signage in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Memphis, TN. Utilizing postmodern interviewing sensibilities (Gubrium & Holstein, 2003) and the notion of LL as a stimulus text (Torronen, 2002), the researcher and participants engaged in a discursive process of negotiation to interpret and understand the psychological, emotional impact of migrant cityscaping , the act of signing the urban landscape to reflect the needs and identities of migrant populations, in their communities. Interviews were conducted onsite during a "walking tour" of selected community sites in which frequency of multilingualism in the LL was present. Findings illuminated a dynamic process of negotiation and co-construction of knowledge and understandings through the interactions between the interviewer, the participant and the LL. Analysis of the co-constructed interview texts considered the explicit meanings, contextualized meanings, shifts of identity, emergent themes and topics, and expressions of emotion. Of particular interest were shifting positionalities of transnational identities triggered by the LL during the interview process. This study maintains that the LL serves as catalyst or stimulus text for mediating visual perceptions and emotional/psychological understandings of belonging and identity in time and place. In the context of this study, I argue that postmodern interviewing methodology in combination with a LL approach provides space for the free flow of natural conversation while maintaining focus on the topic under investigation, two sociolinguistic interview challenges articulated by William Labov (interviewed and transcribed by Gordon, 2006). In particular, the postmodern walking tour interview offers applied linguists a tool for exploring individual transnational experience as it plays

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itself out in responses to the LL in urban settings. As argued, this method is uniquely suited for this purpose because of its ability to address dynamic changes of meaning and interactional responses to linguistic signage in the environment.

Guilat Yael

(The Art Institute, Oranim Academic College of Education, Israel)

The Ark in the street: Sacred and secular painting in the public space on electric boxes in Migdal Haemek-Israel

Along the last years the presence of painted boxes of electric and telephone connection boxes in the public domain became familiar in the Israeli's cities. This phenomenon is an interesting case study between the official and unofficial visual culture in terms of linguistic landscape. The first city that this initiative emerged was Migdal Haemek,in the north of Israel. (Started as a ma'abara in 1953 becoming later a development town in the sixties and a city at 1998). Still now, after becoming a kind of "artistic practice of the everyday life" in Israel, the paintings in Migdal Haemek keep its exceptional value as a manifestation and expression of the relationships between the different ethno-cultural communities in the city that included, both foreign-born and native Israelis, who are primarily from Russia, Kafkaz, Ethiopia, Morocco,Tunisia, Iraq and a small group from South America. This multicultural setting and the strong influence of religious orthodoxy communities, institutions and parties (Shas) that have serious reservations about visual representations contributed to create a peculiar, communal visual language that tells us an urban site-specific narrative.

This paper will consider the general phenomena as well as Migdal Haemek as a case study.

Hanauer David I.

(Prof. of English Graduate Studies in Composition and TESOL English Department Indiana University of Pennsylvania, US / Educational Researcher and Assessment Coordinator Bacteriophage Institute of Pittsburgh PHIRE (Phage Hunting Integrating Research and Education) Program Hatfull Laboratory Biology Department University of Pittsburgh, US)

Transnationalizing, Nationalizing and Historicizing Contested Place: Graffiti at Abu Dis Partially in the Municipality of Jerusalem

The phenomenon discussed in this chapter is the graffiti painted on the dividing wall/border erected by the State of Israel in Abu Dis within the municipality of Jerusalem. The site of this graffiti simultaneously is non-placed, placed and contested as place within the political and national arguments over border definitions between Israeli and Palestinian national entities. The graffiti at this site involves the entry of transnationalizing markings designed to problematize this site through the specification of dual national or dual city interests in the outcome of the political argumentation that this site signifies. The transnationalizing graffiti markings are the result of political tourism and stand in contest to the nationalizing markings made by other agents at this site. In addition, this chapter has the methodological aim of explicating (and then demonstrating) a theory of how political contestation on a wide social arena is manifest and utilized within the linguistic landscape. The current chapter draws on post-modern discussions of montage as an art form that constructs, joins, and assembles disparate items with the agenda of countering understanding of harmony, unity and linearity; in addition, the theory proposed utilizes post-modern discussions of discourse and

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power. The object of the linguistic landscape is described as an exercise in montage by multiple asynchronic actors vying for communicative presence through the embedding of different discourses in dialogic positioning within the same physical site. Evidence of these referenced, activated discourses is obvious with the extraction of the wall graffiti images into websites with clear discursive (political) objectives. The methodological ramifications of this theoretical position will be discussed and demonstrated within this chapter.

Huebner Thom

(San José State University, US)

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Trigger a Recall lection

In 2000, a Vietnamese American real estate developer opened the Grand Century Mall, a shopping center featuring a predominance of Vietnamese American businesses along a 1.5 mile strip of Story Road on the outskirts of San José, California, an area that just a generation before contained ony fruit orchards and dusty vacant lands. In 2004, by winning a seat on the San José City Council, Madison Nguyen became the first Vietnamese-American woman elected to public office in the United States. By 2008, Story Road was home to numerous strip malls housing mostly Vietnamese-American small businesses, and Madison Nguyen was facing a recall drive after having sponsored a resolution to name the area the “Saigon Business District.” Much to the surprise of the City Council that passed the resolution, the protests, sit-ins, and recall petition that followed originated from within the Vietnamese-American community itself. This paper describes the linguistic landscape – physical, psychological and political – of Story Road and how it has divided a community and may yet cost a rising young politician her career.

Hult Francis M.

(University of Texas at San Antonio, US)

The Application of Nexus Analysis to an Ecological Study of Linguistic Landscapes

The ecology of language, or ecolinguistics, has developed as a fruitful conceptual orientation in that it calls for a synthesis of micro- and macro-level lines of sociolinguistic inquiry in order to fully explicate social mechanisms that relate to multilingualism. Researchers working from an ecolinguistic point of view seek to chart aspects of multilingualism by exploring the ways in which individual language choices condition and are conditioned by the social environment within and across scales of social organization (e.g., neighborhoods, cities, regions, and countries).

In this paper, I suggest that the joint application of two emerging sociolinguistic methodologies, linguistic landscape analysis (e.g., Gorter, 2006) and nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), is especially useful to ecolinguistic investigations of multilingualism. Through discussion of this joint application, I demonstrate how principles of nexus analysis might be useful to enriching linguistic landscape analysis. I first review key principles of language ecology. I then examine the methods of nexus analysis and linguistic landscape, with an eye towards how they complement each other. Data collected from a broader study of multilingual language policy in Sweden serve to illustrate potential benefits of using these methods in concert.

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Inoue Fumio

(Meikai University, Japan)

Economical principles for multilingual signs in Japan

In this presentation linguistic landscape or Sprachlandschaft in Japan will be discussed. Manners of usage of writing systems and languages will be surveyed making use of concrete visible data, and their basic mechanism will be considered. Description will be arranged against historical background.

First, changes in usage of four major writing systems in Japan will be considered. In the first millennium AD Japanese signboards were written solely by “kanji” or Chinese characters. Then after the invention of Japanese syllabic writing, “hiragana” was often used in the second millennium AD. After the modernization, another syllabic writing system, “katakana”, was also utilized. But it became old-fashioned after the Second World War. Nowadays, “romaji” or alphabetical writing became prevalent in many areas or domains in Japan. This could be a symbolic process of Westernization (or rather Americanization and globalization) of the world.

To add to this, other ethnic writing systems like Hangul or Thai letters are used recently, almost always with other writing systems. These processes of adoption of new writing systems show that changes do not simply reflect rate of literacy of lay people. Commercial signboards adopt writing systems which seem fashionable to people. They do not have to be read by all the people. They make use of emotive, rather than intellectual aspect of writing systems. Atmosphere raised and produced by writing systems is important in these cases. In the background we can suspect that economical principles are working.

Next, language use itself will be treated. Here, we will make use of the “Masai data” made in 1960s, which seems to be the predecessor of the study of linguistic landscape. The etymology of words (original language) used in the signboards in Tokyo is processed making use of a repetitive study of the same area. Advancement of English was conspicuous. Other survey data will be introduced too for comparison. For example multilingual signs in Japanese department stores were adopted quite early. The data in 1988 and 2004 are compared and advancement of multilingualism was ascertained.  Linguistic landscape of commercial facilities discussed above all reflects economical principles.

Changes in linguistic landscape in Japan reflect changes in consciousness of people. Their view now ceased to be governed by western influences, and was widened to the whole world, or at least they began to pay more attention to Asian countries. The Japanese seem to be able to grasp the language and writings of the world as relative entities. We can detect economical principles working in the background of these changes.

The changes above can also be placed against Neustupny’s idea of sociolinguistic modernization process of languages, from pre-modern, modern to post-modern ages.

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Janssens Rudi, Housen Alex

(BRIO-VUB, Belgium / Dept. of Linguistics & Literature, University of Brussels, VUB, Belgium)

Linguistic landscapes in Belgium (1): The Capital Region of Brussels and its Peripher

This presentation is the first of two presentations on the linguistic situation in Belgium (cf. also Mettewie & Van Mensel). Belgium is a school book example of a bilingual (officially trilingual) country where tensions between the different language communities dominate the political, cultural and social arena. These tensions are often illustrated by the pictures of vandalized bilingual road signs in and around the officially bilingual Dutch-French capital region of Brussels that have figured in many publications on the Belgian language situation (cf. Baker & Prys Jones, 1998). Attempts to chart the distribution of the various languages in the Belgian linguistic landscape have been fraught with difficulty since the abolition of language censuses in 1948. In a concerted effort to complement the findings from survey studies of patterns of language use, proficiency and attitudes in Belgium (eg. Janssens 2001, 2007; Mettewie 2004), teams from the University of Brussels (VUB) and the Facultés Universitaires de Namur (FUNDN) have recently started to document selected aspects of the linguistic signs present in the public domain of the Belgian landscape. The first results of this collaborate research effort will be presented in two presentations.

As a preamble to both presentations, the first presentation will start by briefly outlining the complex language situation and language legislation in Belgium (section 1). The remainder of the first presentation focuses on Brussels (section 2) and its periphery (section 3).

The officially bilingual but predominantly francophone capital region of Brussels is characterized by great linguistic diversity due to the presence of a sizable expat community (e.g. EU and NATO officials) and an even larger migrant community. The non-administrative, ‘bottom-up’ public linguistic signs in four selected commercial districts in Brussels were systematically photographed, coded and subsequently analysed to document the different expressions of the two official languages (Dutch & French), the international lingua franca (English) and the various languages from migrant communities (e.g. Turkish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish, …). The methodological choices that were made will be discussed and the results from this LL analysis will be checked against the findings from recent surveys of language use and knowledge in Brussels.

The term “Brussels Periphery” (Dutch: Brusselse Rand) refers to Flemish periphery immediately bordering upon the Brussels Capital Region and consists of some 19 municipalities. Due to the suburbanisation process and the presence of many international companies and institutions, this area is also characterised by a multilingual population. Since it is part of the officially monolingual Flemish Region, Dutch is the only official language although in some municipalities with (highly contested) linguistic ‘facilities’, French can also be used in contact with the administration. Although only the communication with the government is regulated by law and language use between citizens is free, concrete linguistic practices differ considerably between municipalities where the use of French is allowed and those where it is not. This will be illustrated by discussing three different issues: (1) how LL are used within the political discourse and which initiatives politicians take in relation to the LL, (2) the different visual linguistic strategies that are used by merchants and shopkeepers in this politically and linguistically sensitive area, and (3) the relation the visual linguistic scene of a shop and the actual (spoken) language use within the shop itself.

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Jaworski Adam

(Cardiff University, UK)

Linguistic Landscapes on Postcards

Alongside ‘iconic’ sights such as buildings, monuments, artworks, modes of transport (e.g. the London black cab), linguistic landscapes are prime semiotic resources for the tourist consumption of place. Apart from their referential function (naming or indexing places, buildings, institutions, products, etc.), written signs work as symbolic resources to create a ‘sense of place’ and as performative displays of identity for their producers and consumers. In this paper, I examine the representation of linguistic landscapes on the seemingly banal yet one of the most ubiquitous and powerful of tourist genres – the postcard. After a brief overview of the types of linguistic landscapes represented on postcards, language choices, typography and other aspects of composition, I consider some of the broader issues raised by these (meta-)pragmatic texts in relation to globalisation, mobility and commodification of culture.

Kallen Jeffrey, Kallen Esther

(Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College Dublin 2, Ireland / Independent Scholar, Ireland)

Rising Sun, Celtic Tiger: Language and inter-language in Japanese and Irish linguistic landscapes

Multilingual signage in the linguistic landscape poses several problems of analysis. Looked at purely from the perspective of message presentation, the multilingual sign text may trigger an expectation that the same information is to be conveyed by each language in the text. Yet this expectation is often violated. Reh (2004), for example, notes varying relationships among languages in multilingual signage, including (a) duplicating multilingual writing, which presents the same information in each language, (b) fragmentary multilingualism, where 'the full information is given only in one language, but in which selected parts have been translated into an additional language' (p. 10), (c) overlapping multilingual writing, which describes a unit of signage 'if only part of its information is reported in at least one more language, while other parts of the text are in one language only' (p. 12), and (d) complementary multilingual writing 'in which different parts of the overall information are each rendered in a different language' (p. 14). Backhaus (2007: 90-91) addresses this issue with a musical analogy, establishing a continuum from homophonic signage, which involves full translation between languages, to mixed writing involving partial mutual translation, polyphonic signage where two or more languages each convey different information in the same sign, and monophonic signage where only one language is used. Building on work which we have done in Japan (where we concentrate on signage using Japanese, English, and other European languages in the city of Fukuoka) and Ireland (focusing particularly on the use of Irish and English in the Galway region), we show initially that these two very different linguistic and cultural environments show similar variations in the degree of cross-linguistic referential equivalence commonly used in signage.

In our view, however, some important elements of plurilingual signage are not well accounted for by the analysis of message content and linguistic congruence alone. Using the semiotic notion of indexicality, we first note that writing systems themselves may point to shared knowledge that is independent of the ostensive meaning of the text. In the case of Japanese, which has three writing systems available to it, we suggest, for example, that the use of katakana (a syllable-based orthography generally used for loanwords) instead of an existing form in kanji (the

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pictographically-derived system based on Chinese orthography) can itself be significant. In Ireland, the use of English orthography to present words of Irish, or the use of an Irish-based writing system to write English, also creates linguistic hybrids that accomplish specific purposes by cross-linguistic reference that is not obvious from the ostensive message of the text. Moreover, we suggest that the division of labour between different languages in signage is not simply defined by content, but by decisions arising from language awareness to index concepts associated with particular languages. In Japanese material, English may be used to index modernity and internationalisation (see also Tanaka 1994), while in Ireland the use of Irish and Celticised visible English may index particular definitions of cultural authenticity. Pragmatic functions such as wordplay, politeness, and metaphorical reference, we argue, depend on the roles that different languages play in indexing the world beyond the sign text. By comparing these dynamics in linguistic landscapes in Japan and Ireland, we demonstrate ways in which translational asymmetries in signage generate meanings that are more than the sum of their parts.

Katz Mira-Lisa

(Associate Professor, English Education, English Department, Sonoma State University, US)

Moving Bodies as Linguistic Landscape: Dance as a Multimodal Form of Writing

Perhaps nowhere do we have greater ability to shape LL’s from the bottom-up than through dance, where actors contribute directly and collaboratively to the “symbolic construction of the public space” (Eliezer, Shohamy, Amara & Trumper-Hecht, 2006; Shohamy & Gorter, 2008). Studying the embodiment of linguistic tokens in the context of dance enhances our understanding of ‘landscape’ as both the physical object and its representation (Gorter, 2006). In particular, dance offers us a means of decentering language, allowing us to re-theorize it as multimodally encoded through combinations of speech, intonation, gesture, image and movement – integral parts of semiotic, person-to-person engagement (Finnegan, 2002, Mcneill, 2005; Noland & Ness, 2008; Sheets-Johnstone, 1998; Urciuoli, 1995). Based on a 5-year study of cognition, dance and identity, this presentation articulates a view of dance as written text in the public space by employing video data and interdisciplinary research to illustrate how dance is taught, learned and interpreted in out-of-school settings serving youth in one urban California community. The author argues for expanding notions of LL’s based on how they function in the public and private spaces of the young women and their dance teachers who participated in the study. Conceiving of bodies as integral and unique signs within the public sphere – canvases on and through which language is written spatially, gesturally and multimodally – extends our framework for understanding LL’s. Through these young women’s experiences we see how the range of expressive possibilities available far exceeds those found in many traditional school-based classrooms in critical ways. The multiple multimodal entry points for learning that regularly occur – simultaneous and overlapping uses of talk, vocalization, motion, physical touch, and gesture – complemented by the complex relationships between youth and caring adults in out-of-school contexts, co-create linguistic repertoires and opportunities that effectively support the risk-taking necessary to learn and grow as dancers and authors of LL’s.

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Kohn Ayelet

(Hadassah College Jerusalem and The David Yellin College, Israel)

Visual irony in Israeli political Photojournalism

The article attempts to look into diverse representations of irony in photojournalism as an expressive mode of criticizing loaded political situations. I will focus on photographs and their titles appearing in the public gallery of Israeli press.

If irony is 'a mode of speech in which the meaning is the contrary to the words ' to quote Dr. Johnson's known definition, we shall ask, Following Scott (2004): How can a photograph show the opposite meaning of its objects?

Discussion of irony in the Israeli political context reveals an interesting similarity: every photograph 'lies' and tells the truth simultaneously, and thus, much like irony, is conceived as opposites which perform mutually. The Israeli political situation might be described in the same way as a condition in which polar situations are conceived as an everyday existential mode which one has to understand and live with.

Adopting Sperber's idea of echoing mentions (1984), I will examine three aspects of irony in photographs created by two main Israeli photojournalists, Alex Levac and Pavel Wolberg.

1. The usage of iconography which derives its power from Israeli culture and collective memory, its scopic regime and its consequent representational power (Frosh; 2001).

2. The status of dominant issues of photojournalism such as the portrayal of suffering and terror when they are framed and represented by an ironical attitude towards political situations.

3. The methods in which the ironic "cross-eyed" look suggests a softer, humanistic and more complicated alternative to the rather limited option of the traditional political gaze, to expand Mulvey's term (1975, 1992).

Kurzon Dennis

(Department of English Language and Literature, University of Haifa, Israel)

Kosher Landscape

The paper deals with various ways that food stores, and especially restaurants and coffee-houses inform potential customers – outside above the entrance, on the window – that the establishment offers kosher food only, by certification of a local rabbinical body. The wording on the sign on the various establishments varies according to which one of a number of different bodies – from middle-of-the-road orthodox to ultra-orthodox – has issued the certificate to a specific establishment. Moreover, the wording may be in English (or the local language) or in Hebrew or in both.

A comparison will then be made between the kosher establishments, on the one hand, and restaurants, etc. that serve halal food for the local Muslim population, on the other.

The paper centres on three locations: London, Paris and Israel.

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Lamarre Patricia

(Centre d'études ethniques et Faculté des sciences de l'éducation, Université de Montréal, Canada)

Bilingual winks in the linguistic landscape of Montreal

Over the past ten years, I have become aware of a sly joke taking place in Quebec’s particular linguistic dynamic: more specifically, a growing number of commercial signs that are nothing less than bilingual winks in a linguistic landscape tightly circumscribed by law. Montreal is a city where, up until the late sixties, the language of business and economic mobility was English and this despite the demographic weight of French speakers. Following Quebec’s Quiet Revolution of the sixties, efforts were made to transform the linguistic context and the status of French speakers through language legistation. Quebec’s Charter of the French Language (1977) made French the language of Quebec’s public institutions, the workplace, schooling and of public life. Within the Charter there are also clauses which govern the use of French and other languages in public and commercial signage. These clauses represent a very conscious desire to give Montreal a more French «face» or «visage linguistique», thus sending an immediate and symbolic message to all on the new status of French (Bourhis, 2002). Legislation regulating the language of signs has been somewhat modified over time, but essentially, legislation in Quebec requires the use of French on public and commercial signage.

Since 1977, the linguistic landscape of Montreal has indeed been greatly transformed and in this respect, as in a number of other respects, Montreal is a more French city than it was just three decades ago. This said, Montreal is also a much more multilingual city than it was, for it is not only the linguistic landscape of Montreal that has changed over the past decades, but also the population of speakers who live within that landscape, as well as the languages they draw upon in their repertoires. In the late sixties, it was up to French speakers to learn English. Newcomers to Quebec were also more likely to learn English than French. The unidirectional form of bilingualism (Gendron, 1972) has disappeared and in Quebec today, the number of bilinguals and multilinguals, irrespective of their first language, is high and growing (Statistics Canada, 2006). Rather than creating a unilingual Quebec, the language charter has contributed to creating a more bilingual and multilingual context, one in which the status of French has been greatly improved.

As Bourhis (2002) notes, interest in the linguistic landscape originated in the field of language planning. However, it has since drawn on other fields (Dagenais et al, 2008) and the theoretical framework for approaching its study become more complex. Recently, Scollon and Scollon (2003) and Mondada (2000) have pushed the field beyond analysis of the messages and texts that surround us to a more careful examination of the dynamic underlying linguistic landscapes. Essentially, they propose that social actors not only respond to a linguistic landscape, but also are active participants in shaping it. We have also come to see the messages themselves with more complexity: Lucci (1998) , for example, proposes that texts have various meanings and overlapping functions, hence differing according to who observes them and how. Calvet (1994) brings in another dimension, proposing that the texts of cities are not easily accessible to all: texts are sometimes cryptic and aimed at an audience of readers who are culturally and linguistically able to decipher their meaning. While this is true in unilingual settings, looking at who can or can’t decipher a text becomes all the more potent in cities where bilingualism and multilingualism are major traits. Finally, Pennycook (2008) proposes that the language of signs can be understood as a form of style in multilingual urban settings marked by globalized transcultural flows. It is from this dynamic and critical theorization of linguistic landscape, in which readers of texts are also authors of texts and in which the texts themselves reflect stakes and power relations and serve as expressions of identity, that this study is approached.

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In the spring of 2008, a corpus of photos was created, catching specific examples of what I consider to be bilingual winks to the politics of language in Quebec and in particular to Quebec’s language charter. These winks are multifunctional. On one hand, they serve to announce services and commodities to an audience of readers but in such a way as that they can be understood in French by unilinguals, in English by another group of unilinguals, while for those who are bilingual in the audience, they are a wry bilingual joke. An example of this is a sign over a trendy shoe store in an English neighborhood which reads «Chou Chou», the French equivalent of «sweetiepie». Another example in the same neighbourhood is a small tea room with its sign «t & biscuits» which can be read either in English or in French or in both languages by those with the bilingual skills.

In this presentation, I will develop my argument that these bilingual signs, which seemingly respect the constraints of Quebec’s language charter while announcing goods and services, also represent a sly wink to an audience that is increasingly bilingual, as well as the expression of a new more complex linguistic identity in which bilingual skills are a trait and a major resource.

Lüdi Georges

(Institut für Franz. Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft / Institut d'Etudes françaises et francophones, Universität Basel, Switzerland)

Linguistic landscaping of an international company: the (lack of) influence of the local context

More than on the statistic results, we will focus on the dynamics of linguistic landscaping as a process. In a case study, we will first analyse separately the linguistic landscape in the company's campus and in the surrounding urban area. We will then question the role of contradictory factors (e.g. the company's corporate identity and the resulting language strategies, the local demography, the distribution of languages among the employees, the national and local language policies) on both processes of landscaping: how and how much does the local context determine the processes of landscaping in the company's campus? does the presence of a huge international company have an influence on the linguistic landscaping of the host city? This research is part of the European DYLAN project (www.dylan-project.org).

Malinowski David

(Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, US)

Riding the Google van: Transformed semiotic ecologies in the digitized linguistic cityscape

The advent of Google’s Street View mapping function in 2007, expanded use of GPS and other mobile navigation technologies, and the decentralized creation of multimedia, place-based online content within the Web 2.0 paradigm (O’Reilly, 2005) are among the recent technological changes that are having a profound impact on fundamental interrelationships of spatial, temporal, and social practice in urban settings (cf. Castells et al. 2006, Rheingold 2002). While the essentially political nature of online cartographic practices has been acknowledged (Crampton 2003), the transformative effects of our virtual interactions with the linguistic landscape upon our ‘real-world’ encounters with publicly visible material language have yet to be theorized. This chapter investigates these effects, suggesting that as urban navigation increasingly takes place online, the iconic and symbolic functions of the linguistic landscape may be left unchecked, a phenomenon with particularly

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pernicious consequences as disempowered languages find themselves commodified and manipulated in the service of global capital (cf. Leeman and Modan 2007).

Mettewie Laurence, Van Mensel Luk

(University of Namur (FUNDP), Belgium)

Linguistic landscapes in Belgium (2): Imperfect mirror images from Flanders and Wallonia

This presentation is the second of two presentations on the linguistic landscape in Belgium. While the first presentation by Janssens & Housen focuses on Brussels and its periphery, this presentation will compare LL in different places in Flanders, an officially monolingual Dutch region and Wallonia, an officially monolingual French region, hosting a German-speaking community in the East. Following a standard procedure in registering LL, both administrative and non-administrative public linguistic signs in different Flemish and Walloon cities were photographed and coded in terms of language use and dominance. Based on comparative analyses, we will first discuss general trends based on the results of cities in Flanders and Wallonia, in order to evaluate to what extent LL are dominantly monolingual as required by the language legislation. Second, we will focus on LL in (a) a couple of cities from right across the linguistic border or (b) situated in the German-speaking region. These specific situations illustrate how power relationships are negotiated along Belgium’s linguistic boarders, away from the epicentre discussed by Janssens and Housen. In each comparison we try to evaluate the impact on LL of historical, socio-economic and marketing factors on linguistic code choices evident in the LL, often challenging the legal framework on language use in Belgium.

Mor-Sommerfeld Aura

(The Jewish-Arab Centre & The Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, Israel)

LL in bilingual schools in Israel: language, politics and space

Over the last 25 years, a number of bilingual – Arabic-Hebrew – schools have been set up in Israel. Within a comprehensive approach, each school presents a new inter-cultural practice, proposing that bilingual education can work for Israel, challenge its reality and change it.

Obviously, bilingual education is not just about languages, and dealing with languages is not purely linguistic. Rather, it includes socio-cultural-political aspects, and in areas of conflict like Israel, those aspects become even more complex. In terms of the phenomenon of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew schools in Israel, these interwoven elements seem to present the essence of Linguistic Landscape as a political arena.

The aim of this paper is to examine how languages are exhibited in the public space in bilingual schools in terms of language and content as well, and to discuss how members of the schools' community (teachers, students, parents, policymakers) cope with this exhibition. The discussion relies on a set of ethnographic studies taken within bilingual schools in Israel over the last two years, analyzing issues of language and identity, politics and ideology, space and society.

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Päivikki Pietikäinen Sari

(Department of Languages, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland)

Systems of Sami language visibility in landscapes of Northern Finland

This paper focuses on the visibility and functions of indigenous Sami languages in the landscapes of Northern Finland. The point of departure of this paper is that language policies, ideologies and practices leave their imprint on the visible environment in North. In my paper, I want to discuss the forces and processes that have conspired to give Northern semiotic landscapes their particular characteristics and focus, in particularly, on uses and functions of indigenous Sami languages in this multilingual environment.

The geographical place that this paper focuses on is the Northern most tip of Scandinavia and North-East Russia, an area called Lapland, Finnmark, Samiland, Lapponia, and North-Calotte. It is a multilayered multilingual space, with rapidly changing economic, social and sociolinguistic profiles. Firstly, the region is part of the transnational Samiland (Sápmi) in which a number of indigenous languages are used by speakers across the borders between four nation states. All nine Sami languages are classified as endangered and have, at least to extent, some legal protection: The most dominant language is Northern Sami, with approximately 30,000 speakers, whereas other Sami languages have some 250 to 400 speakers each or even less. Secondly, the national languages of each nation state are also dominantly present in the North, for example, in the context of administration, education, media, business and everyday life. Thirdly, as the North is a popular destination for nature and Christmas tourism, several other languages - English, Russian, French, German, Italian, Japanese - are regularly used there in the context of tourist activities and services. Finally, as elsewhere, several foreign languages – particularly English - also have an access to the North via the media, youth and popular culture. To borrow Scollon and Scollon’s (2001, 2004) terminology, the semiotic landscapes in North can be seen as a nexus point where different languages as well as discourses and practices related to them collide and come together indexing and signifying wider processes and changes.

In the paper, I suggest that these various processes and developments result in a polycentric environment in which visibility and functions of different languages are organized around different, although interrelated logics and regimes. The polycentricity means that there are different, but interlinked and simultaneous layers and orders of visuality related to languages and cultures present in North, each contributing to value and function of a particular language and indexing wider social, political and economic processes taking place in the region. The case of the visibility of Sami language illustrate how the visibility of indigenous languages can stand simultaneously as a sign of minority language community activism and linguistic rights and for a branding of authenticity and originality for economic development in tourism.

Pavlenko Aneta

(Temple University, US)

Linguistic landscapes in Ukraine: Yesterday, today, tomorrow

In 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from the USSR and Ukrainian was proclaimed its only state language. The shift away from official Russian-Ukrainian bilingualism toward Ukrainian only took place in a variety of areas, from political forums and the media to secondary and higher education. And yet, almost two decades later, a traveler visiting Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, or Kharkiv and Odessa, two of its largest cities, would still see and hear Russian all around them. In

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the present paper, I will examine how this linguistic paradox of Ukraine is inscribed in its linguistic landscapes, using data from the fieldwork conducted in Ukraine in 2004 - 2008. I will also argue that to understand the symbolic functions of languages in multilingual landscapes one needs to undertake a diachronic approach, placing current language constellations and their contested meanings in a wider historic context.

Consistent with the proposed approach, I will begin by tracing the origins of the deep linguistic-territorial divide between the Russian East and the Ukrainian West (Reid, 1997; Snyder, 1999). I will show that in the beginning of the twentieth century the territories of the current Ukraine, divided between Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, comprised distinct sociolinguistic worlds. I will also show that the Soviet regime may have blurred some of the boundaries but did not completely erase the divide – as a consequence, in the East, Ukrainians lived in a predominantly Russian-speaking world, where Ukrainian often played a symbolic function, while in the West, Ukrainian functioned on a par with Russian, Polish, and Hungarian, including in linguistic landscapes.

Derussification measures taken post-1991 independence, once again changed the constellation of languages in Ukrainian linguistic landscapes, restoring Ukrainian to the dominant place and replacing Russian where possible with a new lingua franca, English.

The derussification has been particularly successful in official signage, such as building, street, and road signs. In contrast, commercial signs (e.g., shop signs, advertisements, billboards) and private signs (e.g., ads, graffiti) have emerged as areas of contestation of the current linguistic regime and of affirmation of a complex multilingual reality.

The phenomena discussed here include but are not limited to language change in public signage, language choice in different types of signage (official versus commercial, public versus private), order and presentation of various languages in multilingual signs, policing of language use in the public space via signs, and bivalency and hybridity of signs. Throughout, I will focus on ways in which “the display of language transmits symbolic messages as to the legitimacy, relevance, priority, and standards of languages and the people and groups they represent” (Shohamy, 2006: 110).

Rodríguez José M. Franco

(Assistant Professor of Spanish, Fayetteville State University, US)

Interpreting the Linguistic Traits of LLs as Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Globalization

This paper argues and aims to illustrate how a systematic linguistic analysis of LLs can provide the researcher with reliable knowledge of how ethnolinguistic forces work. The studies conducted on linguistic traits of bilingual cities in Los Angeles (California) and Miami-Dade (Florida) counties show the status of resistance and resilience of bilingual communities. However, this status is seemingly relative to the U.S. and to the specific context of languages in contact. Further research on this issue is therefore needed to frame and validate these findings. This paper compares and contrasts the results obtained from these two counties with those from a monolingual Spanish city. After a methodological analysis of the linguistic traits, the results are explained in terms of linguistic neutralization (i.e. adaptation to linguistic pressure) and ethnolinguistic resilience (i.e. social response to English as a global language and/or English as a language of higher prestige).

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Shakh Svitlana

(M.A Student, Master of European Linguistics, University of Freiburg, Germany)

The Study of the Linguistic Landscape in Ukraine: The Case of Kharkiv

This study examines the linguistic landscape in Kharkiv, the second-largest city of Ukraine. It compares the written use of languages on the signs in the central and peripheral localities of the city. The focus is on the context-dependent language choice between Ukrainian, the officially state language of the country, and Russian, the regional language of the study area. The observation that it is the Russian language that dominates the linguistic landscape in question supports the longestablished image of Kharkiv as a 'Pro-Russian' city. Moreover, the findings indicate discrepancies with regard to the use of the two languages in two different types of localities. It turns out that Ukrainian is significantly more visible on public and private signs in central Kharkiv, while Russian leads in the suburbs. The unequal distribution of the Ukrainian and Russian signs throughout the city suggests the twofold perception of the linguistic landscape as related to the national language policy on the one hand, and the regional language policy on the other hand.

Sloboda Marián

(Institute of Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic)

Behaviour towards public signs and the issue of power

This paper is inspired by David I. Hanauer’s question raised during a discussion at the Tel Aviv Linguistic Landscape Workshop. The question was: where does power have its place in the model of social actors’ treatment of public signs that I presented (the Jernudd’s and Neustupný’s model of language management applied to public signs)? In this presentation, I will try to show how power can be found realised in all the stages of the language management process, namely, stage 1 – “noting”, when linguistic landscape users note deviations from norms or, at least, from their expectations regarding certain signs, stage 2 – evaluating of the noted deviations, stage 3 – designing adjustment in order to eliminate the deviations, and stage 4 – implementation of the adjustment. As may become clear, the paper will focus mostly on the question of how power influences public signs. However, the reverse action of public sings (re)producing power should also be considered. The paper will also discuss an issue which is closely related to the language management of public signs, namely, the role of the specific physical as well as institutional conditions of the existence of public signs, that is, including the role of materiality, common knowledge, and resistance.

Trumper-Hecht Nira

(Kibbutzim College of Education Technology and the Arts, Israel)

LL in Mixed Cities in Israel from the Perspectives of ‘Walkers’: the case of Arabic

The present Linguistic Landscape study focuses on the visibility of Arabic as it is perceived by Arab and Jewish residents in three mixed cities in Israel: Nazareth Illit, Acre and Jaffa. Following a previous study which revealed the existence of differential LL patterns reflecting Israel's diverse ethno linguistic settings (Ben Rafael et al. 2006), the present paper presents and analyses the diverse

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perceptions, preferences and attitudes held by members of the two national groups regarding the visibility of national and immigrant languages in their city as well as in the country as a whole. Mixed cities (of which there are seven in Israel) present a unique opportunity to test the vulnerable relationships between the Jewish majority and the Arab indigenous minority through the linguistic landscape prism. Data was collected by phone questionnaires answered by 300 Jewish and Arab residents in Nazareth Illit, Acre and Jaffa.

This paper analyses the different ways in which Jews and Arabs relate to the linguistic landscape they experience and use in their everyday life as 'walkers' in their shared public space.

Waksman Shoshi, Shohamy Elana

(Levinsky college of Education and the Kibbuzim College of Education, Technology and Arts, Israel / Tel Aviv University, Israel)

The manifestation of multiple and competing narratives via the linguistic landscape: Tel Aviv-Jaffa approaching its centennial

Urban entities are constantly re-defining themselves through multiple ideologies, narratives and representations; these redefinitions gain visibility through diverse genres and representations of images, texts, sounds, motions, and spatial designs. In this paper we will focus on the multi layered space of the integrated city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa where diverse narratives are voiced via different forms of linguistic landscape representations. The multiple narratives of the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa include: a. Tel Aviv as 'the first Hebrew city' that 'emerged from the sands', where the city is contextualized as a major force in the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine; b. Tel Aviv as the 'White' city referring mainly to the UNESCO recognition of the city as a major site of the 'Bauhaus architecture; c. Tel Aviv as a vibrant, energetic city (i.e., the 'city that never stops'), contextualized within global urban spaces, viewed as detached and free of national ideologies; d. Tel Aviv as a city that symbolizes a colonial history of the state of Israel as voiced by various activist groups (e,g,, the 'zochrot' group) which aim at bringing back the history of the city and the existence of Arab life and vitality before and during the settlements of Jews in the area; e. Tel Aviv and its relationship with Jaffa, which formally is viewed as an equal component of this urban entity, and whose population in some neighborhoods is mostly Arabs. All these narratives are currently enhanced and amplified in this very time period of 2009, the centennial of the city. The nature of the relationship among and between these different narratives will be explored and described by interpretations of a representation of residences of the city via the different forms of LL. It will focus on the role of LL in this massive reconstruction, expansion, re-definitions, re-writing and marketing of the city via these different narratives.

Woldemariam Hirut, Lanza Elizabeth

(Department of Linguistics, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia / Department of Linguistics, University of Oslo, Norway)

Language contact in the linguistic landscape: The case of Ethiopia

Studying the linguistic landscape is a fruitful approach to investigating the sociolinguistic status of languages in multilingual societies. Few studies, however, have specifically addressed the issue of language contact in the linguistic landscape. In this paper, we explore the linguistic landscape of three different regions in Ethiopia to provide an analysis of language contact that takes place

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between local languages and Amharic, the national working language. In many cases the linguistic landscape in different regions of Ethiopia shows the dominance and influence of Amharic over the regional languages. In Ethiopia, since 1991, a new language policy has been enacted in which regional administrations have been officially assigned to take formal and practical responsibilities for running their own affairs including language development. Regional languages have been promoted to being used for primary education and other public affairs. As a result, languages other than Amharic have become visible in the linguistic landscape of the respective regions. However, it becomes evident that local languages used in signboards tend to exhibit grammatical features of Amharic, not found in the local spoken language. In such signboards, local languages are calqued on the grammatical structure of Amharic. It appears that certain grammatical properties of Amharic have been considered as standard ones to be employed in the transition to literacy in the local languages. For instance, Tigrinya and Amharic, both Semitic languages, follow different word orders in their noun phrase structures. While NPs in Tigrinya are left-headed, their counterparts in Amharic are right-headed. The dominance of Amharic in the public sphere remains - not only through the surface use of Amharic on signboards but also indirectly through the imposition of a grammatical framework from Amharic. A similar situation of language dominance and language contact is also exhibited in textbooks, radio and television programs prepared in local languages. The study is mainly based on data collected from three regions: Tigray, Oromiya and SNNP regions of the country, where Amharic is also in contact with other non-Semitic languages. The results from the linguistic landscape study will be discussed in the light of language ideology and literacy practices in Ethiopia.

Yamashita Akemi

(Meikai University, Japan)

The Linguistic Landscape of the new born Nikkei-Brazilian town in Japan

The aim of this study is to make characteristics of the linguistic landscape of three cities clear and what kinds of factors make the difference concerning the linguistic landscape. The Nikkei-Brazilian people (Japanese Brazilian) has 100 years of history of immigrants in Brazil and the population is 1.5million. The 5th or 6th generation are growing up.From 1980th they began to return to Japan to work and the number of Nikkei-Brazilian living in Japan counts more than 300.000 peoples. They organize Brazilian city in Japan, such as Gunma, Shizuoka, Shiga etc. I will compare the linguistic landscape of these three areas and analysis what kinds of factors make the difference to the linguistic landscape.

Zabrodskaja Anastassia

(Tallinn University, Estonia)

Linguistic Landscape in Post-Soviet Estonia: Linguamosaic of Russian, Estonian, English and Finnish

In this paper I will analyze the corpus of multilingual (shop) signs and local newspaper advertisements collected since 1998 (signs have been recorded digitally since 2006). The database is divided into three sub-corpora according to the three linguistic environments (see Ü. Rannut 2005). Regional variation plays an important role in language attitudes of Russian-speakers towards Estonian, in the Estonian language use in signs etc: while Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is bilingual, North East is predominantly Russian and the rest part of Estonia is predominantly

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Estonian. I have been collecting my data in Tallinn, North-Eastern towns (Kohtla-Järve, Jõhvi, Sillamäe and Narva) and Southern Estonia (Tartu, Viljandi and Pärnu). It will be shown how four languages are combined in multilingual signs: if in Tallinn the use of Finnish is stimulated by a great number of Finnish tourists, then Finnish is missed totally among the collected signs from North-Eastern and Southern Estonia. While Russian is contained on 92% of (bilingual) North-Eastern sample, 73% of Southern items do not contain Russian at all. In the latter information is given in monolingual Estonian or in Estonian with some translations into English and Russian.

Analyzing data on macro-level, I will touch upon remarkable features of particular images, paying attention to ortography of multilingual signs. Sometimes it is the combination of two monolingual grammars or graphic representations. Quite seldom trilingual phrases can be found on a sign. The Estonian Language is a Finno-Ugric language that is an agglutinating inflectional SVO language with a highly morphology. The Russian Language is an Indo-European fusional language and has a developed inflectional morphology as well but to a lesser extent than Estonian. Thus, as far as morphology in Estonian-Russian bilingual signs is concerned, the primary attention is to be given to compromise forms and new creations. Rarely but it is occurs that a code-switched word does not belong to Russian or Estonian monolingual grammar.

What makes this corpus particularly interesting is the context in which it arose, namely the turbulent transition from Soviet to post-Soviet independent Estonia, a country with a population of 1.345 million people (Statistical Office of Estonia). When Estonia became independent in 1991, Estonian became the single official language. Most of non-Estonians residing in Estonia are second generation settlers and their families who came to live here after World War II during the period of Soviet occupation — as late as 1945 Estonians formed more than 97% of the population. During the Soviet occupation, the percentage of Russians was constantly on the increase and reached 30.3 % according to the last Soviet census of 1989. Knowledge of the Estonian language among non-Estonian native speakers has increased from 14% in 1989 to 44% in 2000, according to 2000 Population and Housing Census data. Due to the fact that the migration of Russian-speakers was a part and parcel of demographic and language policy of the Soviet authorities, the Soviet-time newcomers and their descendents could be better described as colonizers (Ozolins 2002). In contemporary Estonia Russians constitute 25.7% from the total population. Estonians comprise the bulk of the country’s population — 68.6% (see Verschik 2005 on language situation in Estonia). Thus, Russian is a language widely spoken in Estonia nowadays and has recently become influenced by Estonian, the official language.

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