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Drive-thru linguistic landscaping: Constructing a linguistically dominant place in a bilingual space

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Author

  • Francis Hult

Summary, in English

Despite the rich societal multilingualism of the United States, the ideological construction of English dominance continues to cast a shadow over other languages. Among the mechanisms that contribute to this state of affairs (e.g. educational policy and conservative language activism), visual language use in public spaces plays a salient role. A growing body of linguistic landscape research highlights the centrality of visual environments in the discursive construction of multilingual settings. Drawing upon nexus analysis together with principles of geosemiotics, the present study explores the discursive processes through which a particular image of San Antonio’s linguistic sense of place, one of English dominance despite its demographic bilingualism, is constructed. Visual data were collected on San Antonio’s highway system, an extensive network that traverses the city and is lined with billboard signs and commercial establishments. Data analysis shows that a confluence of (trans)national, cultural and economic discourses mediates language choices on signs. English is normalized as an unmarked language for all aspects of the linguistic landscape, reproducing national language ideologies about the status of English in the United States. Spanish, in turn, is associated with transnational migration as well as limited community and family domains.

Department/s

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

507-523

Publication/Series

International Journal of Bilingualism

Volume

18

Issue

5

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Keywords

  • discourse analysis
  • English
  • linguistic landscape
  • Spanish
  • societal bilingualism
  • visual semiotics

Status

Published

Research group

  • Language, Cognition and Discourse@Lund (LCD@L)

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1367-0069