城市语言景观研究——以长春为例

论文总字数：35316字

摘 要

本文研究对象是长春市的语言景观现状。语言景观研究具有非常重要的现实意义。语言景观是了解一个地区的语言生态环境的有效途径。语言景观中的语言标牌具有多种功能。首先，语言标牌具有信息功能，它可以为他人传递有效信息。其次，语言标牌具有象征意义。官方语言标牌与私人语言标牌对语言种类的选择上所考虑的不同因素。多语言标牌通过不同语言的排列顺序、字体自号、颜色可见设计者对语言选择的主次之分。本文同时探讨标牌设计者在设计标牌时是否考虑到经济因素，语言是否能产生经济效益、标牌设计者如何通过多语言获利。

通过在长春市五个城区内十条街道实地考察、拍照取证的方式,获取了1314个语言标牌样本的数据。通过列举表格数据分析的方法了解长春市语言景观的现状。列举完长春语言现状的概况和特点后，主要分析长春语言景观的语言种类和官方标牌及私人标牌在语言选择上的区别，并借助语言经济学理论分析其背后原因。

本文得出的主要结论为：汉语为长春地区的优势语言，英语是出现次数最多的外来语言。私人标牌的语言种类比官方标牌更加丰富。在多语标牌中，汉英双语是最常见的组合。随着国际贸易的往来，日语、韩语等语种也在街道上有体现，体现了城市的包容性。

最后本文从语言的宏观制定与规划、内容的准确合理性与语言需求的多维性几个方面对城市的语言景观建设提出合理性建议。

关键词：语言景观；多语制；语言经济学

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i

Abstract ii

摘要 iii

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Significance of the Research 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

1.3 Thesis Structure 3

Chapter Two Linguistic Landscape in Changchun 5

2.1 Methodology and data collection 5

2.2 Multilingualism in Changchun 6

2.3 A comparison between official signs and unofficial signs 7

Chapter Three Data Analysis 8

3.1 Analysis of official versus unofficial signs 8

3.1.1 Official versus unofficial signs 8

3.1.2 Power and the Symbolistic function 9

3.2 Commercial value of language 10

3.2.1 Official signs 10

3.2.2 Unofficial signs 10

Chapter Four Conclusion and Suggestion 13

4.1 Multidimensional linguistic landscape 13

4.2 Accuracy and rationality of content setting 13

4.3 Scientific language planning 14

Reference 15

Appendix 1 17

Chapter One Introduction

• 1. Significance of the Research

The linguistic landscape has been a research hotspot in sociology, linguistics, geography, social psychology and even economics in recent decades. In 1997, Landry and Bourhis first defined the concept of "linguistic landscape" as: linguistic landscape refers to the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region. The study of linguistic landscape focuses on the usage of language in a certain area or urban public space, which includes not only the characteristics of linguistic performance, such as syntactic structure, vocabulary selection or translation skills. The more important is the linguistic landscape reflects a deeper meaning through the choice of language, like urban language planning, government political orientation, national language vitality, language economic benefits as well as other deeper issues.

As for the study of urban linguistic landscape, most domestic scholars focus on international metropolises such as Beijing, Shanghai or Hongkong. With the impact of globalization and China's "The Belt and Road" initiative, these cosmopolitan cities have a high immigration rate, frequent international trade, and prominent language diversity, which are helpful for scholars to investigate the urban language planning issues behind linguistic landscapes as well as the value and status of other languages. A small minority of other scholars put their research sites in the living areas of ethnic minorities in China, such as “yi” language research in Xichang (Nie Peng 2017), Dongba language (Li lLsheng 2017), an endangered language in Lijiang. They have investigated the local ethnic language vitality and cultural heritage by the data analysis of the linguistic landscape. In this paper, the research location is set in second-tier city: Changchun, in order to study the inguistic landscape of common cities in China and the reasons behind the multi-language selection in monolingual countries (the only official language of China is Chinese) from the perspectives of government language planning and language economics.

• 1. Literature Review

Since the 1970s, the research of linguistic landscape in urban areas has attracted extensive attention in the west. Canadian scholars Rodrigue and y.bourhis (1997) first introduced the concept of "linguistic landscape" and defined it as the language appearing on road signs, names of sites, streets, buildings, places, and institutions as well as advertising billboards, commercial shop signs and even personal visiting cards. In 2006, Gortor believed that the definition of the linguistic landscape by scholars Rodrigue and y.bourhis was limited. The linguistic landscape is not only the linguistic phenomenon of public space or public signs but also the text of the linguistic landscape in private space, such as sound, clothing as well as moving objects like buses or taxi.

With regard to the selection of urban linguistic landscape samples, scholar Huebner (2006) took samples from 15 streets in downtown Bangkok to demonstrate the multilingual linguistic landscape of the streets, and mainly discussed the influence of English development on Thai language system from the aspects of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and pronunciation. Backhaus (2006) investigated 28 streets in the central district of Tokyo and analyzed the different reasons for the language selection of official signs and private signs from three perspectives, including language types, the direction of translation together with power and solidarity. Ben-rafeal (2006) compared the linguistic landscapes of Israel and parts of east Jerusalem, with the focus on Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and conducted surveys in several urban areas and the commercial districts of towns and main public institutions to analyze the interplay of ethnic integration in different regions.

When the linguistic landscape has become a research hotspot in foreign countries, it also attracted the attention of researchers in China. The main research areas are the theoretical construction of the linguistic landscape, the translation of the linguistic landscape and the methodology of the urban linguistic landscape. Shang Guowen and Zhao Shouhui (2014) summarized and analyzed the theoretical research on the western linguistic landscape, and sorted out two theoretical frameworks, namely place semiotics and SPEAKING theory. Mee Ling Lai (2012) investigated the local language status 12 years after the recovery of Hong Kong's sovereignty through field investigation and photo forensics. Her forensics method recorded all language signs on the roadside by selecting two streets, one commercial street and one residential street in each administrative region of Hong Kong. Later, Zhang Yuanyuan's (2016) survey on Macao language landscape and Yuan Yuan's (2018) survey on Beijing language landscape adopted the same method for the selection of target samples' geographical location.

The phenomenon of multilingualism is very obvious in China. In modern society with economic globalization and cultural diversity, there are various reasons for multilingualism. Durk Gorter (2006) first proposed that the linguistic landscape is a new method to investigate multilingual phenomena. Wu Huijuan (2016) believes that language on signs reveals social standard and power, that is, the social class with specific power and status takes advantage of the educational function of sign language to maintain its interests or transmit values. Shang Guowen (2016) analyzed the status quo of the multilingual landscape of xinmatai and discussed the economic drivers of its linguistic landscape development from the perspective of linguistic economics.

• 1. Thesis Structure

This thesis is presented in 4 chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction of Linguistic Landscape and an overview of the literature review. It includes the methodology of Linguistic Landscape in different cities for different reasons, like city planning, multilingualism, cultural heritage as well as economic benefit, etc.

Chapter two exhibits the linguistic situation in Changchun, beginning from the methodology used in this study and several rules of data collection. The methodology part also describes, discusses and justifies the research method and explains the procedures used to collect the data, including how to select the suitable sites and appropriate samples. Following this, several tables will be presented to show the data.

In chapter three, the data are discussed and the analysis will be presented. The first analysis is the comparison between the language selection in official signs and unofficial signs. Then by showing the multilingualism of private signs, the economic value of language will be discussed.

Finally, several suggestions will be given for the construction of urban linguistic landscape and a better language environment.

Chapter Two Linguistic Landscape in Changchun

2.1 Methodology and Data collection

Three points were seriously considered before data collection: a limited area to collect data; a clear determination to choose objects; several standards to distinguish the multilingual signs and monolingual signs. For the selection of survey areas, this paper uses Li minglei's survey method in Macao for reference. Ten streets are selected in the five districts of Changchun, with one commercial street and one residential street in each district.

There are several principles for the target samples: 1. Only the signs on the first floor of the street are selected. Signage on the second floor or underground area is not included in the study. 2. Suggestive signs are not recorded, including “push” or “pull” on door handles or business hours and so on. 3. Only the fixed language landscapes are collected. Other mobile language landscapes appearing on vehicles or commodities are not included in the samples. Language landscapes appearing on temporary buildings such as newsstands, telephone booths, and information kiosks are not included in the samples, such as posters or leaflets.

Classification of selected samples shall be recorded by language, region, official or private purpose. As for the distinction between official signs and private signs, according to a breakdown by Rodrigue and y.bourhis (1997): the official sign, also known Top-down linguistic landscape, refers to the sign set up by the government to represent the position and its behavior, such as road signs, traffic signs, etc. Private language signs refer to the signs used by individuals or enterprises to publicize and introduce business information, such as shop names, posters, also known as the bottom-up linguistic landscape. The official language signs in this paper are mainly consisted by the road signs, street names, signs on public toilets, parking lots and other public institutions or facilities like banks or schools in the core streets. There are 205 official signs. A total of 1,109 private language landscapes were collected include shops, restaurants or hotels. There were 1314 cases of landscape texts in two classifications.

2.2 Multilingualism in Changchun

Within the 10 survey areas, a total of 1314 signs were counted, of which 290 were classified as multilingual. This amounts to a ratio of 22.1% multilingual signs in total，most of them are from commercial streets. Including Chinese, there are 8 languages counted in the survey. It can be seen from table 2 that the language structure in Changchun is complex. Except for Chinese, other 7 language resources are English, Korean, Japanese, French, Italian, Arabic and Swedish. Chinese is the most widely used language in Changchun. 99.5% official language signs were in Chinese, while in private signs, Chinese signs appeared 970 times, accounting for 91.3 percent. It mainly because of Chinese as the only official language and spoken language, the language itself has the advantage of high popularity and vast users, therefore Chinese is the power language in Changchun. As Rafael demonstrated in investigating the language use of the Jewish community "language of the dominated populations naturally is the dominant language in LL items”; At the same time, the absolute advantage of Chinese also reflects that, while the globalization of English has a great impact on the language landscape, Chinese still has an absolute position in second-tier cities in China.

Apart from Chinese, English is the most frequently used language. Among all the language signs, there are 337 signs containing English, accounting for 25.6% of the total number. English signs make up 66% of official language signs, 18.2% of private signage. Whether in official signs or private signs, English has obvious advantages over other languages. As the international language in today's world, English enjoys a semi-official status in many countries and regions (Moody, 2008). The reason lies in that with the internationalization of Changchun, foreign trade is becoming larger and larger. As the world's lingua franca, English enters Chinese secondary cities with the flow of global population. Language, as a kind of capital, has differences in value. With the same investment of time and money, English with a higher value can help users to obtain greater benefits. It is precise because of the difference in the value of language resources that English‘s influence appears to be increasing.

Other tiny languages, Korean (1.83%) comes up more than other languages, mainly because Changchun is adjacent to Yanji, a city across the sea from North Korea, and has many ethnic Koreans. Next are French and Arabic, which accounted for the sum of the total sample of 0.76% and 0.68% respectively. Arabic is the official language of one minority in China whose restaurants are dotted around the country. Japanese, Swiss and Italian only appear 5 times, once and once respectively, which are almost the language in brands of each country’s chains.

2.3 A comparison between official signs and unofficial signs

According to previous studies on the linguistic landscape, most signs are divided into two categories: official signs and private signs. As can be seen from table 3, the linguistic diversity of private signs is greater than that of official signs. The official language signs only contain Chinese and English. In fact, I found some Japanese signs in some tourist attractions during the investigation, but the interpretation information of scenic spots was not included in the scope of this study, so it was not reflected in the data. The constructors of official signs mainly represent the ideology of the government or public institutions and are mostly used by the government to provide equivalent information for community residents. However, the construction of private language signs follows the principle of selfhood and shows their advantages. The private sign users wish to choose the most distinctive elements in sign language or symbol, through the use of different kinds of language provides different information, showing their identity and at the same time in order to attract potential congeners.

According to the statistics of language signs in several commercial centers and tourism centers in Changchun, the total number of private signs is significantly higher than that of official signs. In the official language signs, the proportion of bilingual signs in English and Chinese is very high, accounting for 66.3%, while the proportion of bilingual signs in private signs is only 20%. However, in the statistics of bilingual signs in China, Japan, and South Korea, the proportion of private signs is higher than that of official signs. As for the statistics of the pure foreign language signs are all private signs.

Chapter Three Data Analysis

3.1 Analysis of official versus unofficial signs

3.1.1 Official versus unofficial signs

Official signage is a kind of language signage built by the government or relevant institutions in public space, aiming to provide language service in space for the public. Official signs include place-names, road signs, warning signs and language signs on buildings owned by banks or schools. Most of these signs are in English and Chinese. It is worth noting that most of the monolingual Chinese official signs are annotated with Chinese pinyin. And some urban infrastructure in the center of the city, such as garbage cans are traditional Chinese monolingual signs. In the survey, some official signs in tourist attractions were mixed in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean and other languages. On the one hand, it is a means to attract tourists from all over the world. On the other hand, it is also a way to express power. For example, all the signs in the puppet Manchukuo government established by Japan in Changchun are Chinese, English and Japanese. Japanese use their official language for showing the power and cultural aggression. Through the general official signs, Chinese is the dominant language. The font size, location are reflected their dominant position with the local language policy advantage.

Private signage, due to its commercial characteristics, is unofficial from the bottom up, with more flexible forms and richer languages, and a high proportion of bilingual and multilingual signs. From the perspective of design philosophy, on the one hand, it reflects the needs of life service in the population concentration area; on the other hand, it also reflects that Changchun participates in international employment and embraces the advancement of language policies in the process of globalized economic lifestyle. The design of private signage is diversified and personalized in terms of language, font, color, and layout. Through the survey, catering signs accounted for the majority of private signs. And in the language order of multi-language signs, Chinese is not necessarily in the dominant position. Korean restaurant or French restaurant, Korean or French instead of Chinese is the largest font, in the most prominent position.

3.1.2 Power and the Symbolistic function

The linguistic landscape itself has two functions: information function and symbolic function. Information function means that the linguistic landscape can provide information. This is the most basic and dominant function of the linguistic landscape, and the precondition of language itself. Symbolic function means that the linguistic landscape can reflect linguistic power and social status. This is the hidden function of the linguistic landscape. In the study of language signage, it is not only necessary to investigate the characteristics and rules of language usage in the real environment, but more important to explore the underlying policy orientation, power, identity and other issues behind language selection.

The most dominant character is the variety of language. While the private signs contain no less than 8 languages in total, the appearance of languages other than Chinese on official language signs is strictly restricted. In most of the places in Changchun, Chinese and English are the only two languages considered eligible to public. Also, the display of language between Chinese and English are different. Chinese is always the most eye-catching. their font, color, position are more prominent. However, English is often written under Chinese and their size is small. The hierarchy of languages is at the same time an expression of power relations. (Backhaus) It can be seen from the language signs that Chinese is the dominant language used by the ruling class in Changchun.

Meanwhile, the research results of private signage show that the symbolic function of multilingual signage is much larger than the information function. Shops put signs or advertisements in English or other languages, mainly to pursue fashion and convey a global value. At the same time, there are problems in the translation of English signs. For example, a men's clothing store named "男人衣柜" translates into "MAN REN YI GUI", which weakens the information function of English signs. The symbolic function is more prominent.

3.2 Commercial value of language

3.2.1 Official signs

Language has commercial value. And the linguistic landscape, as a resource, also has commercial value. Language landscape builders can gain benefits by investing money and energy. No matter what kind of investment, people must calculate the size of cost and profit. When the investor invested time, material costs are higher than the profit, such investment behavior is failing and irrational; On the contrary, if an investor pays a small cost but can get a fairly high cost of benefits, the investment behavior is more beneficial than harmful, and it is a successful investment behavior.

The use of linguistic landscape is actually an investment behavior. This section, from the perspective of linguistic economics, discusses the linguistic landscape of Changchun city as an investment behavior, and interprets the relationship between costs and benefits of language signage in a multilingual environment. The cost of investment of linguistic landscape mainly refers to energy, time and money, while the profit is the promotion of product information, attracting target customers and informing equivalent information.

Official language signs in Changchun are monolingual in Chinese and bilingual in English and Chinese. The main purpose of official signs such as warning signs, billboards is to convey information. In 1983, 15 public information graphic symbols are promulgated by the National graphic symbol standardization technical committee, new ninth Logos are added to use in the public. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the establishment of uniform language signs in other to develop government authority and inform the public. Although official signs reflect the country's ideology and image, they also follow the principle of cost and benefit. For example, the choice of English and Chinese on the official language signs is because these two languages have the largest social output value and the lowest input cost.

3.2.2 Unofficial signs

Unlike the official language signs, private language signage seeks greater economic benefits beyond the basic benefits of "telling the story." They are more willing to invest more time, energy and money in the designing of logo, modeling, language selection, color, font and other aspects of language signage, and make reasonable resource allocation of these cost elements to maximize the benefits. Through the observation of private signs in Changchun, the vast majority of merchants will choose the language signs that match their products or corporate culture. They pursue the uniqueness and novelty of their own language signs. In flower shop, merchants designed the shape of language signs and adopt the appearance of the signs in leaves or flowers. In jewelry sales, merchants are accustomed to using LED lights to decorate their language signs, creating a luxurious atmosphere and improving the quality and taste of their products. Most of the language signs in the commercial street area are driven by commercial interests. The language landscape builders use distinctive language signs to form an advertisment-like publicity effect and guide the consumption behavior of potential audiences, so as to create positive economic benefits for themselves. The multilingual signs also reflect its economic effect. Using two or more languages at the same time on the language label can promote the product in the largest range and expand the range of potential customers. Although the provision of multiple languages means greater investment in production and translation for the language landscape builders, the diversification of language supply can meet the needs of different consumer groups and create greater economic value.

As a kind of resource, the linguistic landscape has remarkable market value and benefits. The construction of the linguistic landscape in society always brings social and economic benefits directly or indirectly to the builders and space. The linguistic landscape is also an important part of urban language and culture construction. At the same time, the harmonious and healthy development ofthe linguistic landscape is bound to have a hugely positive effect on the whole society. However, the situation of language landscape use in Changchun is not always optimistic, and there are still many problems, such as code inequality, non-standard language use, translation mistakes and other phenomena.

The construction of a harmonious and healthy language landscape environment in Changchun city is conducive to the improvement of language services and language features in the region, so as to better meet the needs of the market. To achieve the smooth construction of a good linguistic landscape environment requires the full cooperation of the whole social groups. The government continues to increase the support of scientific language policy. Merchants recognize their own advantages and disadvantages, so as to make full use of the advantages and avoid the disadvantages.

Chapter Four Conclusion and Suggestion

In this paper, I have investigated the Linguistic Landscape in Changchun. I have identified the major difference between official signs and private signs in terms of power and symbolism. Also, the commercial value of language signs has been interpreted. Several suggestions will be listed in the final part.

4.1 Multidimensional linguistic landscape

In addition to the skillful interpretation of most signs by local residents, there are also a large number of consumers who use Manchu dialects, minority languages and languages of other countries. Multidimensional language usage naturally puts higher requirements for the language use of landscape language texts in this region. Therefore, in addition to providing Chinese signs, for those shops or institutions which are directly facing a certain target, more target countries' languages need to appear when constructing the language landscape.

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