Double Language Inscriptions in Public Space

Authors:

Pages: 147-157
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/NIVS4203

Abstract:

The necessity to use languages different from the local one emerges in response to the conditions of living in a globalising world, characterised by different forms of mobility, superdiversity, and electronic communications. The author focuses on two types of double language inscriptions in public space – mirror images and translanguaged (mixed) inscriptions. The paper is the product of a five year ethnographic research in the local cityscape of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. The research was carried out in the theoretical framework of Linguistic Landscaping Studies, a new branch of sociolinguistics. The two types of double language writing (Bulgarian and English) manifest two different types of literacies – writing according to the elite forms of literacy and grassroots writing. While public signs of the mirror image type foreground the informative function of public signs, grassroots writing relies on the symbolic use of the foreign language and leads to the production of richly associative hybrid uses in public inscriptions.

Keywords:

language landscape, bilingual inscriptions, mixed writing, literacy

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