Article published In:
Linguistic LandscapeVol. 2:1 (2016) ► pp.26–51
Theorizing mobility in semiotic landscapes
Evidence from South Texas and Central Java
This study theorizes connections between semiotic resources and mobility in public displays of language with reference to data from Brownsville, Texas and Betultujuh, Central Java. From an ethnographic perspective, the paper explores the relation of public signage to the mobility of human beings and the mobility of texts in space and time. The semiotic landscape of Brownsville reflects a stratified sociolinguistic space shaped by a history of contact between English and Spanish and the continuing movement of people, goods, and texts across the U.S.-Mexico border. In Betultujuh, by contrast, a semiotic landscape characterized by indeterminacy, amid the influence of national language ideologies and globalizing English, shows evidence of a cultural shift mediated by the circulation of material artifacts and features of language. Based on these analyses, it is argued that porous borders between languages are tied to the mobility of people, texts, and things in a globalizing world.
References (56)
Ager, S. (2015). Javanese alphabet (carakan). Retrieved September 7, 2015 from [URL]
American FactFinder. (2014). U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved October 17, 2014 from [URL].
American Pillo Spring Bed. (2014). Retrieved August 12, 2014 from [URL].
Apsara Gallery. (2015). Languages, scripts, transliteration and pronunciation. Retrieved September 07, 2015 from [URL]
BAPPEDA (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah). (2010). Profil Daerah Kota Salatiga. Retrieved March 29, 2013 from [URL].
Google Translate. (2014). Accessed routinely for this research project at [URL].
Kamusjawa.info. (n.d.). Accessed routinely for this research project at [URL].
KBBI (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia). (2008). Retrieved August 12, 2014 from [URL].
Mongosilakan. (2012). Accessed routinely for this research project at [URL].
Agha, A. (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 38–59. 
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 7–30.
Bever, O. (2012). Linguistic landscapes and environmental print as a resource for language and literacy development in multilingual contexts. In M. Sanz & J. Igoa (Eds.), Applying language science to language pedagogy: Contributions of linguistics and psycholinguistics to second language teaching (pp. 321–341). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
Bhatia, V.K., Flowerdew, J., & Jones, R.H. (2008). Mediated discourse analysis. In V.K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew, & R.H. Jones (Eds.), Advances in discourse studies (pp. 229–232). London: Routledge.
Blommaert, J. (2003). Commentary: A sociolinguistics of globalization. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4), 607–623.
. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. New York: Cambridge University Press.
. (2013). Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity. Tonawanda, NY: Multilingual Matters.
Blommaert, J., Collins, J. & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Polycentricity and interactional regimes in “global neighborhoods”. Ethnography, 6(2), 205–235.
Blommaert, J., Muyllaert, N., Huysmans, M., & Dyers, C. (2005). Peripheral normativity: Literacy and the production of locality in a South African township school. Linguistics and Education, 161, 378–403.
Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 71(1), 14–25.
Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2007). Reading shop windows in globalized neighborhoods: Multilingual literacy practices and indexicality. Journal of Literacy Research, 39(3), 335–356.
Dardjowidjojo, S. (1998). Strategies for a successful national language policy: The Indonesian case. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1301, 35–47.
Eckert, P. (2008). Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(4), 453–476.
Errington, J. (1998). Shifting languages: Interaction and identity in Javanese Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gal, S., & Irvine, J. (1995). The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research, 62(4), 967–1001.
Gorter, D., & Cenoz, J. (2015). Translanguaging and linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1/2), 54–74.
Heryanto, A. (1995). Language of development and development of language: The case of Indonesia. Pacific Linguistics, Series D: The Australian National University.
Jaworski, A. (2014). Mobile language in mobile places. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(5), 524–533.
Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2010). Introducing semiotic landscapes. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space (pp. 1–40). London and New York: Continuum.
Kallen, J., & Ní Dhonnacha, E. (2010). Language and inter-language in urban Irish and Japanese linguistic landscapes. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni (Eds.), Linguistic landscape in the city (pp. 19–36). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Kitamura, Y. (2012). Chinese in the linguistic landscape of Jakarta: Language use and signs of change. In K. Foulcher, M. Moriyama, & M. Budiman (Eds.), Words in motion: Language and discourse in post-New Order Indonesia (pp. 212–233). Singapore: NUS Press.
Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
Kroon, S., Dong, J., & Blommaert, J. (2011). Truly moving texts. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, Paper 3.
Laihonen, P., & Szabó, T.P. (In press). Investigating visual practices in educational settings: Schoolscapes, language ideologies and organizational cultures. In M. Martin-Jones & D. Martin (Eds.), Researching multilingualism: Critical and ethnographic approaches. London: Routledge.
Lamarre, P. (2014). Bilingual winks and bilingual wordplay in Montreal’s linguistic landscape. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2281, 131–151.
LePage, R. & Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of Identity: Creole-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Myers-Scotton, C. (2001). The matrix language frame model: Developments and responses. In R. Jacobson (Ed.), Codeswitching worldwide II (pp. 23–58). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Park, J. (2014). Cartographies of language: Making sense of mobility among Korean transmigrants in Singapore. Language & Communication, 391, 83–91.
Pavlenko, A., & Mullen, A. (2015). Why diachronicity matters in the study of linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1/2), 114–132.
Pennycook, A. (2007). The myth of English as an international language. In S. Makoni & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Disinventing and reconstituting languages (pp. 90–115). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2014). Metrolingual multitasking and spatial repertoires: ‘Pizza mo two minutes coming’. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18(2), 161–184.
Reh, M. (2004). Multilingual writing: A reader-oriented typology with examples from Lira Municipality (Uganda). International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1701, 1–41.
Ricklefs, M.C. (2008) A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200. 4th ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Scollon, R., & Wong Scollon, S. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. New York: Routledge.
. (2004). Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging Internet. New York: Routledge.
Sebba, M. (2010). Discourses in transit. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space (pp. 59–76). London and New York: Continuum.
Shohamy, E. (2006). Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. New York: Routledge.
Siegel, J.T. (1986). Solo in the New Order: Language and hierarchy in an Indonesian city. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Silverstein, M. (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language & Communication, 23(3-4), 193–229.
Spolsky, B. (2009). Prolegomena to a sociolinguistic theory of public signage. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 25–39). London: Routledge.
Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S. (2009). Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism, mobility and space in a South African township. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 363–386.
Warriner, D., & Wyman, L. (2013). Experiences of simultaneity in complex linguistic ecologies: Implications for theory, method, and practice. International Multilingual Research Journal, 71, 1–14.
Woolard, K. (1998). Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Lingustic Anthropology, 8(1), 3–29.
Woolard, K., & Genovese, E.N. (2007). Strategic bivalency in Latin and Spanish in early modern Spain. Language in Society, 361, 487–509.
Zentz, L. (2015a). ‘Is English also the place where I belong?’: Linguistic biographies and expanding communicative repertoires in Central Java. International Journal of Multilingualism, 12(1), 68–92.
. (2015b). The porous borders of language and nation: English in Indonesia. Language Problems & Language Planning, 39(1), 50–69.
Cited by (15)
Cited by 15 other publications
Restrepo-Ramos, Falcon
2024. Contrastive language policies: a comparison of two multilingual linguistic landscapes where Spanish coexists with regional minority languages. International Journal of Multilingualism 21:2 ► pp. 906 ff. 
Bever, Olga & Mahmoud Azaz
2023. An Educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic. In Spatializing Language Studies [Educational Linguistics, 62], ► pp. 179 ff.
Tamtomo, Kristian & Zane Goebel
2023. Dialogic landscapes: Toward a nuanced understanding of globalization in urban Indonesian signage. Journal of Sociolinguistics 27:3 ► pp. 268 ff.
Yao, Xiaofang
2023. Face masks, materiality and exclusion in the COVID-19 semiotic landscape. Social Semiotics 33:5 ► pp. 1110 ff.
Bolton, Kingsley, Werner Botha & Siu‐Lun Lee
2020. English in Asian Linguistic Landscapes. In The Handbook of Asian Englishes, ► pp. 833 ff.
Gorter, Durk & Jasone Cenoz
2020. Theoretical development of linguistic landscape studies. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 6:1 ► pp. 16 ff.
Phan, Nhan & Donna Starks
2020. Language in public space and language policies in Hanoi Old Quarter, Vietnam: a dynamic understanding of the interaction. Language Policy 19:1 ► pp. 111 ff.
Restrepo-Ramos, Falcon D.
2020. Chapter 13. Public signage in a multilingual Caribbean enclave. In Current Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 27], ► pp. 273 ff.
Restrepo-Ramos, Falcon D.
2021. Chapter 2. A changing landscape of voseo in Medellín?. In Linguistic Landscape in the Spanish-speaking World [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 35], ► pp. 45 ff.
Yao, Xiaofang & Paul Gruba
2020. A layered investigation of Chinese in the linguistic landscape. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 43:3 ► pp. 302 ff.
Zentz, Lauren
2020. The Semiotic Functions of English in Indonesia. In Functional Variations in English [Multilingual Education, 37], ► pp. 195 ff.
Buckingham, Louisa
2019. Migration and ethnic diversity reflected in the linguistic landscape of Costa Rica’s Central Valley. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40:9 ► pp. 759 ff.
Malinowski, David
2018. Linguistic Landscape. In The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Linguistics Research Methodology, ► pp. 869 ff.
Seals, Corinne A.
2017. Analyzing the linguistic landscape of mass-scale
events. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:3 ► pp. 267 ff.
Troyer, Robert A. & Tamás Péter Szabó
2017. Representation and videography in linguistic landscape studies. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 3:1 ► pp. 56 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.