The article explores the poetry of Abai Qunanbaiuly, a renowned philosopher and a founder of modern Kazakh literature, through the semiotic perspective of Umberto Eco. The study is a part of a broader research project in cultural studies titled “Semiotic Interpretation of Culture by Umberto Eco.” Specifically, the poem under analysis is “Allanyn özi de ras, sözi de ras” (“Allah is truth, His word is truth”), written in 1902. While Abai’s works initially garnered great enthusiasm, they now provoke heated discussions within Kazakh society. By applying a semiotic approach, this study offers a fresh perspective on Abai’s poetry, enabling new insights and interpretations.
文章通过翁贝托-艾柯的符号学视角，探讨了著名哲学家、哈萨克现代文学奠基人阿拜-库南拜乌力的诗歌。该研究是题为 "翁贝托-艾柯的文化符号学解读 "的文化研究项目的一部分。具体而言，所分析的诗歌是写于 1902 年的 "Allanyn özi de ras, sözi de ras"（"真主是真理，他的话是真理"）。虽然阿拜的作品最初获得了极大的热情，但如今却在哈萨克社会引发了激烈的讨论。通过运用符号学方法，本研究为阿拜的诗歌提供了一个全新的视角，使人们能够获得新的见解和解释。
{"title":"Abai’s poetry in Eco’s semiotic light","authors":"Roza Khassenova, Manifa Sarkulova","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2016","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores the poetry of Abai Qunanbaiuly, a renowned philosopher and a founder of modern Kazakh literature, through the semiotic perspective of Umberto Eco. The study is a part of a broader research project in cultural studies titled “Semiotic Interpretation of Culture by Umberto Eco.” Specifically, the poem under analysis is “Allanyn özi de ras, sözi de ras” (“Allah is truth, His word is truth”), written in 1902. While Abai’s works initially garnered great enthusiasm, they now provoke heated discussions within Kazakh society. By applying a semiotic approach, this study offers a fresh perspective on Abai’s poetry, enabling new insights and interpretations.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141197337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Encouraging biologists to factor semiotics into their research is likely to fall on deaf ears because they already factor it in through an accepted life science methodological standard here called Parallel Engineering (APE). Biosemiotics’ most significant contribution to biology – a contribution that biologists would come to depend upon – would be a more rigorous alternative methodology to APE through a proof-of-concept explanation for how semiotics – here defined as beings making functional interpretive effort – can emerge within nothing but physical phenomena. It would explain organisms’ most basic agency – their struggle for existence – ergodynamically (i.e., an emergent change in likely physical work) that results in work (effort) that works (functions) to keep a chemical system working (a being) in semiotic response to their workspace (interpretation).
鼓励生物学家将符号学纳入他们的研究很可能会被置若罔闻，因为他们已经通过一种公认的生命科学方法标准（这里称为 "并行工程"（APE））将符号学纳入了研究。生物符号学对生物学的最大贡献--生物学家将依赖的贡献--将是通过概念验证解释符号学--这里被定义为进行功能性解释努力的生物--如何能够在物理现象之外的任何东西中出现，从而提供一种更严格的替代 APE 的方法论。它将解释生物体最基本的能动性--它们为生存而斗争--从工效学（即可能的物理工作中出现的变化）的角度来看，这种变化导致工作（努力），而这种工作（功能）使化学系统（生命体）在对其工作空间（解释）做出符号学反应时继续工作。
{"title":"Biosemiotics’ greatest potential contribution to biology","authors":"Jeremy Sherman","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2013","url":null,"abstract":"Encouraging biologists to factor semiotics into their research is likely to fall on deaf ears because they already factor it in through an accepted life science methodological standard here called <jats:italic> Parallel Engineering</jats:italic> (APE). Biosemiotics’ most significant contribution to biology – a contribution that biologists would come to depend upon – would be a more rigorous alternative methodology to APE through a proof-of-concept explanation for how semiotics – here defined as beings making functional interpretive effort – can emerge within nothing but physical phenomena. It would explain organisms’ most basic agency – their struggle for existence – <jats:italic>ergodynamically</jats:italic> (i.e., an emergent change in likely physical work) that results in work (effort) that works (functions) to keep a chemical system working (a being) in semiotic response to their workspace (interpretation).","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141197367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to renowned linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson, translation can be divided into three general categories: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation/transmutation. Unlike the first two categories, intersemiotic transmutation lacks the usual isomorphism that exist between a source and its target, but that should not deter us from discovering an underlying universal process of two-step interpretation that is involved in transmuting painting as a nonverbal sign into art criticism which is mostly verbal. Put simply, painting as a special form of human communication relies heavily on iconicity between “representamen” and its “object,” but this is only the first step on our way toward the hidden meaning of a visual text. To achieve the latter goal, we also need – often, but not always, through indexical reasoning – to make connections between a painting and its sociohistorical context in the manner of logical abduction as proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce rather than structural differentiation as advocated by Ferdinand de Saussure. Compared with iconic correspondences, indexical relations are far more arbitrary and therefore extremely difficult to reconstruct.
著名语言学家和符号学家罗曼-雅各布森（Roman Jakobson）认为，翻译一般可分为三类：语内翻译、语际翻译和语际翻译/嬗变。与前两类不同的是，语际转换缺乏源语和目标语之间通常存在的同构性，但这并不妨碍我们发现一个潜在的两步解释的普遍过程，这个过程涉及将作为非语言符号的绘画转换为以语言为主的艺术批评。简而言之，绘画作为一种特殊的人类交流形式，在很大程度上依赖于 "表述者 "与其 "对象 "之间的标志性，但这只是我们通往视觉文本隐含意义的第一步。为了实现后一个目标，我们还需要--通常但不总是通过索引推理--以查尔斯-桑德斯-皮尔斯（Charles Sanders Peirce）提出的逻辑归纳方式，而不是费迪南德-德-索绪尔（Ferdinand de Saussure）主张的结构区分方式，将一幅画与其社会历史背景联系起来。与图标对应关系相比，索引关系要随意得多，因此极难重建。
{"title":"Transmuting the painterly sign","authors":"Ersu Ding","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2007","url":null,"abstract":"According to renowned linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson, translation can be divided into three general categories: intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation/transmutation. Unlike the first two categories, intersemiotic transmutation lacks the usual isomorphism that exist between a source and its target, but that should not deter us from discovering an underlying universal process of two-step interpretation that is involved in transmuting painting as a nonverbal sign into art criticism which is mostly verbal. Put simply, painting as a special form of human communication relies heavily on iconicity between “representamen” and its “object,” but this is only the first step on our way toward the hidden meaning of a visual text. To achieve the latter goal, we also need – often, but not always, through indexical reasoning – to make connections between a painting and its sociohistorical context in the manner of logical abduction as proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce rather than structural differentiation as advocated by Ferdinand de Saussure. Compared with iconic correspondences, indexical relations are far more arbitrary and therefore extremely difficult to reconstruct.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140325687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study examines the relationship between disaster and religion by exploring three main questions: how religion shapes the interpretation of disasters and the subsequent recovery processes; how disasters transform religious practices; and how religious interpretations may coexist with scientific explanations of the same disaster. By focusing on the Aceh society’s experience after the 2004 tsunami, this paper argues that Islam, which serves as the central modeling system of Aceh culture, played two interconnected roles in the post-tsunami period: one of providing explanations for the inexplicable disaster and the other of guiding the ensuing actions. Furthermore, the tsunami had a significant impact on the practice of Islam in Aceh, as demonstrated by the shift toward the Sharia system to create a more Islamic Aceh society in the future. This phenomenon thus serves as an example of an explosive change in a semiosphere, as explained by Juri Lotman. This paper also identifies the coexistence of religious and scientific interpretations of the tsunami among the Acehnese, highlighting their distinct social functions.
{"title":"Religious modeling of a natural disaster: a cultural semiotic study","authors":"Muzayin Nazaruddin","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2011","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the relationship between disaster and religion by exploring three main questions: how religion shapes the interpretation of disasters and the subsequent recovery processes; how disasters transform religious practices; and how religious interpretations may coexist with scientific explanations of the same disaster. By focusing on the Aceh society’s experience after the 2004 tsunami, this paper argues that Islam, which serves as the central modeling system of Aceh culture, played two interconnected roles in the post-tsunami period: one of providing explanations for the inexplicable disaster and the other of guiding the ensuing actions. Furthermore, the tsunami had a significant impact on the practice of Islam in Aceh, as demonstrated by the shift toward the Sharia system to create a more Islamic Aceh society in the future. This phenomenon thus serves as an example of an explosive change in a semiosphere, as explained by Juri Lotman. This paper also identifies the coexistence of religious and scientific interpretations of the tsunami among the Acehnese, highlighting their distinct social functions.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140325845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the syntax of sluicing in Mandarin Chinese, including the syntactic constraints on predicates that might appear in sluicing, the reclassification of wh-phrases, the syntactic status of shi ‘be’ and you ‘have,’ and the syntactic derivation of typical sluicing and pseudo-sluicing. This article argues that there are both pseudo-sluicing and typical sluicing in Chinese, with each involving different structures and derivations and requiring different analysis.
{"title":"On the syntax and semantics of sluicing in Mandarin Chinese","authors":"Chengdong Wang, Yudi Yuan","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2009","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the syntax of sluicing in Mandarin Chinese, including the syntactic constraints on predicates that might appear in sluicing, the reclassification of <jats:italic>wh</jats:italic>-phrases, the syntactic status of <jats:italic>shi</jats:italic> ‘be’ and <jats:italic>you</jats:italic> ‘have,’ and the syntactic derivation of typical sluicing and pseudo-sluicing. This article argues that there are both pseudo-sluicing and typical sluicing in Chinese, with each involving different structures and derivations and requiring different analysis.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140325643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jan Blommaert had a profound impact on studies of language in society, pushing many concepts, theories, and research approaches to the center of sociolinguistics. Materialist semiotics is one of the theories and research approaches that he argued for forcefully. Blommaert’s approach to semiotics aligns with Kress’s social semiotics and Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotics, with an emphasis on the social and materialist nature of signs. By theorizing materialist semiotics, Blommaert argued against the traditional abstract view, which saw meaning systems as timeless and context-less. This paper discusses three core elements of materialist semiotics – spatial scope, orders of indexicalities, and chronotopicity – and presents an ethnographic landscaping case study of a Chinese university’s on-campus bilingual signage, in order to illustrate materialist semiotics and to attract more scholarly attention to Blommaert’s oeuvre, which offers a wealth of theoretical and empirical potential, and continues to inspire us to do more, to go further.
{"title":"Toward an ethnographic materialist semiotics: spatial scope, indexicality, and chronotope in a Chinese academic institution","authors":"Jie Dong","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Jan Blommaert had a profound impact on studies of language in society, pushing many concepts, theories, and research approaches to the center of sociolinguistics. Materialist semiotics is one of the theories and research approaches that he argued for forcefully. Blommaert’s approach to semiotics aligns with Kress’s social semiotics and Scollon and Scollon’s geosemiotics, with an emphasis on the social and materialist nature of signs. By theorizing materialist semiotics, Blommaert argued against the traditional abstract view, which saw meaning systems as timeless and context-less. This paper discusses three core elements of materialist semiotics – spatial scope, orders of indexicalities, and chronotopicity – and presents an ethnographic landscaping case study of a Chinese university’s on-campus bilingual signage, in order to illustrate materialist semiotics and to attract more scholarly attention to Blommaert’s oeuvre, which offers a wealth of theoretical and empirical potential, and continues to inspire us to do more, to go further.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140470502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper adopts a digital ethnographic approach to analyze concrete communicative practices with Elder Biaoqing, a type of graphic semiotic resources comparable to emojis and memes, typically designed for and used by older people on Chinese social media. Following Silverstein’s theorizing, it reveals the emergence of multiple indexicalities of Elder Biaoqing that are a result of several social factors: the growth of an older population online, people’s reflections on their communicative needs engendered by specific social facts, and people’s ethno-metapragmatics. The study of Elder Biaoqing reveals users’ agency in creating semiotic resources, the inequality between digital natives and digital migrants, and age anxiety in Chinese society. The findings invite a re-imagination of social facts – the existence of an online–offline nexus and a re-thinking of theories for sociocultural research in a digital era – ontological perspectives on multimodal resources and digital infrastructures, developments of the theoretical perspective of indexicality, and a total-semiotic-fact approach to digitally mediated social interaction.
{"title":"Elder Biaoqing: investigating the indexicalities of memes on Chinese social media","authors":"Ying Lu, Sjaak Kroon","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper adopts a digital ethnographic approach to analyze concrete communicative practices with Elder Biaoqing, a type of graphic semiotic resources comparable to emojis and memes, typically designed for and used by older people on Chinese social media. Following Silverstein’s theorizing, it reveals the emergence of multiple indexicalities of Elder Biaoqing that are a result of several social factors: the growth of an older population online, people’s reflections on their communicative needs engendered by specific social facts, and people’s ethno-metapragmatics. The study of Elder Biaoqing reveals users’ agency in creating semiotic resources, the inequality between digital natives and digital migrants, and age anxiety in Chinese society. The findings invite a re-imagination of social facts – the existence of an online–offline nexus and a re-thinking of theories for sociocultural research in a digital era – ontological perspectives on multimodal resources and digital infrastructures, developments of the theoretical perspective of indexicality, and a total-semiotic-fact approach to digitally mediated social interaction.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140465829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Adapted by Li Bihua and Lu Wei and directed by Chen Kaige, Farewell My Concubine was first released in mainland China and Hong Kong in 1993. It gained strong momentum and went on to break the box office for mainland Chinese literary films in the USA. Against the background of traditional Peking Opera culture, the film spans nearly half a century and follows the love–hate relationship between Cheng Dieyi, played by Leslie Cheung, and Duan Xiaolou, played by Zhang Fengyi. It shows the changes in human nature and the rise and fall of classical art in the city of Beiping in different eras. Taking “symbols” as the entry point, this paper analyses and explores the characteristics of the cultural symbols and metaphors that accompany the main narrative line of the film so as to further trace and understand the multiple interpretations that “anti-identity construction” brings to the film, as well as the ethical implications reflected in the symbols.
{"title":"A semiotic view of symbol and identity in the film Farewell My Concubine","authors":"Wenxi Zhu","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Adapted by Li Bihua and Lu Wei and directed by Chen Kaige, Farewell My Concubine was first released in mainland China and Hong Kong in 1993. It gained strong momentum and went on to break the box office for mainland Chinese literary films in the USA. Against the background of traditional Peking Opera culture, the film spans nearly half a century and follows the love–hate relationship between Cheng Dieyi, played by Leslie Cheung, and Duan Xiaolou, played by Zhang Fengyi. It shows the changes in human nature and the rise and fall of classical art in the city of Beiping in different eras. Taking “symbols” as the entry point, this paper analyses and explores the characteristics of the cultural symbols and metaphors that accompany the main narrative line of the film so as to further trace and understand the multiple interpretations that “anti-identity construction” brings to the film, as well as the ethical implications reflected in the symbols.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140468535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Space is constructed as a particular place by various agents and in a variety of ways, and languages play an important role in the semiotic construction of a space. This study adopts a linguistic landscape approach to explore how languages are commodified for consumption in sites of luxury, i.e., four cafés in Quanzhou, a southeastern city of China. The findings show some similarities and differences in terms of language choice for the four cafés. Despite the similarities and differences, the four shops’ landscapes feature atmospheric multilingualism, where multiple languages and scripts move into a luxury register of late-modern consumption and create the affective regime of luxury and exclusivity. Atmospheric multilingualism is driven by commercial interests and characterized by the commodification of multilingualism and a division of labor among languages in four cafés. In this division, English, other foreign languages, and traditional Chinese characters are employed for their symbolic functions, indexing cosmopolitanism, distinction, luxury, and modernity. Simplified Chinese characters are linked to the interaction order and used in daily business as the main instrument of communication.
{"title":"A study of the commodification of multilingualism in four cafés in China","authors":"Xi Yan","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Space is constructed as a particular place by various agents and in a variety of ways, and languages play an important role in the semiotic construction of a space. This study adopts a linguistic landscape approach to explore how languages are commodified for consumption in sites of luxury, i.e., four cafés in Quanzhou, a southeastern city of China. The findings show some similarities and differences in terms of language choice for the four cafés. Despite the similarities and differences, the four shops’ landscapes feature atmospheric multilingualism, where multiple languages and scripts move into a luxury register of late-modern consumption and create the affective regime of luxury and exclusivity. Atmospheric multilingualism is driven by commercial interests and characterized by the commodification of multilingualism and a division of labor among languages in four cafés. In this division, English, other foreign languages, and traditional Chinese characters are employed for their symbolic functions, indexing cosmopolitanism, distinction, luxury, and modernity. Simplified Chinese characters are linked to the interaction order and used in daily business as the main instrument of communication.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140463867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The sociolinguistics of mobility is one of Jan Blommaert’s significant theoretical legacies vis-à-vis language interactions in the age of globalization. This paper investigates the mobilization of English as a semiotic resource in the public space of Chinese cities to reveal how the process of linguistic landscaping rescales English in China’s layered language regime. In the three investigated cities in eastern China, the English language has been conceptualized as a symbol of internationalization, and the affective potentials of English signs turn the cities into spaces of friendliness. I argue that the visual bilingualism for internationalization purposes is loaded with state ideologies, and English semiotization in the urban space demonstrates the state’s keenness for international recognition and integration into the global world. Inherent in this linguistic landscaping process are Englishization as internationalization ideology, standard language ideology, and linguistic purism ideology. While the translocal status of English in the world language system serves to upscale the cities to a higher scale level, the valorization of English in the official domain also reinforces the hegemonic power of English in the indexicality order, marginalizing social groups with limited English literacy. Thus, a critical, dialectical lens is needed to analyze the role of English in top-down linguistic landscaping.
{"title":"Linguistic landscaping from above in China: scale-making and language ideologies","authors":"Guowen Shang","doi":"10.1515/css-2024-2001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2024-2001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The sociolinguistics of mobility is one of Jan Blommaert’s significant theoretical legacies vis-à-vis language interactions in the age of globalization. This paper investigates the mobilization of English as a semiotic resource in the public space of Chinese cities to reveal how the process of linguistic landscaping rescales English in China’s layered language regime. In the three investigated cities in eastern China, the English language has been conceptualized as a symbol of internationalization, and the affective potentials of English signs turn the cities into spaces of friendliness. I argue that the visual bilingualism for internationalization purposes is loaded with state ideologies, and English semiotization in the urban space demonstrates the state’s keenness for international recognition and integration into the global world. Inherent in this linguistic landscaping process are Englishization as internationalization ideology, standard language ideology, and linguistic purism ideology. While the translocal status of English in the world language system serves to upscale the cities to a higher scale level, the valorization of English in the official domain also reinforces the hegemonic power of English in the indexicality order, marginalizing social groups with limited English literacy. Thus, a critical, dialectical lens is needed to analyze the role of English in top-down linguistic landscaping.","PeriodicalId":52036,"journal":{"name":"Chinese Semiotic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140469299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：