Language visibility, functionality and meaning across various TimeSpace scales in Brussels' multilingual landscapes

Abstract

This paper addresses the complex multilingual linguistic landscapes (LLs) of three strategically-chosen areas in global city Brussels by examining how language displays on public signage in these areas are used for different purposes, functions or intentions. The focus will be on meaning-construction in the post-Fordist globalised era as shaped by different contextual scales. By drawing on a systematic corpus of linguistic landscape data indicative of language visibility and functionality patterns in each of these three areas and by drawing on a small selection of interviews with shop-owners, this study will discuss the ‘landscapes’ and diverse displays of Brussels' three ‘big’ languages (French, English and Dutch) and ‘ethnoscapes’ (Appadurai 1990 Appadurai, A. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture and Society 7 (2): 295–310. doi:10.1177/026327690007002017.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) of their attendant transnational communities of tourists, immigrants and expats. In order to assess these differences in functionality and meaning, the geographical notion of TimeSpace scales is applied as an analytical and interpretative concept and as a metaphor most apt to study sociolinguistic processes and phenomena of globalisation. This more interpretative, scale-sensitive and contextualised approach to LL and language meaning is also in line with recent arguments in favour of qualitative, interdisciplinary approaches to linguistic landscape research.

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