Agency‐Structure Dynamics in the Linguistic Landscape of a Global Mega‐Event: The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article advances an agency‐structure perspective on linguistic landscapes (LLs) by examining the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as a global mega‐event held during the pandemic. Drawing on geosemiotic analysis of multilingual signs and displays, it conceptualizes the LL not only as a collection of texts but as a social and discursive space in which actors’ practices and institutional arrangements are mutually constitutive. The findings show how the Chinese government, as the primary organizer, macro‐designed the visual‐linguistic environment to comply with long‐standing Olympic conventions and address the need for COVID‐19 prevention measures, while projecting China's cultural confidence on the world stage. Meanwhile, participants, audiences and individuals exercised agency within the event's time‐space structures, inserting their own signs and messages into public view. By theorizing the LL as the negotiated outcome of structural forces and agentic action, this study highlights how global sporting events simultaneously reproduce the Olympic legacy and generate context‐specific innovations, thereby extending LL research beyond the static description of signs toward a deeper understanding of the agency‐structure dynamics that shape multilingual public space.

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