Analysis of Linguistic Landscape in Inner Mongolia from the Linguistic Viewpoint

Yoko Kobayashi

Analysis of Linguistic Landscape in Inner Mongolia from the Linguistic Viewpoint

(62nd Annual Meeting Friedensau, 2019)

According to Landry and Bouris 1997, linguistic landscape is defined as visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region (op. cit.:23). Especially that of multilingual society has been recently attracting academic attention from various viewpoints. Studies of linguistic landscape has contributed and can contribute much not only to socio-linguistics but also to applied linguistics, social psychology and so forth. For instance, the languages utilized in public signs and advertisements enable us to know what languages are locally relevant or predominant and what are not. How and to what degree the languages are correct can be regarded as an index of their authorities or social status in the region. This paper is a preliminary study of linguistic landscape in Inner Mongolia, focusing that of rural cities which has not gone through academic research yet.