Ethnic Businesses in the Neighbourhoods of Tunnel and La Borde

Ethnic Businesses in the Neighbourhoods of Tunnel and La Borde

Saara Jones and Susan Effamonh

 

Abstract

This study tries to understand the purpose of the different signs found on ethnic businesses’ window displays. The paper focuses on the neighbourhood of Tunnel and Borde which have a high percentage of the migrant population and show visible signs of multilingualism. We collected the data by taking pictures of the different grocery shops and by analysing the way in which different languages are being used and the possible intended audience and purpose of the signs. We found that while most signs are written in French or Lingua Franca English, some signs were only for a specific community in a non-official language, therefore intended to a specific migrant community.

  1. Introduction

Prior to this research, we had noticed that in the neighbourhood of Tunnel and Borde in Lausanne, there was a diverse soundscape. We could hear different languages being spoken around, so this is why we chose to investigate further and see if there would be visual proofs of what we could hear, and we were not disappointed. We found plenty of ethnic businesses which displayed different degrees of multilingualism and a variety of languages. This paper will try to understand what the purpose of the signs of ethnic businesses’ window displays is, which languages are being used, why and to whom they are addressed. In previous research, Sabaté i Dalmau shows the importance of ethnic businesses in translating ads into migrant languages to advertise and give the opportunity to different migrant communities to access and understand offers that were at first only in Spanish (2013). Also, when studying the linguistic landscape, we will look into “uncovering the everyday communicative strategies of the people who actually use a particular space” (Mooney and Evans 2015:96). This paper will start by explaining more in detail previous research done on similar matter. Then, it will show why we chose the specific neighbourhoods, where they are located and statistical information about them.  We will explain which method we used, how we collected our data and why we selected it. Finally, we will discuss our results and conclude with possible further studies.

  1. Theoretical framework

Linguistic Landscape, like Mooney and Evans explain, is “a testament to the languages actually being used in a place” (2015: 97) It is a visual proof of an invisible soundscape. They suggest that “some research (…) can provide insight into linguistic diversity not captures by official top down discourses or even by official audits (e.g. a census).” (2015: 97) This is what we will be looking at when analysing our photos. Signs can be top-down which usually means official government-made messages or bottom-up which are made by individuals or smaller groups (Mooney and Evans 2015: 87). Unlike Mooney and Evans who would consider signs produced by business owners as top-down, we think of them as bottom-up because of the smaller scale of ethnic businesses.

Also, Sabaté i Dalmau’s research aimed to study on how the Locutorios fill up the linguistic gap with their services to the undocumented migrants, because the ICT multinational companies in Catalonia and Spain do not deem it economically profitable to invest in their migrant languages. According to the official statistics and references in her article, Catalan as an autonomous community, on the north-eastern side of Spain has witnessed a great influx of migrants, notably from Europe, Africa and South America. Evidently, these migrants came along with their linguistic repertoires but unfortunately, the ICT multinational companies in Catalonia (Spain) do not want to incorporate these newly arrived languages into their linguistic advertising approach to customers because they think that they won’t make a significant profit from the languages of these migrants. So, the Locutorios business, which are ethnic businesses owned by migrants who are well established in Catalonia, offer not only access to the internet, computers, cabin calls, prepaid phone cards, top ups, photocopying, fax and money transfers, to these other (undocumented) migrants but these locutorios also provide the platform on which these undocumented migrants can communicate with the outside world, in a language in their repertoires. Through their workers, the locutorios also offer crucial services of: translation of text messages and promotion offers from Spanish into migrant languages like Urdu, and filling of administrative.

However, because it has not been previously done, our research focus will be on ethnic businesses and their linguistic landscapes, in Tunnel and La Borde neighbourhood, Lausanne in Switzerland. For the purpose of this study, we will refer to other languages that are not French language as non-official languages, French as the official language because it the local authorised language, spoken in this region of Switzerland and English language as the lingua franca because it is the “global language” (Pennycook 2003:516).

  1. Contextualisation

Figure 1. Shop locations on Google maps

 

Figure 2. Percentage of foreigners in Lausanne

This paper focuses on the two main streets of the neighbourhoods of Tunnel and La Borde in Lausanne which were chosen because of previous soundscaping in the area. They are situated relatively close to the center of the city and Tunnel is part of the center district and La Borde of Borde/Bellevaux, but both situated next to each other. When we first went with the intention of taking pictures and collecting data, we were looking for any signs of multilingualism, but we discovered that they were mostly on the window display of ethnic shops. Therefore, we decided to focus on ethnic businesses. In Figure 1, the green dots represent the different shops we found although there were many more, but we decided to filter through the multitude of shops to a selection that best represent the multilingualism of the area. According to the official statistics of Lausanne, more than half of the inhabitants of these two areas are foreigners (2017). We can see in figure 2, the blue dots show where our two neighbourhoods are located and where we collected our data. They are both in dark red because more of half the inhabitants are immigrants which explains why we have found so many ethnic businesses around there. Tunnel/Riponne has 60,6% of foreigners and La Borde 59,8%. We could not find more details on the origins of the foreigners of  the neighbourhoods, but in the whole of Lausanne out of all the foreigners, there is a majority of European migrants (65,3% – Germans, Italians, French, …) but also a smaller but considerable proportion from Asia (7,7% – China, Sri Lanka, …), from South America (5,2% – Brazil, Chili, Ecuador, …) and from Turkey (1,5%). The neighbourhoods are quite vibrant with many restaurants, hairdressers, cafés and specialised shops, but according to the official statistics of Lausanne, the number of businesses in the area (and Lausanne in general) has decreased since 1995 and some of the shops we photographed seemed to have already closed down when we took photos of them.

  1. Methodology

The data for our study was collected on the 5th of November 2018, based on previous soundscaping. We started in the neighbourhood of Tunnel but continued up to the main street of La Borde. We took multiple photos of different ethnic shop window displays and signs because there were many businesses on the two main streets and most of them displayed non-official migrant languages. Therefore, since almost all our pictures were of shops, we decided to focus on ethnic businesses.

We selected ten photos of businesses for this study: ‘Akdeniz Voyages’ (travel agency), ‘The next cut’ (barber shop), ‘Au Bornéo’ (café), ‘Nice people’ (shop), ‘La Tienda de la Esquina’ (shop), ‘Thai délices’ (restaurant), ‘Créacion Del Tata’ (restaurant), ‘Chez Bui’ (shop), ‘Sam’s piercing and Tattoo’ (tattoo shop). All of them used language in a different way to advertise to locals or diverse migrant communities like the Spanish and Asian communities. Later, more data were collected from oral interviews that we conducted with the owners of ‘Chez Bui’, ‘Akdeniz Voyages’ and ‘Thai délices’ and we got oral permission from them to use our discussion with them in our data analysis.

Tunnel and La Borde neighbourhood have delivered our expectations of finding non-official languages there because of the dominant presence of ethnic businesses in it. Our research has proved that the soundscape is also visible in the linguistic landscape. It is rather an interesting project and we have learnt not to just walk into any shop without observing and mentally analysing the language signs that we find there.

5. Results

Fig. 3. Language distribution in signs

For this study, we had to choose ten pictures to focus on. Because there were too many different languages and language combinations, we divided them into three categories depending on the main language used: non-official, official & non-official and lingua franca. Three signs were fully written in non-official languages, three signs were in non-official languages but also in French and finally, four signs in Lingua Franca (English).

Image 1. Turkish travel agency

Image 2. Turkish ad

Image 1 is a picture we took on the window display of a Turkish traveling agency and the languages we found in it are in French, Turkish and English. It is a bottom-up advert and French language has a dominant presence because it is written in big font. According to the owner of the office, its targeted customers are French speaking travellers. However, there is a concert advert that is completely written in Turkish language (Image 2). This signifies that the physical space of the agency office is a medium of making relevant the Turkish language for Turkish people, in a French speaking neighbourhood. English language does not play a significant role in Image 1 because it is written in small font but is necessary because “it is the language of international communication in the vast majority of advertisement”(Piller 2001:164).

Image 3. Chinese and Thai ads

The presence of Asian languages is obvious in Image 3, and notably are Chinese and Thai languages. In the interview we had with the shop owner, his shop provides unique Asian products for the Asian communities living in this neighbourhood. On the window display, the price list and Thai massage advert, written in French is for locals who like Asian products. This shop also serves as adverts space for Chinese Buddhist religion, and a job proposal of 80%-100%. These adverts are written in Chinese and Thai, respectively and they are also bottom-up adverts. Image 3 is also a good example of non-official languages being used to target a specific language group.

Image 4. Tattoo and piercing ad

Image 4 is a typical example of English language as a global language, staking its presence in Tunnel and La Borde neighbourhoods, in Lausanne. As seen on the window display of this  shop, every word is written in English and mostly in big font, too. The use of English language indicates that its targeted customers are only English speakers. The featuring of the crown symbol which is popularly associated with the Queen of England, might be an indication that the owner of the shop is from the United Kingdom and therefore is staking a place for  English language in a French-locally spoken neighbourhood.

Image 5. Ads on a Spanish shop

Based on the linguistic signs in Image 5, we could say that it is a Latino shop. This means that even as  ‘Bienvenue’ is written boldly in French language,and ‘Open and Pull’ in English Language, the dominant language on the window display is Spanish language. As advertised in Spanish language, this shop sells food items (“productos latinos”) and Lebara top-up cards. It also buys euros and dollars, as well as provides fixing up services of perhaps broken car windows. Thus, it is a shop that provides information for different kinds of services. It targets the Latino community but is obviously open to locals through the welcome signs of (‘Bienvenue’, ‘Open and Pull’) written in French and English.

  1. Discussion

Our results reveal the diversity of purposes and addressees. Most shops, of course, had signs in French or English to open the business to a majority of customers, but we noticed that some shops specifically intend some ads or messages for a specific community. A few signs were only written in a non-official language therefore solely focused on one immigrant language speaker group. They represent visible signs of migration as also revealed in the statistics that show the two neighbourhoods have some of the highest proportion of migrants in Lausanne. We could not study and interview the owners as much as Sabaté i Dalmau did, but we were able to find out that ‘Chez Bui’, for example, targets specific ads to the Chinese community or adverts jobs directly for Thai speakers. In his study, Blommaert describes the LL of Antwerp as mostly Turkish and Belgian being visible and audible but also found traces of Chinese migration through a sign written in Chinese advertising a flat to rent (2013: 45-46), which is also what we were able to find in Lausanne. The poster ad fully written in Turkish directly addresses the Turkish community, but we found out that the owner only speaks in French to his customers.

 

  1. Conclusion

This study set out to understand the purposes and targeted audiences of the different signs found on window displays of ethnic businesses, in Tunnel and La Borde neighbourhoods, in Lausanne. Our findings confirm with the findings in Sabate i Dalmau (2013), namely that ethnic business provide various non-official languages services like: selling of top-ups phone cards, money transfers, and advert services. It would have been interesting to study linguistic services (e.g. to fill in administrative forms in French as the official and locally spoken language) provided to migrants in these neighbourhoods; however, this was not possible in the scope of this study but further research could be undertaken on it.

 

References

Blommaert, Jan. 2013. Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes: Chronicles of Complexity. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. pp. 45-6.

Mooney, A., B. Evans. 2015. Linguistic landscapes. In A. Mooney and B. Evans (eds.),Language,Society and Power: an Introduction. London: Routledge, pp. 86-107.

Pennycook, Alastair. 2003. Global Englishes, Rip Slyme, and performativity, Journal of Sociolinguistics 7/4, p. 516.

Piller, Ingrid. 2001. Identity constructions in multilingualism advertising, Language in Society 30, p. 164.

Sabaté i Dalmau, Maria. 2013. Fighting Exclusion from the Margins: Locutorios as Sites of Social Agency and Resistance for Migrants. Bristol: Mulilingual Matters.

Websites

Official statistics from the website of Lausanne. Available on https://www.lausanne.ch/en/officiel/statistique/quartiers/cartes-thematiques.html Accessed on the 04.12.18.

Appendix

Image 1.1 Nice People Shop

Image 1.2 The Next Cut Barber Shop

Image1.3 Thai Délices Restaurant

Image 1.4 Créacion Del Tata Restaurant

Image 1.5 Au Bornéo bar à café

Image 1. 6 Rapid Lunch Pastelaria

The Power Struggle of Two Discourses in la Cité

The Power Struggle of Two Discourses: An Analysis of the Linguistic Landscape in La Cité in Lausanne

by Lucie Mottet and Teodora Trujanovic

Abstract

This paper explores the power struggle between two cohabiting types of discourses, regulatory and transgressive, in one neighbourhood: La Cité. With both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis, it presents the old town of Lausanne under a new light. This research analyses how the delimitation of the named neighbourhood is determined by signs, presenting the dichotomy between the capitalistic and anti-capitalistic discourses, such as anarchist and anti-consumerist ones. The interactions between those two discourses illustrate the different constructions of space and shape the neighbourhood. The languages used in those signs also help to understand some tensions between the municipality of Lausanne and its inhabitants. Throughout the paper, the notion of delimitation emerges given that there exist inner boundaries between the spaces where each of the groups have their place to express themselves.

Introduction

“(Social) space is a (social) product” wrote Henri Lefebvre in his book The Construction of Space translated in English by Donaldson-Smith (26). Through this quote, Lefebvre expresses the fact that the delimitation of spaces corresponds to a social construction by ideologies, namely capitalism in our case, rather than to a natural phenomenon. As a consequence, those delimitations are not perceived similarly by every individual which can initiate conflict within spaces.

Among the neighbourhood of La Cité in Lausanne exists a contrast between two opposed discourses; a top-down discourse present in the regulatory signs, particularly in commercial and touristic ones, mainly displaying the strong influence of capitalism and, in opposition, bottom-up signs, namely graffiti and stickers, conveying an anti-capitalistic conception of the space. The power struggle between the two illustrates this notion of socially constructed spaces Lefebvre wrote about. Both discourses evolve in the same space and each one of them is transforming the old town of Lausanne by their interactions within the neighbourhood. These contradictory interactions reveal tensions between these two discourses in the same neighbourhood and multilingual practices tend to contribute and/or influence this conflicting dimension between discourses.

Analysing pictures taken within this neighbourhood will provide us an insight into the interactions between these discourses: how the regulatory and the transgressive discourses cohabit within this space visited by tourists throughout the year. We will start our paper with a contextualisation of both previous researches on the matter and of the neighbourhood. We will continue by presenting both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of the way those discourses have created space for themselves within La Cité’sboundaries and how a transgression of those limits will generate an erasure of the opposing discourse.

Theoretical Framework

Observing the delimitation of space by looking at the linguistic landscape (LL) allows us to understand the eventual power struggle present in this region. Other studies have been made regarding neighbourhoods and how people cohabit within the space. As quoted before, Lefebvre considers the delimitation of spaces to be a social construction (26) rather than a natural conception, particularly in the context of capitalism in which we live because we are in a society that aims to achieve financial benefits.

Looking at the signs present in a socially constructed neighbourhood warrant us to grasp the power dynamic between the people living there. Trinch and Snajdr outline in their article that “as signs embody different language ideologies they come to shape political, social and economic contexts by conferring differential and competing symbolic and material values on the land” (66). According to them, signs are particularly interesting to look at for understanding the social organisation in a given space because of the different types there are. In this paper, we focus on the comparison between regulatory and transgressive signs. This binary distinction can also be found in terms such as top-down and bottom-up signs. The former defines signs that are on public institutions and announcements which we mostly found in regulatory signs. On the other hand, the latter, which was present in transgressive signs, reports what can be considered as produced by private individuals.

For this research, we will base ourselves on Screti’s round-up of Lefebvrian conception of space: “For Lefebvre, the city is constructed according to, and to reinforce, capitalism and is a space where capitalism is enacted, but also resisted” (2018: 22). We will try to shed light on this dichotomy between the capitalist ideologies represented by regulatory signs and the one resisting it, so transgressive signs.

Next to Lefebvre and its socially constructed space, Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) define the linguistic landscape as the shaping process “of the very scene—made of streets, corners, circuses, parks, buildings—where society’s public life takes place”. By looking at the LL of the city of Lausanne, it is possible to grasp the “sociosymbolic” dimension of the concerned city as well as of the studied neighbourhood, which becomes emblematic of that precise place (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006: 8).

In addition, Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) take into account the great number of actors engaged in this shaping process as public institutions, associations, firms, individuals and many more. The interesting point to focus on is the power struggle and dissensions found in this process between different actors “that do not necessarily act harmoniously” (8), which in our case we hypothesise to be reflected in the dichotomy between top-down regulatory and bottom-up transgressive signs. In order to analyse the space, one has to consider “the era of modernity, globalization and multiculturalism” characterising today’s world, which completely changes the nature, status and population of quarters, neighbourhoods and cities growing in diversity. In this newly contoured space, interactions between public authority and civil society, often characterized as a power struggle, evolve and shape in turn this same space (9). Indeed, power relations act as one of the “structuration principles” building the linguistic landscape (Ben-Rafael 2009, 45-6).

To stick to power relationships, Papen (2012) interprets the space as “one of the arenas where [debates are] taking place (61). The public space is socially constructed through interactions of individuals and authorities, displaying the mainstream ideology, as Lefebvre develops in his work (1991). This propriety of space enables individuals, despite the controlling of state’s authorities, to express their opinions and, as Papen claims, “to disseminate their views” (73). This point shows another facet of LL, “used primarily to shed light on aspects of multilingualism, [that] can be harnessed to seek insights into much broader issues relating to social change, urban renewal, gentrification and its concomitant class tensions” (Papen 2012, 58).

Contextualisation

Our paper focuses on the neighbourhood of La Cité in Lausanne, the capital of the French-speaking canton of Vaud. Our choice of this specific sector of the city is based on its touristic nature, as it represents the historical and cultural centre of the city, as well as on our expectations to encounter multilingual practices, in particular featuring English. La Cité is situated in the quarter of Lausanne named “the Centre”, figuring on the map as the number 01 (see appendix Image 11). We observe that its name corresponds well to its centralised localisation. Thanks to the collective Google Mapof the Multilingual Lausanne project, we are able to associate our localisation and boundaries of La Citéwith the one of the official website of the city, here below in Figure 1 and 2. According to statistics found on the official website of Lausanne, La Citécounts 737 inhabitants in 2017. However, this website does not give any information concerning statistics of spoken languages in the area.

While the beginnings of Lausanne were by the lac Léman (lake Geneva), the population moved during the 9thcentury to the hills to what we call La Citétoday. With time, Lausanne was Christianised and started to spread beyond the small section of La Cité, all the way over the “Centre” mentioned previously. The cathedral was officially finished in 1275 and Lausanne became a place of pilgrimage which can be considered as the beginning of tourism in Lausanne. The city continued to grow to what we know today and La Citéremains the historical centre of Lausanne mainly because of its cathedral.

 

Figure 1:  Map of La Cité, found on the official website of the city of Lausanne.

Figure 2 : Our own map of La Cité, based on our linguistic landscaping and data in purple.

 

 

Methodology

Our choice of the neighbourhood of La Cité, as previously mentioned, is motivated by its touristic nature considering museums and the cathedral in this area, as well as by our expectations of multilingualism, especially English. Thus, our linguistic landscaping data collection began at the emblematic monument of Lausanne, the cathedral. Then, we stopped by the two museums located in front of the cathedral, the MUDAC (museum of contemporary design and applied arts) and the historical museum of Lausanne (Musée historique de Lausanne). After taking pictures around these touristic attractions, we have continued our search in smaller streets as Escalier du Marché and Rue Louis-Auguste Curtat away from the cultural and historical area. There we found a great presence of transgressive signs, as the map shows (i.e. skull symbols), in the official (according to Lausanne’s official website) border of the neighbourhood. In addition, we encountered many shops, bars and restaurants, considered as a meeting points for its inhabitants.

When dealing with this specific area, we decided to focus on three main aspects that interact with one another as they exist in the same space: signs in touristic places such as museums and the cathedral, commercial signs in activities such as bars and restaurants (places encompassed in capitalist ideologies) and transgressive signs most of which dialogue with top-down signs documented.

After having selected pictures representing each aspect aforementioned, we have evaluated them in reference to the global project of Multilingual Lausanne and therefore, looked for multilingual use in particular. For the purpose of this paper, we have selected pictures that are situated in the south of La Cité, where the two discourses cohabit closely and the power struggle between them is the most visible.

Then, we have uploaded the different chosen pictures on the collective Google Map of the lesson, “Multilingual Lausanne Autumn 2018”. When uploading the pictures, we have categorised them according to these criteria: name, address, authors of the picture, date of collection, presence of multilingual or monolingual practices and considering which are main or secondary languages, the neighbourhood, the support/medium (of the text), activity domain and finally the type of sign (regulatory, transgressive…).

As noted before, we have chosen this specific neighbourhood because of its touristic dimension and the conviction to encounter multilingual practices and especially English as a lingua franca. We were very surprised to notice the negligible use of English compared to French, which is prevalent considering the French-speaking nature of the canton de Vaud of which Lausanne is the capital and its associated legislation policies. Furthermore, it was interesting to observe differently the space, namely as an interaction of signs as well as a construction of these contacts. We were not completely aware of the issues anchored in space when just passing by this area. To “read the space” correctly as Screti mentions in his article by quoting Lefebvre (Screti 2018, 2), we have to take into account “the histories of space and the social practices that occur within it”.

Results and discussion

To compare our different signs, we decided to analyse them on both a quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine and try to understand the coexistence and interaction between regulatory and transgressive signs.

A/ Quantitative analysis

In our selected corpus of 10 images in 9 locations, we count a small number of languages. French is predominantly present. It is found in both regulatory and transgressive signs, in standard and non-standard French respectively. We also found an occurrence of franglais (see Image 8 in the appendix).

While the presence of French was expected as it is the official language of the city, it is the absence of other languages that surprised us, particularly the lack of English. It was indeed mostly used in schedules for touristic attractions as English is considered as a lingua franca and in some transgressive signs, where individuals use English language to emphasize their comments.

We also encountered two other languages: Italian and Chinese. The former was present on the signs for a Pasta bar while the latter was indicating the availability of Chinese audio guides. Those were the only occurrences of those languages we noted during our data collection.

Finally, a number of signs, two in our corpus, were displaying illustrations instead of written texts. In one of our images, the pictures symbolize an assortment of rules to respect in green spaces. The other indicates the direction to take to reach the cathedral. Rather than using the word that might not be universally understood, a sign depicting the cathedral is far more efficient as semiotic signs convey meaning across speakers of different languages.

B/ Qualitative analysis

Throughout the neighbourhood of La Cité, different kind of signs were spotted. Among these, commercial and touristic ones can be considered as signs deriving from capitalist ideologies of Lausanne, since they are encouraging economic transactions and growth of their activities. Signs opposed to those ideologies figuring in the same space tend to be transgressive. These are consequently opposed to the first ones as transgressive additions try to regain control over the neighbourhood by transforming its construction and representation. 

Image 1: Pasta Bar Pomodoro della Nonna

As a first step, we concentrate on a commercial sign situated at the entry of the neighbourhood, named Pomodoro della Nonna (Image 1). The sign displayed on this pasta bar is mainly written in Italian. Considering the commercial nature of this sign, its aim is to attract a wider audience and to make the commercial activity thriving in the light of capitalist ideology. In order to fulfil this aim, the use of Italian does not suggest only the traditional and typical Italian food, it also affirms the authenticity of the kitchen through the stereotypical figure of the Italian cook, la nonna. This figure of la nonna, here a semiotic and written sign, can be interpreted as a brand for Italian culture and cooking regarding the definition of “branding” given by Sebba (2015): “process whereby a specific visual/graphical element of written language [such as an alphabetic character (see Screti 2018, 15)] becomes emblematic of a group of people”. In addition, Piller (2001, 170) observes that Italian is used in commercials “as the language of the good life, unambiguously connected to food”, which is considered as a “passion”. Moreover, the colour of the sign plays with a crucial ingredient of Italian food as it mirrors the colour of the tomato – figuring also on the sign and its title – that makes the sign generally visible in the entry of La Cité.

We then focussed on  transgressive addition on a direction sign (that used to indicate the direction of touristic attractions) (Image 2), which does not fit within the capitalist construction of the space anymore as it has been heavily tagged and consequently acquires a dialogic nature. Indeed, the sign was originally regulatory, therefore representative of the mainstream ideology and has become almost unreadable under the tags. Direction signs’ primary purpose intends to help individuals to reach specific places, as touristic ones and implicitly, corresponds to a capitalist construction of the space. By covering the direction signs with tags – that are difficult to read and thus, to understand – the capitalist ideology is “challenged” by other discourses, called transgressive in opposition to regulatory, capitalist signs (Lefebvre 1991, 23).

Image 2 : Transgressive additions on a direction sign

The sign’s situation is crucial in order to fully grasp the power struggle underlying this direction sign and in La Cité in general. The sign is situated on the official boundary (also accepted by the locals according to our knowledge of the neighbourhood) of the neighbourhood where a great presence of graffiti characterize the margins of La Cité. In addition, the direction sign figures next to a tunnel that is completely tagged (see some parts of it on the left in the picture and also Image 8 in the appendix). This point illustrates the correlation between the boundaries as well as the margins of the neighbourhood and the expression of minority’s voices, considered to be transgressive as they do not fit in the main ideology and official signs. For instance, one of these voices mentions by code-switching a xenophobic concern in the tunnel as the Image  8 shows. Thus, boundaries of La Cité appear as a place “providing marginalised people a voice” (Mooney and Evans 2015, 101) as well as for transgressive discourses opposed to the capitalist ideology (see Image 9 in the appendix denouncing animal cruelty for its use of fur).

Image 8 : Graffiti in the tunnel ” Fuck les Valaisent [misspelling of inhabitants of other canton] + Portugais (Portuguese)” (Steph)

Even though the dialogic direction sign constitutes a direct confrontation with a capitalist construction of space, the geographical location of this direction sign -namely in the margins of the neighbourhood -explains that it has not been erased by authorities. In comparison to this transgressive sign, the anarchist graffiti “Abattre le capitalisme, construire la solidarité” (“Bring down capitalism, build solidarity”), corresponding to Image 10 in the appendix, has been cleaned, as it is situated closer to the centre of La Cité and therefore to touristic attractions.

In this case, there are multiple signs displayed in the picture. The first one being analysed is the one present on the left corresponding to schedules of Le Musée historique de Lausanne (Image 3) (the historical museum). Similarly to other touristic places in La Cité, it is written in both French and English but no other languages (see Images 5 and 6 in the appendix). This multilingual practice contributes to the attraction of a wider audience in this neighbourhood, particularly as this museum is situated in front of the cathedral. It is contributing to the commercial activity of the museum and which can be related to capitalist ideologies as it represents a way to be lucrative.       

 

Image 3 : Le Musée historique de Lausanne

On the right side of the picture, there are two different signs. One of which is solely in French and is the poster for the exhibition present in the museum that was also spread around the city. The other represents a promotion poster in Chinese. Although it is written in two different writing systems, traditional and simplified Chinese, the machine translation we used (Google Translate) translated the two lines as an indication of the availability of Chinese audio guide. It might suggest a frequency of Chinese speaking tourists and therefore, the museum’s advertisement is oriented to these specific consumers, so adapting its activity in relation to the multiculturalism we live in (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006, 9).

Image 4 : Direction signs leading to the cathedral

Finally, the last sign we are analysing is also an official, top-down one. Those direction signs (Image 4) are also present in the borders of La Cité, close to the tunnel and the transgressive sign (see Image 2 and appendix Image 8). However, those have not received transgressive dialogic additions. It can be linked both to the fact that it is situated in a busier street than the one near the tunnel. Another reason for its monologic nature is that it is situated high on the wall which can also protect the signs from graffiti.

These signs indicate the directions to access the main touristic attractions in La Cité. Those signs are mostly written in French. However, the sign indicating the direction of the cathedral on the left handside offers an alternative semiotic practice for a multilingual audience. It depicts the cathedral rather than have it translated in a different language. On the right of the picture, the highest sign indicates the cité cathédrale. Rather than translating it, a choice has been made to put an image. The use of illustration for directions applies to a wider audience. Illustrations allow a universal comprehension and avoid the need to present translations. A similar use of illustrations is also found in Image 7 (see appendix) where the rules and prohibited activities are represented with illustrations and act as a “structuration principle” in building the landscape (Ben-Rafael 2009, 45-6). It suggests an alternative way to describe the rules without having to translate it in different language and the need to choose which language to translate it in.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have intended to explore the cohabitation of two opposed discourses in the neighbourhood of La Cité, respectively a regulatory, top-down discourse and a bottom-up one, also qualified as transgressive. However, this cohabitation, as seen, does not necessarily imply harmony between discourses, mainly because of ideas conveyed within them that nourish a power struggle. Regulatory discourse is indeed vested in capitalist ideology and its shaping of space corresponds to and reinforces this mainstream influence, as observed in commercials and direction signs. On the contrary, transgressive signs acquire this designation as they do not fit in this ideology and tend to resist the capitalist conception of space by constructing their own, in our data by mainly using tags as form of expression.

The main limitation encountered in our paper is linked to the nature of a neighbourhood, namely its boundaries and margin zones. The delimitations of La Cité act also as delimitation for us in our research as we have to constrain to a specific space in which we have investigated the power struggle between top-down and bottom-up signs that actually might extend to a larger area.

Future research could focus on this specific neighbourhood during touristic periods, especially in summer and observe the measures, linguistic ones for instance, displayed in order to attract as well as to adapt their offers to tourists’ interests and on the other side, the bottom-up reaction to these measures. Another future direction might involve the soundscape of the same neighbourhood and to look at the existent languages and their representation in regulatory signs as well as in the bottom-up discourse, in other words an approach combining linguistic soundscape and landscape.

References

Ben-Rafael E., Shohamy E., Hasan A. M. and 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.

Ben-Rafael, E. 2009. A sociological approach to the study of linguistic landscapes. In Shohamy E. and Gorter D. (eds.) Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. London: Routledge. 40–55.

Mooney, A., Evans, B.  2015. Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. Routledge. 4th edition. Chapter 5. 86-107.

Lefebvre, H. 1991. Plan of the Present Work, The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford : Blackwell. 1-67.

Papen, U. 2012. Commercial discourses, gentrification, and citizen’s protest: The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16/1. 56–80.

Piller, I. 2001. Identity Constructions in Multilingual Advertisements. Language in Society 30 (2). 153-186.

Screti, F. 2018. Re-writing Galicia: Spelling and the Construction of Social Space. Journal of Sociolinguistics 22/5. 516–544.

Sebba, M. 2015. Iconicity, attribution and branding in orthography. Written Language and Literacy 18: 208–227.  

Trich S., Snajdr E. 2016. What the signs say: Gentrification and the disappearance of capitalism without distinction in Brooklyn.  Journal of Sociolinguistics 21/1. 64-89.

Websites

Historical information on La Cité found on the official website of Lausanne tourism https://www.lausanne-tourisme.ch/en/Z5657/history, consulted on the 08.12.18.

Image 11, on the official website of the city of Lausanne: https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/quartiers/presentation-des-quartiers.html, consulted on the 6.12.2018.

Statistic on La Cité, on the official site of the city of Lausanne on “population selon la nationalité” category: https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/quartiers/tableaux-donnees.html, consulted on the 6.12.2018.

Appendix

 

Image 5 : MUDAC museum’s schedules

 

Image 6 : Cathedral’s schedules

 

Image 7 : Green spaces rules of Lausanne

 

Image 8 : Graffities in the tunnel ” Fuck les Valaisent [misspelling of inhabitants of other canton] + Portugais (Portuguese) (Steph)”

Image 9 : Transgressive sign “Sur cette promenade” [On this promenade], above the green space rules (see Image 7).

Zoom on the sticker denouncing animal cruelty

 

Image 10 : Anarchist graffiti that has been erased. However, it remains readable: “Abattre le capitalisme, construire la solidarité” [Bring down the capitalism, build solidarity) completed by the anarchist symbol.

Image 11 : Different quarters of Lausanne, the Centre under number 1. Map found on the official website of the city of Lausanne.

 

Usage of English in Branding on a French-speaking University Campus

Authors: Lisa Wulf & Emma Pivoda

Abstract:

English branding is a well-known strategy in marketing and there are many researches on  the usage of foreign languages in branding and its effects on the brand and consumers. However, as students on a campus, we were not aware of how much it was actually used. Therefore, we wanted to make our own research on the campus of the University of Lausanne and the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) to know in which context and for which purpose English is used in branding. We collected the data for our paper by collecting bilingual English advertisements on both campuses. Through the analysis of these data we found that English was used mostly to give an image of internationality, which encompasses an image of modernity, urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life, comprehensibility and in some sort, connects to quality, which however, was the least striking reason for English usage.

 

  1. Introduction

As students at the University of Lausanne, we encounter a lot of advertisements for different restaurants and events while we are on campus. To our greatest surprise, once we actually paid attention to it, most of it is brought to us with either a foreign brand name or foreign language catchphrase. Consequently, our interest was to know to what extent the English language in branding influences the consumers on a university campus and the purpose of English usage in the analysed ads. As a result, in this research, we want to analyse the purpose of foreign language branding, in this case English on a French-speaking campus, and its effect on the product and the consumers. Ayse Öztürk et al.(2015) found out that products with an English brand name are perceived as a more competent and that the consumer have more intention to buy if it is an English brand name. In addition to this study, Mrugank V. Thankor and Barney G. Pacheco also argue in their study (2015) that, in fact, attitudes and perceptions of consumers can be influenced by the brand name alone. Regarding these studies, we wanted to know how much foreign language branding is actually used and what kind of effect it creates. For this purpose we collected some commercials on the university campus of the University of Lausanne and the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). Our method was to collect these data on the most viewed billboards that are placed so that every student passing by sees them. Therefore, we hypothesize that English brand names or catch phrases are used in practically every advertisement and that it, in fact, promotes an image of modernity, urbanity, (Piller 2001) which will attract young university students, and that what is written in the local language has the purpose to give essential information.

 

  1. Theoretical framework

Ayse Öztürk et. Al. (2015) found that an “English brand name suggests a more competent product, more favourable attitude towards the brand name and higher intention to purchase the product” (283). To come to this conclusion they tested how business students perceive a brand name and its effect on the brand personality. They used three types of brand names: English brand name, English sounding brand name and a local brand name, which were used for two categories of products: blue jeans and café which were selected because they were categories that already often have foreign brand names. Mrugank V. Thankor and Barney G. Pacheco (1997) replicated earlier work done by Leclerc et al. (1994), which had investigated the effect of foreign branding on product perceptions and attitudes towards the brand name and see if their results were generalizable. Furthermore, Thankor and Pacheco also tried to extend Leclerc et al.’s study “by examining the role of gender as a moderating factor on the effectiveness of foreign branding” (17). They found that the results were very product specific and that there were no differences across brands and countries for their hedonic product. They also found that attitudes and perceptions of consumers can be influenced by the brand and especially that foreign branding can be important, which should encourage managers to, indeed, use these information to position their products and manipulate the image of their products. Furthermore, they find that the impact of Country-of-Origin (COO) is weak and therefore “suggest that country images are not readily transferred to products originating from those countries” (27). Additionally, there is also a significant interaction of gender with foreign branding that should not be neglected, which shows that foreign branding appears to have a negative effect on the perception of the product by females.

These researches are interesting to us because they prove how important foreign branding is for advertisement and proves that it has major effects on the consumer and the brand. We will use these studies and results as a basis and report them on a university campus where the local language is French and we will restrict the foreign branding on English branding, because it was, in our case, the most striking foreign language we saw on the campus of the University of Lausanne and the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne).

 

  1. Contextualisation

We went on the campus of the University of Lausanne and EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) to collect our data, therefore our research context is higher education and concerns students. We chose this space because both of us are students and we never took the time to analyse and realize the constant multilingual advertisement around us. Nowadays, the University of Lausanne and EPFL are based next to each other in Dorigny. Furthermore, throughout the years, the Westside of Lausanne has been urbanised a lot: the first underground in Lausanne was innovated and the EPFL was built. The EPFL was founded in 1853, and at that time it was called “Ecole spéciale de Lausanne”. The building of the EPFL was a private initiative inspired by the Ecole Centrale de Paris. The name Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) emerged in 1969. It is also in this year, that the EPFL was moved to Ecublens-Dorigny. Because of these two renowned universities, a lot of students come from other countries to study there. The number of students and foreign students is growing every year. In autumn 2017 UNIL counted nearly 15’000 students[1] and EPFL nearly 11’000, with over 116 nationalities even though when they started they had less than 3’000 students.[2]

On the map[3] down below, we can clearly see that the two Universities are located next to each other.

 

  1. Methodology

To do our research and try to justify and support our hypothesis, we collected some advertising panels on the campus. We just walked around the campus, as we do every day, just focusing on advertisement. Throughout our data collection, and thanks to our focus on advertisements, we were astonished by the amount of advertisements in the first place, and furthermore, by the advertisement through foreign brand names and catchphrases, especially in English, even though the local language of this university is French and not English. First, we wanted to take a picture of every advertisement we saw, because we did not know what to expect by having a close look at the advertisement on the campus, but in the end, we thought that it would be better, for the purpose of this paper, to focus mainly on the English branding as it was the most prevalent and most used by the advertisers. The images selected for the final results were those which represented the most how English is used in advertisement on these university campus. Once we selected the right images that we found the most fitting for this research, we looked at the use of English language versus the use of French language, the local language of the region where this university is situated. As students ourselves in this university we are aware of the diversity that reigns there and the number of non-French speakers there is, but as Lausanne still is situated in a French-speaking region and its main language is thus still French, we had not expected to find that many English branding on the campus. We expected some, because we are used to advertisements and we see that it is often foreign language branding, but we had not expected that, on campuses of French-speaking universities there would be as many. Furthermore, we had to do some researches on the campus and on foreign branding to actually have reliable information for our research paper, which has taught us many new information on foreign branding and also on the universities’ culture and students. However, we found difficult to find the right information that were useful for our paper, which made it hard to find the main focus. Eventually, we thought that we should use our new knowledge on English and global foreign branding to look on the purpose of the use of English branding in the context of a University.

 

  1. Results

Table 1 shows the distribution of the purpose of the English branding used for each image in comparison with French usage. We explain in this table for which reasons the advertisers may have used English instead of French in some instances and, furthermore, also explain in which case and why French or English would be used (see Table 1 below).  Consequently, we can see that the English language is used for several purposes as:  attraction of the eye, international – famous – prestigious – stylish aspects, urban image, aspect of modernity and also for the purpose that everybody can understand what is sold.

Table 1 (see Appendix for a bigger format of the pictures):

1)Picture 1: The French language is used for detailed and important information as opening hours, reductions, offers. However to catch people’s attention, they use the English because English becomes an important language of the society and here it makes it more serious and gives the image of internationality and modernity.

So here the English advertisement gives an image of modernity, urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life and it is used as an eye catcher. English is used as a marker of internationality.

 

2)

Picture 2: This beauty institute uses English for a catch phrase. Using English makes it sound more professional and mostly international which indicates a higher quality to the clients. Adding to this it also gives an image of urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life.

Furthermore, the phone number, email address can be interpreted in both languages, and “free Wi-Fi”, which actually is in English, but nowadays has become so used that it is intelligible for everybody as “wi-fi” is an international word that is used in every language thus this instance only has the goal to communicate “free wi-fi”, which is intelligible by everybody.

So here English Branding is used to show, through the fact that it gives an international image of the brand, that it is better quality, modern and gives the image of urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life.

 

3)

 

Pictures 3: The shop’s name is in English for the purpose to make it more attractive by giving the impression that it is international and therefore better because it shows that it gives an urban image, which attracts the people. The information are also in English because they use simple language to make people understand what the shop sells. However they use French for the opening hours because it is information that is needed to be understood and as it is located in a French environment, it should be in the local language so that it can still be identified with the region.

In this case, English branding is used to give the image of a international brand that is modern, urban, cosmopolitan and gives the image of upper-class way of life. Furthermore it is also used so that it is understandable by more people and to catch the eye.

 

4)

Picture 4: Here the whole text is in English. There are only a few words and they are all words that are easy to understand for most people as they are easy vocabulary and “act” and “change” are nearly the same words in French. Furthermore, it makes it more international and shows that the purpose for what they are advertising is for everybody and everyone, no matter the language, is welcome.

In this case, the usage of English branding is there to show the internationality of the brand and to make it understandable for everyone.

 

5)

Picture 5: Here only the title is in English because it attracts the eye and gives the impression that it is more famous/ international/prestigious. The rest of the information are in French because most of the population that sees this billboard speaks French and it is a cultural exhibition, which should be represented in the language to which it contributes to the culture, which is French in this case.

Thus in this case, English is used to show the internationality of the exhibition and furthermore to catch the eye of the person who passes by.

 

6)

Picture 6: Here only the title is in English because it is a well-known swiss  show, which name is known thus is kept. The rest of the information are in French because most of the population that sees this billboard speaks

French and like picture 5 it is cultural. .

Consequently, in this advertisement it is mainly the fact that it gives the image that the show is international, thus “big and impressive”.

 

 

7)Picture 7: What here is written in French are information about the drugstore and what it  offers. The English version is a perfect translation of what is written in French. The translation here shows that the drugstore concerns everybody and, as English is the lingua franca in this region  it addresses everyone, and shows that the drugstore is well aware that a lot of students that come to there will not have French as their first language and thus the information should be intelligible for everyone.

Here it is quite clear that English is mainly used to make it understandable for everyone what the drugstore is selling.

——————–

Regarding the distribution of the use of the English language in advertising, we wanted to see how it is actually distributed. For this purpose, we made Graph 1 (see below).

Graph 1:

(from left to right; Better quality/ Modernity/ Urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life/ Internationality/ Understandable for everybody/ Eye catcher)

Graph 1 shows the distribution of the English use in branding by comparing all the different possibilities of use that we have decided on. In this graph we can see that internationality, thus the fact that in the universities there are students from around the world, is why advertisers use English as branding the most. It is the most striking aspect with the highest value. On the contrary, the lowest value is regarding quality. It does not seem as if the use of English is there to indicate better quality. However, regarding the other three categories we depicted namely urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life, better understanding for everybody, modernity and eye-catcher, they all are on the same level.

 

  1. Discussion

By analysing our data, we have faced two different aspects of how English language is used on the campus. First of all, English is used for the purpose of the comprehensibility for everybody and secondly it is used for the purpose to make the product – billboard – restaurant – event more attractive to consumers by playing with English and French languages. Many students come from abroad and they do not necessarily speak French very well. Therefore, according to the first aspect of the English usage, some of the important information or billboards are written in English so that everyone is concerned as, for example, on the Polycare’s panel (picture 7). Polycare is a drugstore, thus, the information are written in French and also translated in English so that it addresses all people. Furthermore, as Sevgi Ayse Öztürk, Fatma Zeynep Özata and Feyza Aglargöz mention by citing Piller’s work from 2003 that “English is the most frequently used language in advertising messages in non-English-speaking countries. Internationally, it has become a general symbol of modernity, progress and globalization so it is used to associate a product with a social stereotype”. Indeed, English has become a very strong and important language in the world and we can, in fact, see in our data that this language is used a lot and mainly for giving an international aspect to brand through English advertisement. The English language is also used for the brand names to attract people’s eye and to give it a more important meaning because English is one of the strongest and international language in the world because of its characteristic of being the lingua franca in this region. Furthermore, as graph 1 shows, internationality seems to be the most used reason for English branding. In our opinion, this is due to the fact that the other reasons are all linked to internationality. Internationality encompasses the image of modernity, urban, cosmopolitan, thus having an exciting and glamorous characteristic associated with travel and a mixture of cultures, which results also in the idea of an upper-class way of life. Furthermore it is used for better understanding, eye catching and comprehensibility for everyone, because English has become the image of progress and additionally, is the Lingua Franca, which serves to communicate between people from all around the world. Consequently, we can see how it seemingly affect the consumers and which image it gives to them so that it attracts young people from around the world, reunited on a university campus in a French-speaking region.

 

  1. Conclusion

To conclude, we find out that the main purpose for using English language in a non-English-speaking environment for advertisement was internationality. Internationality is the main purpose but not the only one, as it encompasses many other aspects like modernity, urban, cosmopolitan and upper-class way of life, better understanding and, in also quality. These are all related to the fact that English is the language of globalisation because it has become a very important language that nearly everybody understands as it is the Lingua Franca in this context.

Unfortunately, we were limited for our research because we could not ask the actual managers of the shops and advertisements to explain why they preferred using English because we have not have had the right resources for this. Consequently, our results and explanation are mainly based on our understanding of the branding and what it provoked and appeared to be to us regarding the read literature and our understanding of it. Therefore, we do not know actually the true reasons why the advertisers thought that English is the better option to attract consumers. Therefore, actually speaking with the ones who were in charge of the advertisement could be a way to extent this research and get a better understanding of the purpose of English.

[1] https://www.unil.ch/central/home/menuinst/unil-en-bref/en-chiffres.html

[2] https://www.epfl.ch/about/overview/fr/presentation/chiffres-cles/

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@46.5210304,6.5749249,15z

References:

Öztürk, S. A., & Özata, F. Z. (2015). HOW FOREIGN BRANDING AFFECT BRAND PERSONALITY AND PURCHASE INTENTION? (No. 2304200). International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.

Thakor, M. V., & Pacheco, B. G. (1997). Foreign branding and its effects on product perceptions and attitudes: A replication and extension in a multicultural setting. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 5(1), 15-30.

Appendix:

picture 1

picture 2

picture 3

picture 4

picture 5

picture 6

picture 7

Multilingualism in Café and Restaurants in the centered neighborhood of Lausanne Different strategies by using several languages

Rey Camille and Berger Iman

17.01.2019

_________________________________

               In this research paper, we will continue investigating multilingualism, focusing on the restaurants and cafés in the center of Lausanne. The goal of this study is to analyze how multilingualism is used as a business strategy in those establishments.  In order to carry out this investigation, we went to this neighborhood to take pictures of visible written marks of multilingualism. After this first step, we had to analyze our pictures and understand how and for which reasons several languages were used in these places. We then came with different categories: using multilingualism in order to convey authenticity, or adopting multilingualism in a trendy way to appeal the customers by employing English. This inquiry allowed us to become aware of the predominance of multilingualism nowadays and that this phenomenon is often used for specific purposes by the commercial establishments. Our results show that multilingualism is both used either to express the authenticity of the restaurant/café, or, by using English, to appeal customers in a trendy way since English became very popular and is increasingly used.

_________________________________

Introduction

The academic interest in the urban linguistic landscape has grown over the past few years. Effectively, linguists have investigated multilingualism in order to have a better understanding on how and why cities use different languages nowadays. Indeed, cities such as Lausanne are interesting places to investigate due to the great concentration of people in them and to the contact of languages resulting from it. In this way, language appear as an indicator of global processes on the ground. By choosing a city in Switzerland which is a multilingual country by nature because of its different national languages (French, German, Italian and Romansch) we thought that it was interesting to investigate how the businesses use different languages and for which reasons. The aim of this research is to analyze multilingualism in public areas in the center of the city of Lausanne. More specifically, what is the purpose for businesses to use different languages? Would it be either a manner to express authenticity or rather a way to follow the trend by using English? Therefore, we will analyze the use of different languages and to which strategy it corresponds.  In addition, a theoretical framework will be provided in order to introduce the main aspects and shed light on our own concepts. Indeed, previous studies as Piller’s (2001) have investigated the use of multilingualism in advertising. Her analysis focused on advertising mixing German and English and revealed that English was more and more used in the twentieth century. Moreover, another study on restaurants’ strategies to use several languages to keep the authenticity of the restaurant offer diverse interesting points that have been also raised in our research. In addition to these previous studies, we have also collected information from Jasone Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner’s article on the spread of English in the world because “English as a lingua franca” is one of the main point of this analysis, since it consists of one of the reason many establishments use multilingualism. In order to collect our data, we first went to the center of Lausanne around the “Place de la Louve” and “Place Pépinet” to observe the written language used in this place and to collect pictures of several restaurants and cafés’ windows displays and their respective advertisements where multilingualism would appear. Then, an analysis was conducted in order to analyze which restaurant use and expose different languages in their menu, panels, window displays and especially why they would do this. To answer our research question, a quantitative and qualitative analysis will be done on the basis of our selected pictures, followed by a discussion, a conclusion and potential opening on this research.

Theoretical framework

Firstly, we have taken an interest on Piller’s study made in 1999 which is about multilingualism in advertising and thus give an overall analysis on how English is used. She based her analysis especially on the German advertisements and interrogated the role of media on the expansion of the use of bilingualism (German and English). She thus noticed a “concomitants shift from monolingual practices to multilingual and English-dominant ones.” (Piller 2001: 153) In her article, she explores one linguistic discourse within the discourse of advertising which is the use of multilingualism. She notices that “contemporary cultural identities are hybrid, complex, and often contradictory, and the media play a crucial role in their configuration.” (2001: 155) She also agrees with other linguists on the fact that advertising is now continuing to integrate the creation of consumer identities, which have “become global and transnational” (2001: 155). In relation to our research, we can observe that eighteen years after her article, her conclusion was coherent with our results; and that nowadays, in advertisement and also in the street (cafés and restaurant) multilingualism has largely spread.

Alana Anne Colton, Amy Brenndorfer, Olivia Katie Colvin and Lucy Hannah Cook’s research  outlines similarities regarding our specific focus on cafés and restaurants. Despite having investigated deeper in this subject, they have also looked at the different restaurants’ strategies set up to keep authenticity, regarding the language used within the institution. Their first main aim was to look if and how language is used as marketing strategy in the Italian Restaurant “P”, centered in Manchester. In addition to this, they also examined if the language used by the staff affects or not the customer’s dining experience. By focusing their analysis on this notion of authenticity, which is one of our key point, they give an adequate definition of this term, which is “something that is made or done in the traditional or original way or in a way that faithfully resembles to the original.’’ (Colton, Brenndorfer, Colvin Cook 2014: 2). Having carried different quantitative and qualitative methods such as questionnaires, interviews and observation, they realized that the language used in the restaurant, Italian, does definitely help to create an authentic atmosphere for the customers. In fact, almost 94% of the staff use both English and Italian to speak with the clients. Colton, Brenndorfer, Colvin and Cook’s conclusion is that the use of Italian is a strategy to keep identity and the restaurant’s authenticity.

Finally, in order to collect information about the spread of English and its expansion over time, we chose to read Jason Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner’s article (2000). In this article, we learned that the growing and expansion of multilingualism is a reaction to “people who need to be bilingual or multilingual in their daily communicative functions or who consider that they, or their children, have a potential need for it.” (2000: 3).  English has, in fact, spread due to colonialism but has maintained for other reasons. Other languages have spread with colonialism, like Spanish and French. However, they differ in the “speed and extent of its growth also in mainly monolingual countries in the Middle and Far East, and in many parts in Europe.” (2000: 5). English has quickly become a “lingua franca used in several activities like trade, tourism, air travel, popular media, sport, science, technology and many other fields of importance in contemporary life.” (Cenoz and Jessner 2000: 5). It is important to discern their observation made in 2000 from ours made in 2018. Cities, in almost 20 years have developed, and Lausanne has also become an important city with more and more international communities. They, however, already observed that “English had become visible throughout Europe and beyond a large number of domains such as commerce (…) and tourism.” (2000:10). They also noticed that it had become the “dominant language of advertising, especially for consumer goods” (2000:10) which support our observations made in this paper.

 

Contextualization

To answer our research question on the linguistic landscape, we have chosen to focus mainly on a certain type of establishments which is the restaurants, cafés and food businesses in the center of the city of Lausanne. Indeed, by walking around the center of Lausanne, we have noticed that several of those establishments were using different languages in their brand names, menus, slogans, etc. Obviously, due to their geographical position in the center of the city, those restaurants and cafés are more visible and thus might attract and ‘’welcome’’ a larger customer type with different nationalities, for example.

In fact, Lausanne is in full development, regarding the economy, urban planning, public transport and mobility which are sectors in continual change. As a popular tourist destination, this capital also contains a larger number of different international companies. By hosting the International Olympic Committee and other international agencies, Lausanne is an important city. In fact, this city is really involved in supporting its inhabitants and has thus set up several political programmes to help integration. On the strength of this support policy, the city has also engaged an integration policy for foreign populations. Regarding its demography and ethnolinguistic groups, Lausanne is a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, which is also the capital and the biggest city of the Canton de Vaud. Nevertheless, although this city includes a total of 145’892 inhabitants (October 2018), 62’631 of them have not the Swiss nationality, which is nearly the half of the total. In 2017, 40’648 of the non-Swiss people were originated from the European countries. However, from the 1980 and nowadays, the number of Asians and North Americans has significantly grew. Despite the fact that the nationality does not necessarily reflect the linguistic repertoires, it still gives an idea on the diversity in Lausanne.

Nowadays, this centered district (fig.1) became more and more popular through time with its many restaurants, cafés and also shops and commerce. Undoubtedly, this district might be known and attended by mostly everyone from different countries and nationalities.

Figure 1: map of our research district from Google maps

 

 Methodology  

By walking around in the central neighborhood of Lausanne, we were surprised to see how many cafés and restaurants use multilingual signs. We decided to go in the center, since it would be surely in this specific area that we would find more interesting ‘’examples’’ of multilingualism than in another neighborhood which is less used.  We initially started to analyze the commercial discourse and signs of both shops and restaurants/cafés, by looking at the brands, the window displays, the signs and notice boards in front of the establishment. Nonetheless, realizing that our data would be too broad, we decided to focus only on the different establishments which provide food and drink. Since those businesses have to attract people in order to get customers and to run their business, they have to use different strategies regarding their written public discourse, on the window displays for example. Indeed, using multilingual signs could either be a strategy to attract the eye of the potential customer, or to reflect the nationality of their product and to maintain their authenticity. Therefore, we started first to take pictures from the street, mainly of the window displays, the brand names and also of some notice boards promoting a specific product. Then, in order to complete our analysis, we decided to collect more data by going inside the institutions, taking pictures of the menus and even asking extra information by talking to the waiters/sellers. In this manner, we decided to look at which languages the establishment use, how those languages are presented (hierarchy, size, colors, …)  and for what purpose. Our data is thus made up of eight different institutions in the center of Lausanne, divided in restaurants, cafés or shops that sell food or drinks as ‘’take-away’’.

Considering Lausanne as a city that contains a lot of migrants, we were not so surprised to find many different types of signs in different languages. Including people from different nationalities, this seems natural that the establishments address the customers in many languages in the menus or the written signs. Moreover, as English has become an international language, we were not surprised by the numerous English brand names which, most of the time, outline a way to follow a trend.

 

Results and Discussion

We realized that Multilingualism was used for two different purposes. Thus, we grouped the different restaurants and cafés into three distinct categories: first, the ones which use another language in order to keep their authenticity; second, the ones that use multilingual signs mostly in English (L2) as a marketing strategy to attract customers by following the trend; and finally, the ones who appear to mix both of these two strategies. As presented in the graph below (fig.2), the idea of maintaining authenticity is slightly above the use of English as a lingua franca. Having delimited three categories, we will now proceed to the analysis and discussion of those results.

          Figure 2: Graph on the different strategies by using multilingual written signs

 

Maintaining authenticity

Firstly, focusing on the notion of authenticity, we have selected the restaurant “Le Central 5” which has a neon light on its front wall where it is written: “Central Park”. This neon actually comes from the original name of the restaurant opened in the 1970s, “period in which the American culture was trendy”, as affirmed the waiter of the restaurant. What is more, they do not only maintain the authenticity of the previous restaurant, but also the authenticity in their menu. Indeed, they keep the original name of the food they serve: “chicken” in English (fig.3), and “carne de porco alentejana” in Portuguese.

Figure 3: Central 5’s menu

Another commerce that uses language in order to convey it authenticity is the “Pida Bar”. In this case, it is not English that is used, but Italian. Italian is here used in order to reflect the origin of the products they sold. The term ‘’Pida’’ is a romagnol dialect which is also intriguing. We also noticed that besides using Italian local products, they also transmitted their origin in the front window, by using the colors of the Italian flag. Nevertheless, we can still notice that there is a mark of English (‘’take away’’) which reflects this trend of ‘’fastness’’ that appears nowadays in our society.

Figure 4: The Pida Bar – window display

The last café we classed in this category is actually an international brand, “Starbucks Café”. Because it is an international chain which initiated in America (Seattle), we can observe that they will always keep the same strategy in all their cafés: the names of their articles (coffee, food, tea, objects) are in English, thus intensifying their origin. What is more, they sell American type products (cinnamon rolls, bagels, muffins, donuts, …). Nevertheless, the slogans directly addressed to the customers will be adapted to the native language of the city the Starbucks is based, which is in the case of Lausanne, French.

Figure 5 and 6: Starbucks’ sign in the street + menu in the café

English as a lingua franca

The second category regroups institutions using English, because it is an international language, as a tendency that has spread these past few years. For example, the case of the restaurant “Luncheonette” which uses English, not only on the window display, but also in its menu. First of all, as they mix a large number of meals from different nationalities in their menu (“Wraps grillés”: “Quesadilla”, “Jimmy le Grec”, “La Créole”, …), the strategy “maintaining authenticity” is abandonned due to the fact that they do not focus on a specific nationality.  Therefore, English is in this case used to follow a sort of trend, because this international language is nowadays understood by most people in this region of the world.

Figure 7: Luncheonette – window display

Another café that uses English as a lingua franca is “Tekoe”. This Swiss brand of coffee shop uses English to describe the characters of the products on the packaging as this language is international. What is more, because Switzerland is composed of four national languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh), they had to make a selection of the languages that appear on their products label. Consequently, due to aesthetic and marketing design reasons, they favored the English language. Indeed, as the manager of the shop told us, English language is definitely more direct and easy to use than any other language. Moreover, their expansion in Spain and the online selling of their products influenced their choice of using English as an international language. As she said: “Internet sales does not have boundaries and therefore needs an international language that everybody can understand.”

Using both strategies

Finally, some of the establishments we visited use both of these strategies. It is the case of “Mexicana” which uses some Spanish words in order to convey their authenticity. In fact, the Mexican authenticity is expressed through colors and drawings on the wall (see fig.8). However, it is French that is used in the menu since it is the native language in the city. On the other hand, we have noticed that English is used in the slogan “Taco Tuesday”, which refers to a special offer they have that day of the week. The use of English rather than French is probably due to the alliteration that the ‘t’ produces.

Figure 8: Mexicana – writings on the wall

Another example of the use of multilingualism as both strategies is the Chinese restaurant “Chinatown”. The most striking use of multilingualism are the Chinese signs, not only in the front of the restaurants, but also on the menu. There is so a clear claiming for their authenticity as a Chinese restaurant. In addition, they also use French (the most spoken language in Lausanne) and, German; in order to refer to the two main languages used in Switzerland. Thus, it shows their will to reach a large amount of people. Interestingly, despite the fact that there are already three strong languages presented in their menu, English still appears due to its status as lingua franca.

Figure 9: Chinatown – menu

The last café we visited was the “Black Bird Café” which also uses English in its name (like Chinatown). This café actually uses English language in order to reflect the authenticity of their English breakfast and other meals from the American/ English culture: pancakes, milkshakes, bacon, peanut butter, …. However, something that surprised us was the manner they ‘’code-switch’’ between English and French in the menu.  In fact, for example, the titles of the menu are in English, but the description are in French. In this way, the use of English seems to be used in order to catch the attention of the customer, in a trendy way.

Figure 10: Black Bird Café’s menu

Having analyzed and categorized all our data, we came up with the main and general observation that multilingualism is mostly present everywhere and that most of the time it occurs between English and another language L2. In addition, as we can observe through the graph (fig.2), multilingualism is rather used as a strategy to express authenticity. Nevertheless, it is important to be conscious that the results found are subtly different (3 vs. 2: which is a very small difference), due to the limited sample of data, and thus our results have to be taken carefully.

Conclusion

Keeping in mind that we have mainly focused on the restaurants and cafés in the center of Lausanne, we tried to understand how and why multilingualism was used in those establishments. Throughout the analysis of our data, we came to the realization that multilingualism was used conforming to specific strategies.  Actually, multilingualism is either a way to reflect the authenticity of the establishment, or a manner to follow the tendency of using English. In fact, we have observed that English was one of the most present language due to its important position as a lingua franca nowadays. Nonetheless, due to our selective choice of data, we obviously cannot make an overall conclusion as there are so many other restaurants and cafés centered in this district. In order to enlarge our research, as our analysis is only external and based on our own observation, we could eventually go back in the selected institutions, get interviews with the staff or the customers, observe the customers’ linguistic repertoires for example, in order to confirm our results or not. Nevertheless, now that we have produced this research, we realized how omnipresent multilingualism is all around us, on each street corner, and that it could be interestingly used as different strategies for commerce.

  

References  

Cenoz, J. & Jessner, U., 2000. English in Europe: The Acquisition of a third Language: The Spread of English. Clevedon, Buffalo, Toronto, Sydney: Multilingual Matters,

Colton A., Brenndorfer A., Colvin O. K. & Cook L. H., 2014. An analysis of multilingualism in two Manchester branches of Restaurant P. Multilingual Manchester,1-14. Available at: Google Books, http://mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/An-Analysis-of-multilingualism-in-two-Manchester-branches-of-restaurant-P.pdf (26.12.18).

Piller, I. 2001., “Identity construction in multilingual advertising”, Language in Society, volume. 153- 186

Short history of Lausanne, available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lausanne Accessed on: 05.12.2018.

Ville de Lausanne, “Contrôle des habitants” Available at: http://www.lausanne.ch/lausanne-officielle/administration/securite-et-economie/controle-des-habitants/statistiques/evolution-mensuelle-nombre-habitants-en-2018.html Accessed on: 05.12.18.

Ville de Lausanne,  “Etat et structure de la population totale” Available at:  https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/themes/01-population.html Accessed on: 05.12.2018.

The linguistic landscape in La Riponne

By M. Florencia Cuadra and Eva Bouhana

Abstract

This study investigates the linguistic landscape of the area of La Riponne in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. Through the collection of pictures of multilingual signs in the area, we observe how the confluence of a variety of social groups affects the linguistic landscape. We identify several social processes influencing the diversity of the linguistic environment, namely tourism, gentrification and migration, and notice how languages convey different values within the same space, depending on their producers and visibility. Additionally, multilingual signs present in the area index an opposition between official, prestigious languages and migrant languages, as well as between official, top-down discourses and alternative voices in transgressive signs.

  1. Introduction

As part of our linguistic landscaping research, we chose to study the Riponne area, which is located right in the Lausanne city centre. From local residents to international tourists and migrants, from students to drug addicts (24 Heures 2016), the Riponne area offers an extraordinary cultural and social mix in different spaces, all in close proximity. Based on a corpus of multilingual signs photographed in this area, we were interested in observing how the confluence of people from very diverse social backgrounds shapes the linguistic landscape of the area, with alternative signs emerging alongside the official signs. This research will specifically analyse what languages official and alternative discourses use and what values are associated with these languages in both types of discourse. Firstly, we will go over various theoretical concepts relevant to our analysis. Secondly, we will give some statistics about the Riponne area in order to contextualize our research. Thirdly, we will analyse the results of our research and highlight how tourism, migration and gentrification shape the linguistic landscape. Lastly, we will make some concluding remarks and provide future research directions.

  1. Theoretical framework

The study of linguistic landscapes (LL henceforth) has been used as a tool to analyse the social diversity present in a given time and place. As a departing point, LLs have been defined as the set of written signs within public space (Backhaus 2007), such as posters, noticeboards and graffiti, among others, which may be part of both official and informal discourse (Landry & Bourhis 1997). Mooney and Evans (2015) further categorise these signs as either “top-down” when produced by an official government agency or the owner of a building or shop, or “bottom-up” when produced by individuals or groups. The authors also make the distinction between four types of discourse, these being regulatory (used to portray official indications or prohibitions), infrastructural (used to refer to a city’s infrastructure), commercial (used in marketing), and transgressive (used intentionally or accidentally to violate the semantics of a place). Additionally, Lefebvre (1991) highlights the set of relationships that occur within a place and how both social interactions and space shape the configuration of each other. One way these set of relationships can be studied is through what Coulmas (2018) calls city language profiles, which proposes a consideration of the language diversity within a specific area, assessing how social and linguistic variables interact.

Among the many language choices in LLs, two types can be highlighted in relation to our study: the use of English and the use of migrant languages within different types of signs. On the one hand, Piller (2001) argues that English in advertising is not only vested “with the meaning of authority, authenticity and truth” (p. 160) but also linked to internationality, the future, success, sophistication, and fun (p. 163). On the other hand, the use of migrant languages within ethnic businesses is a topic explored by Sabaté i Dalmau in her article about locutorios, i.e. migrant-tailored call shops, in Spain (Sabaté i Dalmau 2013). In order to bypass the legal, economic, and language barriers, these highly multilingual sites run by and for immigrants, provide various services in the language of their customers.

Going back to the topic of interactions between space and language, Blommaert, Collins and Slembrouck (2005) introduce the concept of interactional regimes, understood as the range of behavioural expectations, including language. Each space may have its own type of regime: either an ‘old’ one challenged by ethnolinguistic diversity (e.g. official institutions such as museums that use official languages prominently but have to accommodate to other languages too), or a ‘new’ one springing locally from contact, usually not supported by governmental institutions. When referring to the types of spaces created by the two regimes, the authors talk about monologic and dialogic places, wherein the former impose single regimes and are often monolingual, and the latter allow for multiple regimes to be present in one space, often translating into multilingualism.

The relationship between space and language becomes evident in the phenomenon of gentrification, which is bound to cause a modification on the LL. However, as cited by Papen (2012) referring to Ben-Rafael et al. (2006), the LL not only maps the population shift, but also allows for this shift to happen, attracting more businesses that can appreciate the modernity of the city. At the same time, however, other voices can emerge in protest of such phenomena, which is also reflected on the LL. Overall, considering past research on language landscaping will be useful in analysing our own corpus of data and in discovering the way social interactions and language choices influence one another in our chosen area of study.

  1. Contextualisation

Located between the immigrant neighbourhood of Tunnel and the touristy pedestrian streets of the city centre, the Place de la Riponne is a social, cultural, commercial and transportation hub at the heart of the city of Lausanne, in the area called “Centre”. The Centre area accounts for 38% of jobs in Lausanne and for 9% of the population, while the sub-area of Riponne-Tunnel alone has a population of 1102 inhabitants, out of which 853 are between 20 and 64 years old (Ville de Lausanne 2018). The area delimited on the map below will be the focus of our study (the fuchsia icons indicate the sites where the pictures were taken).

Map 1: Map of the present linguistic landscape study

Map 2: Map of Lausanne, highlighting the position of the Riponne area

The square is bordered by the Palais de Rumine (which hosts four museums and a university library) on the western side; by the municipal administration and the local police station on the northern side; by the cultural venue Espace Arlaud, a post office and a labour union branch office (UNIA) on the southern side; and by a commercial street called Rue du Tunnel (close to the immigrant neighbourhood of Tunnel) on the eastern side. Additionally, the Riponne Square contains one of the largest covered parking lots in Lausanne (with a capacity of 1190 places), as well as a metro station just two stops away from the Lausanne railway station.

A major place of transit, attracting a varied population of local residents, international tourists and students due to its transportation and cultural options, the Riponne square hosts a popular marketplace on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, as well as regular flea markets and festivals. It also gives access to touristy pedestrian streets and squares (including Rue Haldimand, Place de la Pallud, Rue Neuve, Rue de l’Ale) of the city centre, with their many shops, restaurants and cafés. Another popular hang-out place is the bar called “The Great Escape” (which overlooks the square), always crowded on Saturday evenings. In the summer, a trendy bar also occupies the northern side of the Place de la Riponne, in the area called La Grenette.

Finally, we should also note that the Riponne square has had a bad reputation in Lausanne and is known for being a hub for homelessness and drug abuse. There have been regular complaints regarding insecurity in the area, which is why the presence of the police has been reinforced (24 Heures 2016).

  1. Methodology

As part of this research, we found the Riponne area to be an interesting place to investigate since it presents a rich mix of populations and linguistic variety, being central to commerce and tourism. From the graffitied wall of La Grenette to the steps of the official Palais de Rumine, we wanted our corpus to reflect the multiple facets of the Place de la Riponne, which is why we took pictures of multilingual signs in different locations in and around the square, including in the parking lot, next to the subway entrance, inside the Palais de Rumine, and in the adjacent commercial streets. To see the specific locations, please refer to our collective Google Map, where all pictures have been classified according to specific criteria such as the main and secondary languages used, the type of discourse used, the type of medium and the related activity domain. Our pictures are marked by fuchsia icons (as on the map above).

In total, we selected twelve pictures for analysis, which were meant to reflect various social processes at work in la Riponne such as:

  • the gentrification of the square, especially towards the south of the square, with shops trying to attract a well-off, international clientele
  • the influence of tourism, especially in official institutions like the Palais de Rumine and in advertisements
  • the role of migration, visible on the shopfronts of ethnic businesses, but also in bottom-up messages in the form of private ads or subversive posters against authorities
  • the surfacing of alternative voices within the area, seen in the graffitied walls

Our objective was to show how various written messages and voices (with varying degrees of visibility) intersect, overlap or clash in a single neighbourhood, sometimes even on a single board, thus revealing the tensions and transformations this area is undergoing.

Even though we both knew the Riponne area from our own experiences, this research was an interesting process as we started paying attention to signs we had never seen before and looking at familiar places with fresh eyes. Besides, we also had the opportunity to discuss with the shop clerks of one of the ethnic businesses we photographed, as we could not identify the language on the window front (which was in fact Amharic). The research raised our awareness about the complex “profile” of this neighbourhood due to the confluence, over just a few thousand square meters, of people from many social and cultural backgrounds, and their written signs evoking different ideologies. As these people cross paths or live alongside one another, sometimes without even realizing it, the signs around them bear traces of their presence, revealing a cohabitation of sorts between the most diverse populations.

  1. Results and discussion

All twelve photographs depict multilingual signs that feature messages in two to five languages. French (as the official language of Vaud) is used in all twelve pictures, while English (mostly used as a lingua franca) is present in all but one. The other languages represented on the pictures are German (another official language of Switzerland, but not of the Canton of Vaud); Amharic, Spanish, Portuguese (all three as migrant languages), Chinese (in a poster promoting the exhibition of a Chinese artist’s work) and finally Vietnamese (language of a travel destination).

In order to analyse our data, we decided to regroup it by types of signs (shopfronts, institutions, advertisements and transgressive signs) to identify similarities and differences so as to see how alternative bottom-up voices emerge alongside official, top-down discourses.

5.1. Shopfronts

The two pictures below illustrate the contrast between the commercial strategies of two types of businesses located on the Rue du Tunnel, which borders the Riponne square. Picture A shows an ethnic grocery shop where Spanish is the predominant language, while Picture B shows a Swiss bag store.

Picture A, La Tienda de La Esquina store front

Picture B, Qwstion store front

We found it interesting to set these two pictures in opposition to illustrate two co-occurring social processes taking place in La Riponne: the impact of migration versus the gentrification of the area. While ethnic businesses promote the language of their community (here Spanish), targeting a specific clientele of migrants speaking their language, Swiss shops build on the prestige of the “Swiss-made” label and mix signs in French and English in order to target an international, well-off clientele. Connecting this with Piller’s research on the values of English in advertising (Piller 2001), we can deduce that the latter type of business uses English as a way to construct an ideal customer, that is a young, future- and success-oriented, sophisticated and fun. This also transpires in the message written on the shopfront, which puts an emphasis on quality, contemporary designs and the use of sustainable materials. The idea of English as the language of modernisation and progress is very clear in this bag store, even when French is the de facto primary social language in the Riponne area, as well as in the rest of the city of Lausanne. The depiction of such values on shopfronts attracts new businesses that can see the global identity of the city, while fuelling the process of gentrification (Papen 2012). On the other hand, the use of migrant languages on the ethnic businesses’ shopfront is an example of an alternative voice coexisting alongside the use of the official Vaud language and English as a lingua franca, thus indexing locality and globality in the same space.

Interesting to note is that ethnic businesses using migrant languages are more present towards the northern side of the Rue du Tunnel, going towards the Tunnel area, which is an immigrant neighbourhood (Ville de Lausanne 2018) while shops like the Qwstion store, using multilingual messages in French and English, are rather located on the southern side of the Riponne area, close to the more tourist city centre.

5.2 Official institution

We took two pictures inside the Palais de Rumine depicting multilingual signs that reflect the multifunctionality of the building, which hosts four museums and a university library. Picture C below features the entrance steps of the museum, with an official, top-down message designed to entice people to continue their visit. This sign reflects the official language policy of the museum, which uses French as the official language of the canton in larger characters, then German as the most widely spoken official language in Switzerland and then English as lingua franca for the rest of the visitors who speak neither of these languages. We should also note that Italian, the third official language of Switzerland is not present at all, which may indicate that the Italian-speaking linguistic community is a minority in Switzerland and not considered big enough to add a translation into Italian.

Picture C, entrance steps of the Palais de Rumine

Picture D was taken in the same building, just up the stairs from picture C, in the outer room leading to the entrance of the university library. As opposed to the latter picture, here the personal ads left on the board by private individuals are clearly bottom-up and reflect the whole range of languages spoken in Lausanne. French, the official local language, is the most visible language on the wall, in terms of size and prominence, but other languages are also represented, including German (another official language of Switzerland) and migrant languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and English. Looking at our analysed space from Blommaert et al.’s perspective (2005), it is interesting to see how a single building can mix various interactional regimes: the official top-down language policy of the museum designed for tourists, and alternative, bottom-up messages posted by and/or targeted at people frequenting the building, reflecting the impact of migration in Lausanne. The various linguistic signs index the dialogic practices in place in the Palais de Rumine, due to the touristic, academic and social function of the museum, where lots of visitors from both within and outside Switzerland (tourists, local residents, Swiss and international students, etc.) converge for various purposes.

Picture D, noticeboard in the library

5.3. Advertisement

Both pictures below are advertisements that portray the authoritative voice, i.e. the message that catches the eye (Piller 2001), in a foreign language rather than in French. In Picture E, located inside the Riponne parking lot, the English text “Events” dominates the panel, even though the subtitle “À ne pas manquer” (“not to be missed”) is in French and the events descriptions of the 4 Vallées ski resort are in both languages. In Picture F, from the Swiss airline Edelweiss and located at the metro entrance, a centrally aligned text in Vietnamese occupies most of the ad, with only the practical information in French. Two different commercial strategies can be identified here through the use of multilingual messages: on Picture F, the foreign language (written with a foreign script and unlikely to be understood by the local population) is meant to evoke exoticism and entice customers to travel to Vietnam to experience a change of scenery, while on Picture E, the use of English, the international lingua franca, is there to be understood by and attract an international clientele, building on the prestige and fun associated with the English language (Piller 2001).

 Picture E, 4 Vallées advertisement

 Picture F, Edelweiss advertisement

The two commercial strategies are shown through the use of multilingualism. However different, both ads promote a specific product and construct the identity of their targeted clientele. While Edelweiss is a Swiss company that targets a local clientele (all practical information is in the official local language), the 4 Vallées resort ad uses a mix of French and English in order to target a larger clientele, both local and international. Both ads reflect the impact of mobility in La Riponne, since they are strategically located in places of great transit, and of tourism since both ads entice customers to travel, whether inside or outside of Switzerland.

5.4. Transgressive signs

The two pictures below are of transgressive, bottom-up signs that use public, top-down urban facilities as a medium of support to express their opposition. Picture G shows a poster against the police on a wall in a bordering street and Picture H shows a graffitied wall located on the Riponne square. Both signs use French as their primary language and some English as secondary language. On picture G, the translation into English as lingua franca, could be a method to make the anti-authority message accessible for more people. Although the poster is not signed, we can arguably assume that it was produced by members of social movements in favour of migrant rights, following the recent death of a Nigerian migrant in police custody in Lausanne (20 Minutes 2018). In this context, the use of English on the anti-police poster could be understood as part of a wider global discourse of protest against the police that has been spreading around the world, especially on social media, following widespread scandals about police brutality (e.g. in the USA).

Picture G, anti-police poster

The values associated with English on the graffitied wall in Picture H are different. Here, most graffiti, whether in French or in English, reveal an idealistic vision of society (e.g. “peace and love” or the crosswords in French including verbs like “love”, “believe” or “dream”). Thus, English is arguably used to reproduce the words of the hippie movement of the 1960s, and therefore indexes an alternative global discourse about society, advocating for a lifestyle outside of the mainstream consumer society and probably opposing the gentrification of the area. The fact that there are almost no orthographic mistakes in these messages makes us think that they were produced by people with a certain level of education; however, the area hosts such a mix of populations that it would be difficult to locate the authors.

Picture H, graffitied wall in La Grenette

In these transgressive signs, English is used to express the voices of less visible communities, still pointing to a larger international community of alter-globalist social movements. The proximity of these transgressive signs to the local police station and to public facilities adds to their subversive effect and indexes the tensions in the area. Alternative voices do not have any medium of their own to convey their messages, so they just juxtapose their message over existing official buildings or advertisements made by others. For example, on Picture I, promoting the Liu Bolin art exhibition in the Elysee Museum, the transgressive ACAB acronym in non-standard English (meaning “All Cops Are Bastards”) has been drawn as coming from the Chinese artist’s mouth. In this way, the artist is used as a “spokesperson” for the anti-police movement, showing that this discourse transcends borders. Transgressive signs, therefore, add to the diversity of the LL and offer a medium for alternative voices to be heard within the community.

Picture I, Liu Bolin exhibition poster

  1. Conclusion

This qualitative study on the Riponne area helped shed light at how the inhabitants of the area influence their linguistic space. The convergence of various social groups is evident in the environment’s linguistic landscape, which gives a more detailed view of the diversity of its inhabitants, including Swiss-born residents, migrants, students, tourists and drug addicts. The languages employed by official top-down and alternative bottom-up messages are not necessarily intrinsic to one kind of message, as we saw in our corpus of data. English was used in both types of signs, as well as French. The values associated to English in particular seem to overlap, as both official institution signs and transgressive posters link it to progress, education and internationality, among other such values. The configuration of the Riponne area has allowed for alternative official and unofficial voices to emerge, as visible on the ethnic grocery shop front and the anti-police posters. This not only reflects the impact of migration and globalisation (as seen for example in the fact that the current global discourse of anti-police brutality can find a voice in a local area).  It also reflects the varied identities and profiles of the people inhabiting the space, even if they may only be transitory residents (such as students and tourists).

Our sample of pictures aimed at reflecting the many varied practices at work in La Riponne, such as advertisement, business and the emergence of alternative voices. However, we are aware that our data is not necessarily representative of the real linguistic landscape. In future research, special attention should be put on gathering a more representative sample of the area as a whole so that the linguistic landscape can accurately show the frequency of the usage of certain languages, of the types of discourse and signage present, and of the different processes at play.

References

20 Minutes. (2018, September 18). Policiers accusés d’homicide intentionnel. Retrieved December 27, 2018, from: https://www.20min.ch/ro/news/vaud/story/Mike-serait-mort-des-suites-de-son-arrestation-23974624

24 Heures. (2016, September 29). La police va montrer les muscles à la Riponne. Retrieved December 27, 2018, from: https://www.24heures.ch/vaud-regions/police-s-apprete-montrer-muscles-riponne/story/27368614

Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Blommaert, J., Collins, J., & Slembrouck, S. (2005). Polycentricity and interactional regimes in ‘global neighborhoods’. Ethnography 6/2, 205-235.

Coulmas, F. (2018). An Introduction to Multilingualism: Language in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gorter, D. (2007). The Linguistic Landscape in Rome: Aspects of Multilingualism and Diversity. Working Paper, Instituto Psicoanalitico Per Le Recerche Sociale, Roma.

Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16/1, 23-49.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Mooney, A., & Evans, B. (2015). Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.

Papen, U. (2012). Commercial discourses, gentrification and citizens’ protest. The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Breg, Berlin. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16/1, 56-80.

Piller, I. (2001). Identity constructions in multilingual advertising. Language in Society 30/2, 153-186.

Sabaté i Dalmau, M. (2013). Fighting Exclusion from the Margins: Locutorios as Sites of Social Agency and Resistance for Migrants. In A. Duchêne, M. Moyer and C. Roberts (eds.) Language, migration and social inequalities: A critical sociolinguistic perspective on institutions and work (248-271). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Ville de Lausanne. (2018). 01 – Centre. Retrieved December 15, 2018, from Commune de Lausanne: https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/quartiers/presentation-des-quartiers/01-centre.html

Ville de Lausanne. (2018). Cartes thématiques. Retrieved December 15, 2018, from Commune de Lausanne: https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/quartiers/cartes-thematiques.html

Logic of Identification and Construction of a Narratee: A Linguistic Landscape Study of the Internef’s Hallway in the UNIL Campus

Logic of Identification and Construction of a Narratee: A Linguistic Landscape Study of the Internef’s Hallway in the UNIL Campus

Mukuna Lola and Betti Paul

Abstract

This study investigates the realisation of event advertisement logics adopted in the posters located in the Internef building of the UNIL Campus, more specifically through specific language choices constructing an elitist multilingual academic narratee. Similar studies that have previously examined the subject in the field of Linguistic Landscape (LL) demonstrated that “identity formation in advertising tends to work through identification with narrators and narratees (O’Barr 1994)” (cited in Piller, 2006, p.3) and so consequently the advertisement  construct the implied reader. Taking into consideration that identification strategies are part of the narratee construction, we thought that it should be therefore possible to establish a correspondence between the narratee and the linguistic landscape she or he occupies. To determine which specific narratee identities were constructed in the particular LL setting of higher education at the University of Lausanne, we conducted this research based on an image-based data collection in the Internef’s hallways in November 2018. The results show that all the narratees are indeed constructed by references to certain symbols, such as images or specific languages (English in our case) that are embedded in systems of value proper to the specific social fields of the Internef building which are the Faculty of Business and Economics and Faculty of Law.

 

  1. Introduction

This paper investigates the realisation of events advertisement logics which implies by specific language choices a logic of identification that, in the particular setting of an academic community, therefore constructs a peculiar narratee. The focus of this paper was chosen with the interest to explore the linguistic landscape of the specific area of the Internef’s hallway, located in the Internef building (Faculty of Business and Economics and Faculty of Law) of the University of Lausanne campus in Switzerland.

In her study, Piller discussed: “these [logic of] identity constructions [in] the discourse of (…) advertising” (2006 ; p.153). She investigated the construction of the implied reader in commercial and non-profit German advertisements. Her research showed that the construction of a narratee seeks the identification of potential buyers that share the same ideological or aesthetical values that the narratee. Taking into consideration that identification strategies are part of the narratee construction and that the Linguistic landscape is affected by them since “advertising tends to work through identification with narrators and narratees (O’Barr 1994, cited in Piller, 2006, p.3), we thought that it would be therefore possible to establish a correspondence between the narratee and the linguistic landscape s/he occupies.

The aim of this study is to shed light on the targeting strategies of commercial and non-commercial advertisement posters on the UNIL campus, and more precisely, in the Internef’s hallway. Using an image-based data corpus that was collected by taking pictures of displayed posters localised in the hallway area of the Internef’s building, we will analyse the construction and logics of events advertisements. Considering that: “[t]he body copy of the advertisement constructs the narratee” (Piller, 2006, p.154), we will investigate how language, in particular language creativity, creates a logic of identification, which takes part in the construction of a multilingual academic elitist narratee.

This paper is structured as follows: Firstly, we will consider a theoretical framework of what previous studies acknowledged about the linguistic landscape coupled with the discursive and semiotic creation of the narratee that is the focus of our research. Secondly, we will give a contextualization and justification of our choice. thirdly, we will explain what methodology was used to collect, select and investigate the data. Penultimately, we will expose the results and interpret them in a discussion. Finally, we will outline in the conclusion the main findings of our paper and also mention the limitations encountered as well as the possible future research orientations.

 

  1. Theoretical framework

Linguistic landscape (LL) commonly “refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space in a given territory.” (Ben-Rafael and al., 2006, p.8). But LL also participates in the narratee construction. In fact, “the field as the study of the symbolic construction of the public space” should be considered since “[i]ts linguistic markings may be analyzed according to languages utilized [for] their saliency and syntactic and semantic aspects.” (Ben-Rafael and al., 2006 ; pp.19-20).

Regarding the construction of the narratee, Piller, in her study of German multilingual advertising, also pointed out that: “identity formation in advertising tends to work through identification with narrators and narratees (O’Barr, 1994, cited in Piller, 2006, p.3) and that  “representations of societal ideals, societal concerns can be used to call for identification” (Piller, 2006 ; p.156)

From these assumptions, we were able to hypothesise that each poster of our data could construct a specific kind of narratee and that it would possible for us to reconstruct this narratee by reading which type of identity it tries to construct through the logic of identification strategies and language strategies.

In our study, English is used to call for an economic identity construction, since our advertisement samples are related to the economic field or to attract identity profiles that value certain practices. That is to say, each field requires a specific linguistic capital. Indeed, when it comes to the structuration of LL, Bourdieu’s (1983) tradition sees social reality as consisting of power relations between categories of participants in given fields. (Ben-Rafael, Eliezer & Ben-Rafael, Miriam, 2015

Also as Kuppens interestingly pointed out “The meaning and/or humor of these ads can only be understood and appreciated if viewers are familiar with”(2009, p.118). If we define a community by a group of people that share similar symbolic representations such as moral values, language repertoires and social practices, we can thus establish that all the posters in the Internef’s hallway target a specific “community”. Furthermore, the implied reader constructed in these posters could therefore be identified by particular thematic and language that are associated with specific fields.

The present study is based on the aforementioned body of LL studies about the  realisation of the narratee. previous research reveals that language is at the core of identification mechanism. Later in this study, our results will be analysed and discussed with these prior findings in mind.

 

  1. Contextualisation

For the purpose of this study, we will specifically focus on the Internef’s building on the University campus of Lausanne, Switzerland. Built between 1975 and 1977, the Internef building houses the Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public administration, as well as the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne). Intended to receive 16000 students, it includes 5 audiences, numerous lecture rooms as well as the law and economics academic library. Our deliberate intention to have chosen the research context of Internef building, as a whole within a given academic setting, will hopefully outline a field that may justify a systematic study as it may constitute an interesting way of uncovering the possible correspondences between the constructed narratee of advertisements and the linguistic landscape he occupies.

As Arts students, that have most of their classes in the Anthropole (Arts, languages and philosophy building) building of the same campus, we are sometime given classes in some of the 5 audiences of the Internef building. We have noticed a remarkable difference in the LL that changes from one building to another. For example, Anthropole has more advertisment for musical events, art exhibitions, cultural events or philosophical conferences. And this difference led us question if the linguistic configuration of landscape (LL) reflects the faculties predominantly established in the buildings. Considering that: “Unlike nature, LL is however human-made and typically qualifies for Durkheim’s (1964/1895) definition of a ‘social fact’ as pertaining to social life, independent a priori from individual desires or inclinations. Hence, LL items appear to passers-by as ‘givens’ of the space” (Ben-Rafael, Eliezer & Ben-Rafael, Miriam, 2015, p.21). One could imagine that to reach an intended audience, the people who produce advertisement make assumptions about the values of the targeted audience along with their shared knowledge and languages competences. From that, we can affirm that discourse constructs identities.

We also chose this space because of our assumptions about social phenomena taking place in the Internef building. Indeed, we do assume that a causal link exists between the values carried by the faculty, and the configuration of its linguistic Landscape. Looking at the Faculty of Business and Economics official webpage, it states that HEC Lausanne: “has been training future executives and company directors to become the new leaders of the business world for over 100 years.”[1] and that: “[e]njoying a strong international reputation, the dynamic HEC Lausanne intends to continue its development as a leading public institution in integrated management and economic training at the European and global levels.”[2] These claims are to us symptomatic of the university LL setting because we can already see the inscription of the university in an international study and research networks and thus can assume that it will shape the representation of the narratee. In fact, we can see that part of one phenomenon in the Internef building is to heighten awareness of international questioning to student, which is reflected in our data base. Many times, concepts linked to the economic field (e.g.: globalised economy, the start-up nation, international law) are part of things that are international.

All of this led us to the following considerations.  Firstly, it allows us to consider that every field consists a specific type of language and that each language value, according to the field, will be somehow mirrored in the LL. Secondly, this restricted and specific place of the Internef’s hallway will consequently involve a restricted and specific part of the populations (academic community). We will therefore certainly face a “higher, more complex and particular occurrences of field’s terminology and values that the Internef’s building hosts/carries.

 

  1. Methodology

The data analysed in this paper consists of five advertisement posters in the hallway that we collected by taking pictures of displayed posters localised in the hallway area of the Internef’s building back in November 2018. This commonly employed research technique geared toward eliciting a depiction of what type posters build the LL, offering a more likely representative portrayal of the everyday LL environment of the Internef’s building.

Bearing in mind that we wanted to observe how textual artefacts, such as posters, construct the narratee according to the values of the faculties, we thought that reducing the linguistic landscape to the hallway was a judicious choice for two reasons. The first one being that the hallway is a major stopping-off place which make those advertisements visible to everyone, and therefore must adopt in this mass some visual and linguistic strategies to stand out from the crowd in order to attract the targeted audience.

But this research based on an image-based data had to go through a selection. Indeed back in November 2018, we actually took ten pictures of multilingual manifestation on posters. We decided to keep five of them that permits us to only focus our research on posters that were directly linked to the faculties of the Internef building. Thus, our corpus is not entirely representative of all the different kinds of events that are proposed, since we selected some images and not others. Furthermore, because posters are substituted all the time, implying that there is a constant evolution of the LL of the Internef’s hallway.

The data was then classified and analysed. After having selected which of the ten pictures fitted the best our research, we decided to write down a list of steps to follow when we will be describing and analysing each picture; in order to be sure it would let us to answer our research question. This list prescribes how to analyse the proportion of words according to each language as well as the typography used (bold, small or big), and the kind of images used in the poster. It then defines how to interpret these informations, in order to reconstruct the targeted narratee (Piller, 2006 ; p.163).

 

  1. Results

Among the five posters we focused on, one is almost entirely in English with a small amount of French (appendix A, fig.3), one is the opposite (appendix A, fig.5) and three have a balanced proportion of each language (appendix A, fig.1-2-4). In proportion, French is more present in our corpus. However, in all of them, English is used to catch people’s attention walking by the posters. Figure 4 serves as a good example. Indeed, although French is dominant in quantity, English words have a bigger size for fond or are in bold. Furthermore, English can also be used to make a pun or a joke, such as “workchope” (Workshop and chope, fig.5). graph 1 which illustrates how English words are categorized according to their use, highlights this peculiar usage of English.

Figure 4 : English words are in bold, more visible, But there are more French words but in smaller font

 

 

Graph 1 : How English words are used (some can be in bold and in a title, or for pun mixed with french in a title, etc…)

 

French on the other hand was mainly used to provide practical information about the location, date and time of the events or procedure details for example. In the FIDAG award for example (fig.2), location and date of informational conference is written in French at the bottom of the poster. But mixing English and French to convey the message to university students is also a possibility. For example, the “Workchope” pun in fig.5, uses English as a base to create a bilingual pun composed of the word workshop and the French word chope, that refers to a mug of beer. The drawing of a man whose brain is connected to the beer by battery cable confirms the pun.

fig.2

Images behind the linguistic signs are also relevant to note. We can see the person depicted on the poster on data protection (fig.1), is probably a young man, whose face is hidden. The lights behind him are blurred. Both of these choices are linked to the subject of protection. The poster on circular economy (fig.3) uses a green circle and trees as symbols to suppose the trend of a more ecological economic development.

fig.3

We also noticed that, as we expected, some words were specifically related to certain social fields. Words such as “circular economy incubator” (fig.3) and “FIDAG” (fig.2) are related to the economical field. And words like “elsa”, “data protection” and “RGPD” (réglement général sur la protection des données, all from fig.1) are related to the juridical sphere. Finally, the word workshop, that is used to make the pun “workchope” (fig.5), is related to the educational/academic sphere.

We can thus observe that in this corpus of data, English can be either a more casual language to make jokes or catch attention, and also a language employed for the specific value it has in the field to which it refers. Alternatively, we can see that French is the official language, since it is used to communicate the informations that are necessary to the practical understanding of these advertisement (see graph.2 below).

 

  1. Discussion

The results of our study reflect the constructed character of linguistic landscapes (LL). Indeed, LL can be understood in terms of symbolic construction of the public space (Ben-Rafael and al. 2006, p.7). It gives a representation of which social group interact within, in our case, the Internef building of UNIL. Although is not perfectly representative of all types of possible occurrences, it reflects the plurality of targeted narratee (Piller ; 2006) that can be affiliated to specific faculties of the university. Among these faculties, we noticed the presence of three of them: HEC (economic and commercial school), Law school, and GSE (geosciences and environment). Our selection focus mainly on HEC-related posters.

Considering that: “From [a] presentation-of-self and primordialist perspectives, one would hypothesise that identity markers of communities would imprint themselves quite strongly on LL” (Ben-Rafael and al. 2006 ; p.10), identity markers of HEC and Law school can indeed be identified throughout the posters. For the HEC, economical lexicon and the high proportion of English-dominant posters underline the relation between the faculty and their identity markers in the LL. Law school related posters also uses specific lexicon such as “RGPD” and “elsa” (fig.1).

The outstanding importance of English as a lingua franca in cities (Ben-Rafael & Ben-Rafael 2015 ; p.35) can be seen in two different ways. Firstly, as explained earlier, its relation to international and economical networks makes it a valorized and authoritative language in the HEC and also in the Law school. Indeed, the concerns about international/European issues such as data protection (appendix A, fig.1) highlight the necessity of English to communicate between different countries about such topics. In another way, the importance of English is underlined by the possibilities it offers to make puns (fig.5), hence catch the attention of passers-by.

As we already underlined Ben-Rafael & al. ‘s claim earlier, LL is human-made, and qualifies for the Durkheim’s (1964/1895) concept of “social fact”, thus appearing to passers-by as “givens” of the space (2006 ; p.21). Social facts also have the particularity to impose themselves to the individuals. Hence, the values and symbols constructed or perpetuated through the posters participate to the construction of the social identities of students that interact with them. In the HEC-related posters, the value of English, as the economic language (appendix A, fig.2-3-4) influenced the choice of using it in these posters and also perpetuate its own legitimacy in the “field” (Bourdieu 1983, 1993, cited in Ben-Rafael and al. 2006, p.9). This specific value in the economical field is anchored in the HEC’s culture, therefore used in non-economical context, such as the figure 4 which promotes a faculty party in a nightclub and still uses English in bold in the title.

Piller (yesr) underlines the constructive effect of advertisement (in our case commercial posters for events) by stating that: “the social order is constantly being re-created by reference to model discourses such as advertising” (Corston-Oliver 1998, cited in Piller, 2006, p.156). In our study, these “discourses” (Foucault (1972:49), cited in Piller, 2006 ; p.155) are posters that use symbols linked to specific social fields. These references to . Piller’s concept of narrate helps to understand these strategies. He: “pointed out that the implicit reader (…) is constructed not only as bilingual in English [and French], but also as a [student] who [has specific] values” (Piller, 2006 ; p.163).

We identified in our corpus which narratee was constructed, and how. As an example, the poster about circular economy (appendix A, fig.3) constructs a narratee that values ecological concerns and recycling, but also economical and managerial interests, who desires to lead the construction of a start-up that binds these interests and values. Another example is the FIDAG consulting award poster (appendix A, fig.2). The low-poly hare and the countdown, linked to the “FIDAG” word referring to the economic sphere, constructs a narratee that is a competitive HEC student, interested in entrepreneurialism, start-ups and managerialism. An “ambitious and adventurous”[3] student that is not afraid of risks, ready to run to the top and who desires to win an internship in financial consulting. All these narratees are constructed by references to certain symbols, such as images or specific languages (English in our case), that are embedded in systems of value proper to social fields.

Finally, in all our posters we also found considerable use of the official language (in our case French). On the one hand, it may express à la Bourdieu (Ben-Rafael and al. 2006), the power of institutions aspiring to assert the validity in LL of societal symbols. But it would however simultaneously express the actors ‘collective allegiance to these all-societal identity symbols (Ben-Rafael & al. 2015 ; p.34). On the other hand, a hypothesis could be that some information is necessary to be understood, and thus are written in the official language.

 

  1. Conclusion

The aim of this study was to investigate how language, in particular language creativity, adopts a logic of identification, which takes part in the construction of a multilingual academic narratee.

The main findings of this study confirm the presumptions we have made concerning the language creativity involved in the construction of a multilingual academic elitist narratee: translanguaging, alternation (e.g. RGDP & Data protection), mixing English and French to convey the message to university students (e.g. work-chope), puns that require a good knowledge of the language used, all of these are just a few examples of linguistic creativity at UNIL that is most likely not to be found in the same degree in other places in Lausanne (and especially in non-commercial signs). Still, the adopted pattern seems to be redundant: the use of English and writing systems are in brands when practical information is given in French, the official language, in these signs.

We have seen that an undeniable elitism is implied by the subtlety of language (such as puns) and the context of specific language use which indirectly only construct a higher educated narratee. As Eliezer Ben-Rafael & al. accurately mentioned  “LL analysis allows us to point out patterns representing different ways in which people, groups, associations, institutions and governmental agencies cope with the game of symbols within a complex reality.” (2006; p.27) Hence, all narratees of this study are constructed by references to certain symbols, such as images, specific language (English in our case) and terminology that are embedded in systems of value proper to social fields.

As mentioned previously, some potential limitations in this study included the ones of our analysing data since we excluded some posters that did not fit our precise research question and because we restricted the linguistic landscape to only the hallway of the Internef building. We should therefore extend these observations on a longer period of time, and also  see if our assumptions are applicable to the entire building.

Hence, after our first attempt to analyse the various discursive and symbolic manifestations of the narratee construction in the Internef’s hallway, possible future research orientations could be to figure out if different articulations and configurations can be observable in other departments of the UNIL campus and if so, consider if each LL is representative of its buildings’ faculties that the UNIL campus houses.

In conclusion, we found that our hypothesis of a particular logic of identification, presenting a specific and undeniable elitist language strategy linked to the faculty’s values which simultaneously correlate with the configuration of its linguistic Landscape, that constructs a higher educated narratee, was correct.

 

Appendices

 Appendix A :

Figure 1 : law school poster for a conference

Figure 2 : HEC poster for consulting award

Figure 3 : HEC poster for startup incubation

Figure 4 : HEC poster for student party

Figure 5 : GSE poster for after-class party

 

Appendix B:

Graphic 1 : How English words are used (some can be in bold and in a title, or for pun in a title, etc…)

Graphic 2 :  Which language is used for practical information

References

Eliezer Ben-Rafael , Elana Shohamy , Muhammad Hasan Amara
& Nira Trumper-Hecht (2006) Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel, International Journal of Multilingualism, 3:1, 7-30.

Ben-Rafael, Eliezer & Ben-Rafael, Miriam, 2015 “Linguistic landscapes in an era of multiple globalizations” Linguistic Landscape, 1:1, 19 – 37.

Kuppens AN H., 2009. “English in Advertising: Generic Intertextuality in a Globalizing Media Environment” Applied Linguistics, 31:1, 115–135.

Piller, Ingrid, 2006. “Identity constructions in multilingual advertising ” Language in Society, 30:2, 153–186.

[1] https://www.unil.ch/hec/en/home/menuinst/a-propos/carrieres.html

[2] https://www.unil.ch/hec/about

[3] used terms on the FIDAG website to describe students that participate to this competition. https://prixstrategis.ch/FIDAG-consulting-award/ 

Introduction

Course lecturer: Maria Rosa Garrido Sardà (mariarosa.garridosarda@unil.ch)

Spring Semester 2018

“Multilingual Lausanne” is a linguistic landscaping (LL henceforth) project carried out by 2nd-year English linguistics students taking the course “Introduction to Multilingualism in Society” at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland).Our collective goal is to observe, document and critically analyse the use of different linguistic resources in written signs located in Lausanne. LL is used as a pedagogical tool to learn how to do research in sociolinguistics and to raise awareness about the role of multilingualism in social transformations and in different types of mobilities. In line with citizen sociolinguistics, this blog and the associated collective Googlemap (below) aim to generate and share knowledge through 2.0 webs of participation.

Participatory research

This project was inspired by citizen sociolinguistics (Svendsen, 2018; Rymes and Leone, 2014), which encourages participatory research by ordinary citizens that study the social world in which they live to generate situated knowledge in collaboration with researchers and research institutions.

“Citizen sociolinguistics has, moreover, the potential to provide research experience, stimulate curiosity, further research, public understanding of science and increased (socio)linguistic awareness and knowledge by involving the public in sociolinguistic research” (Svendsen, 2018, p. 140)

Citizen science has the potential of generating large data sets by far-flung citizens that compile information about their environment, be it monarch butterlies (in one of the earliest citizen science studies) or written signs. In this spirit, this participatory project contributes to the Observatori del discurs of the EDiSo association (Studies of Discourse and Society), which is committed to educating university students through collective LL projects included in course syllabi. This platform shares LL data gathered by university students in different countries through project blogs, its own Facebook page, on the Urban Voices app (not available during our project) and thesis repositories.

Crucially, this new paradigm alters our epistemological assumptions about what counts as knowledge  and redefines the role of the academic researcher. The underlying assumption in “Multilingual Lausanne” is that these young university students being trained in linguistics are competent observers of social reality and in particular, linguistic practices and written signs that are accessible to them in their everyday lives in the city. My role as a lecturer was one of training and guidance to enable these students to carry out the project in alignment with the objectives of our course. This participatory project was limited and structured, but it allowed for the development of students’ creativity since they gathered original data and proposed a research lens that has resulted in original research contributions to LL.

Linguistic landscaping as a pedagogical tool

Linguistic Landscape refers to “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards,  street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings” (Landry and Bourhis, 1997, p. 25). Linguistic landscaping (LL) investigates the visibility and salience of “languages” in public spaces. Linguistic resources fulfil not only informational but also symbolic functions as a markers of power relationships between languages and communities. Investigating the production and distribution of linguistic inscriptions in public space illuminates social transformations such as gentrification, migration and touristification which involve relationships, tensions, conflicts, resistance and struggles among those inhabiting that physical and social space. Although there is an increasing number of publications in the area of LL, this methodology has little presence in academic curricula. Multilingualism in the public space might go unnoticed by university students who are either too familiar with their environment or who are totally new in it, as is the case of exchange students who cannot speak the dominant languages. In line with the potential outcomes of citizen sociolinguistics above, “Multilingual Lausanne” has two main objectives.

  • raising awareness about language in contact in Switzerland, the role of language in contemporary mobilities (e.g. tourism, migration, international study) and transformations in the linguistic market, with a focus on English as a global language.
  • learning how to do research in (socio)linguistics: reading original research articles, formulating a research question, collecting data through observation (complemented by interviews in some cases), analysing the individual messages and the social values attached to them and finally writing a short research paper for the wider public (i.e. the blog posts here).

I initially asked the students to observe, locate and photograph written signs in public spaces through linguistic landscaping. They were free to explore different neighbourhoods and types of establishments for this project, without pre-defined areas or topics given to the students. On the basis of these observations, students selected a corpus of at least 8 pictures and posted them on our collective Googlemap with a classification taken from a similar project in Madrid that Luisa Martín-Rojo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) kindly shared with us. The categories include main and secondary language(s), support (medium), activity domain, type of sign (regulatory, infrastructural, commercial or transgressive) and production (bottom-up/top-down, monologic/dialogic). At that point, I gave them feedback about their data classification and the thematic coherence, as well as scientific relevance, of the corpus. This fieldwork was the basis for students to formulate a research question that they would analyse in their papers. Some groups subsequently adopted a multisited ethnographic linguistic landscape approach (MELLA) (Tavares, 2018), in which they approached and interviewed shopkeepers informally in order to further understand the production and meaning of the documented signs. Concerning ethics, the interviewees were informed about the study and asked if they wanted to participate. Their names have been kept confidential but the locations and written signs are found on our collective Googlemap. If shopkeepers and customers refused to talk to the students, their locations have also been anonymised.

The guiding questions that I gave students for analysis were the following:

  • In what linguistic varieties are messages presented? Is it top-down or bottom-up multilingualism? Which values are associated to these linguistic varieties?
  • How are the languages distributed in space? Which languages are central and which peripheral? In what ways are written inscriptions deictic?
  • Which social transformations and larger discourses do these signs index?

As a whole, these questions aimed to investigate the power dynamics and ideologies underlying the relations between social groups/individuals through linguistic and symbolic representations in the urban space. The analysis was both quantitative and qualitative. Their quantitative analysis comprised the distributional patterns of languages in the signs and the taxonomy of messages. The analysis was also qualitative since the projects were concerned with the social value of linguistic and literacy resources in signs. They looked into hierarchical relationships between languages in contact, the role of English in different sign types, the relationship between a specific language and informational or symbolic functions, and the conditions of production under certain linguistic policies and sociolinguistic norms.

Contributions (Spring 2018)

In the Spring semester, the “Multilingual Lausanne” collaborative project started out with a total of 12 contributions that are shared on this blog. They are divided into three categories: 1) institutions, 2) neighbourhoods and 3) transit areas. As explained above, the main goal of the project was pedagogical. For the vast majority of students, this was their first experience in (socio)linguistic research. This participatory project is also a contribution to citizen sociolinguistics, since the students’ sociolinguistic accounts of Lausanne might interest a broader public and provide topics for further academic and non-academic research.

References

Landry, R. and Bourhis, R.Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16(1), 23-49.

Rymes, Betsy and Leone, A. (2014). Citizen sociolinguistics: A new media methodology for understanding language and social life. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 29, 25–43.

Svendsen, B.A. (2018). The dynamics of citizen sociolinguistics. Journal of Sociolinguistics 22(2), 137–160.

Tavares, B. (2018). Cape Verdean migration trajectories into Luxembourg: A multisited sociolinguistic investigation. Unpublished PhD thesis: Université de Luxembourg.

Construction of Asian food industry in Lausanne

Abstract

Asian markets are spreading all around the world in recent years, and so as in Lausanne. This paper aims for an insight to Asian food industries by looking deeper into the linguistic landscape of Lausanne. Using the theoretical framework which includes top-down / bottom up approach and main and secondary language, we set a hypothesis on our own. We thought that French would be presented as the main language, while Asian languages would rather be absent. Data of Linguistic Landscape was taken by taking photos while walking through Lausanne-flon and analyzing reviews from Google maps and trip advisor. The research paper had found that the results did not correspond to the hypothesis. Asian languages were easily found in all the stores we investigated, and some of them were even presented as main language.

  1. Introduction

This paper was written to find out how the Asian food industry is constructed linguistically in the city center of Lausanne, a francophone city in Switzerland. We’ve been in Lausanne for a few months and realized that food from our home country really takes big part of our lives. So we decided to walk through the streets to see Asian food industries’ language use. Our hypothesis was that there wouldn’t be a lot of Asian languages used, since we had barely seen Asian languages while in Lausanne. In the theoretical framework, we’ll focus on top down/bottom up and main language and secondary language. In the contextualization, we’ll explain why we chose Switzerland, and especially Lausanne flon. Then we’ll talk about methodology, which accompanied taking pictures while on the street, and Trip Advisors and Google reviews for analyzing the distribution of the customers. We described each photo in the result part and made discussion based on that.

 

  1. Theoretical framework

It is important to have multilingualism in a country, as it can foster cultural exchange between people and is the main element of cultural diversity. (Lo Bianco, 2010) In order to analyze how multilingualism is incorporated into the city or country, Linguistics Landscape is a tool to do so. Linguistics Landscape, by definition given by Landry and Bourhis (1997), means:

the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration.

Landry and Bourhis have further simplified their meaning of Linguistics Landscape in 2002 to the use of language written in different medium that is shown in the public place. In this research paper, we chose commercial shop signs and advertising billboards as our targets. The followings are the concepts that we have used in writing this research paper: top-down, bottom-up, main language and secondary language.

Top-down vs Bottom-up

Signs could be interpreted as top-down or bottom-up depending on the producer. In this research, we follow the definition given by Ben-Rafael et al, (2006). They mentioned that ‘top down’ items are ‘issued by national and public bureaucracies’, and ‘bottom up’ items as ‘issued by individual social actors’, and those social actors include shop owners and companies.

Main Language and Secondary Language

Jasone Cenoz et al said in 2006 that ‘the linguistic landscape reflects the relative power and status of the different languages in a specific sociolinguistic context’. This relative power can be shown how languages are displayed. We analyzed the language dominant by dividing. it into two types: main language and secondary language. Main languages are those written first, bigger, colored or with a bold while secondary language serves as an additional role to this, with a less significance.

  1. Contextualisation

There is no doubt that Switzerland is a very globalized and multilingual country. They have four official languages (French, German, Italian, Romansh), and 24.6% of the permanent population is foreigners. Lausanne, located in a francophone region, is the fourth biggest in city in this country, following Zurich, Geneva, and Basel.

The figures prove how globalized Lausanne is. The City Statistics Portraits made by DFI in 2017 tells that among its 135,629 inhabitants, 42.9% of the people are permanent foreign residence population, and permanent foreign residence population from Non-EU countries accounts for 15.4% of the whole population. This is a high proportion considering the fact that permanent foreign residence population takes up 24.6% and Non-EU permanent residence accounts for only 8.3% of the whole Switzerland population.

Although Asia is not significant in figures when it comes to permanent residence, it takes up huge part in tourism. According to Swiss tourism figure 2015, out of 19,576,295 of overnight stays made by foreigners, 4,741,090 of them were from Asia, which was biggest in numbers in continental analysis. China (Hongkong included) accounted for 1,519,100, 4th biggest number in country analysis.

There are some factors that made Lausanne multinational and multilingual region. First, it is geographically located near France and Italy, especially France just being one lake away. Secondly, Lausanne is the Olympic capital of the world. It has the International Olympic Committee, and that led a lot of other international sport federations to move its headquarters to Lausanne. It also has a lot of higher educational institutions, such as EPFL, UNIL, Lausanne Hotel School and IMD. Furthermore, it has also been a tourist city since 18th century, attracting tourists with its Alps that has been recently discovered back then. Lausanne was therefore able to join an enlarged economic area without being much industrial center back then. However, the influx of the immigrants, Italians in a large number, started to increase with the economic development of Lausanne in 19th century. Therefore, even the big river that goes across the town, the flon, was covered to support the economic development by providing even more space. Like this, geographical, sociopolitical, educational, touristic and economical reasons all drew many foreigners to Lausanne making it multilingual and multinational city.

In this globalized city of Lausanne, we particularly focused on the district of the flon. As we mentioned just before, it has been a center of economic development accompanied by migrant culture that started in 19th century. Even now, it is the must-stop place for foreigners since it is only 10 minutes away from the Gare, where most of the foreigners would start their journey in Lausanne and has population office for foreigners.

Just like flon could be the representation of foreign cultures in Lausanne, it is where Asian culture in Lausanne is most dominant, too. When we searched Asian Restaurants in a Google map in a city of Lausanne, we got a result like this:

<Picture 1> Asian restaurants near Lausanne Flon

<Picture 2> Asian restaurants in whole Lausanne

 

Clearly, Asian culture is most clustered around Lausanne flon. We had the similar results for Asian supermarkets as well. Therefore, we decided to go to flon in search of the  Asian food industry.

 

  1. Methodology

On 19th April, 2018, we searched some Asian restaurant and markets before leaving for flon by using Google maps and set pathway according to that. We walked and took photos of multilingual signs along that way. We took photos of other foreign restaurants as well because we thought it would be interesting to compare them with Asian stores. For analyzing three different usage of Chinese restaurants, we used Google and Trip Advisor review as well.

 

Before we went on to data collection, we expected French would be dominant language even in an Asian food store because of these reasons. First, it is natural to have French in a French speaking region, and Asian markets are no exception. Also, we thought stores cannot survive if they only appeal to Asian customers since Asian is minority in numbers in Lausanne. They have to localize their service first to appeal to the residents here or add English as well to embrace the tourists as well. Finally, we thought that store owners would expect that Asians inhabiting in Lausanne would already know French. Therefore, we set a hypothesis that the Asian language wouldn’t be easily found.

 

             However, this method had some drawbacks. This method was done in a superficial way, as it didn’t include real conversation with the people. Moreover, as there aren’t any official reviews or statistics of the restaurants, hence our analysis based on the reviews in google map on the restaurant may not be accurate. Furthermore, the lack of data could mean the comprehensiveness of the paper might not be enough.

 

5.Results

<Picture 3 Collective Google map>The yellow dots are data we used.

So, here’s the photo and explanations of the places we selected. We have six  restaurants, and two shops. We have three Chinese restaurants, all differing how they used their language, a Korean restaurant, Italian and Egyptian Restaurant. We have photos of two Asian market, Chinese and Japanese respectively. These stores were produced in a bottom-up way by the store or building owner and all had signs for commercial use. However, they all had communicative usage as well since they were used to give information about the store themselves and products they have. The detailed description of each places will follow with the pictures below.

<Picture 4: Ningbo>

 

This is a picture of a Chinese restaurant named ‘Ningbo’, which uses Chinese as a main language. It is written bigger with a red color to emphasize it in the menu and the banner. French can be also found below the Chinese character of the menu, but just for explaining the menu.

<Picture 5: Restaurant Orchidée>

 

This is a Chinese restaurant called ‘Restaurant Orchidée’. The main language is French, and the secondary language is Chinese. This is because the name of the restaurant and the menu are mainly in French, with some Chinese as an explanation.

<Picture 6,7: Chinatown>

 

The two pictures above are from Chinese restaurant called ‘Chinatown’. Out of menu  written in French, Chinese, and English, French is main language since it is bolded and emphasized. Also, the opening hours are only written in French.

<Picture 8: Restaurant Coreen>

This is a flyer of the Korean barbecue restaurant in Flon. They used different kinds of language, including Korean, Chinese, and French. However, the interesting thing is that even though it’s a Korean restaurant, they are not using Korean properly. It says it’s ‘한국어 바베큐’, which means ‘Korean language barbecue’, a complete nonsense. You can get this translation when you type in ‘Korean Barbecue’ in the google translator. Therefore, we can infer that this store owner was trying to gain authenticity by using Korean, but that attempt didn’t work out well because of the lack of proper translation.

<Picture 9: Prince d’Egypt>

This is an Egyptian restaurant called ‘Prince d’Egypte’. The main language used is French, since the menu and the name of the restaurant is illustrated mostly in French. The only word that is in other language other than French is ‘since’. We were surprised that they didn’t have any Arabic in it, neither in the menu nor the sign of the restaurant, even though it’s an Egyptian restaurant.

<Picture 10: Le Theatre Restaurant>

This restaurant doesn’t have a lot of explanations in foreign language other then Frehch. The main language here is French and English plays a secondary role explaining the menus. This restaurant had all the other signs only in English.

<Picture 11: Uchitomi>

In ‘Uchitomi’, a Japanese market, Japanese and French are used as a main language. The store banner, price tag and the leaflet are written in Japanese with a French translation below everywhere. The shopkeeper spoke French to non Japanese, and Japanese to Japanese.

<Picture 12: Mika>

 

This is an Asian supermarket named ‘Mika Alimentation Asiatique’, the main language is French, as all the price tag are only written in French. Chinese was seen as a secondary language in the banner of the store and decorations. The shopkeeper spoke French to non-Chinese and spoke Chinese to Chinese.

 

 

  1. Discussion

 

All of the stores that we analyzed produced signs in a bottom up way. This could be why all of the stores had Asian languages in the store. Since they don’t have to be tied with national ideologies, they can use the language they want to because there were no official languages designated for their use. So, they were accompanying Asian languages because they thought it’s their best strategy.

 

However, as it can be shown from the three Chinese restaurants above, how they used the language differed from the store to store. First, ‘Ningbo’ was using Chinese as a main language. Second, Restaurant Orchidee was using French as a main language, and Chinese as a second. Third restaurant, Chinatown was using French as a main language accompanied by English and Chinese below.

 

We thought that this difference in language use would bring difference in customers, too. We analyzed people who left google reviews to these restaurants.

 

Asian Non-Chinese Unknown Total % of Asian
Ningbo 14 35 1 50 28%
Restaurant Orchidee 11 94 1 106 10.3%
Chinatown 6 60 3 69 8.6%

<Table 1: Analysis of Google reviews>

 

Even though this google review can’t be full representation of the customer distribution, it showed that how you use your language affects the store’s customer diversity, and probably the owner of the store knew this as well, too. So we thought that this arrangement of languages had relationship with the store’s owner’s intention as well. If he wanted to appeal to the Chinese people living or travelling in Lausanne, he would make Chinese more dominant. These Chinese centered signs would make them feel friendly and give them a signal that the personnel in the store would be Chinese or fluent in Chinese. Therefore, you can get more Chinese customers. However, if the store owner plans to appeal to the locals here, you should have French as a main language since it is a francophone region. That was the case with Restaurant Orchidee, and the percentage of the Asian shows that it is more localized restaurant compared to Ningbo.

 

However, if the store owner wants to have tourists as the main customer, it is best if he has English menu as well to appeal more to the foreigners, since English acts as a lingua franca in this region. This was also proved by Trip Advisor review, too. Trip Advisor, a website that is usually used by tourists as the name says, is a site which has restaurant reviews for and by the tourists. While Ningbo had only 51 one reviews, Restaurant Orchidee had 75, and Chinatown had 85. It shows that this restaurant, with English menu, attracted most tourists.

 

Number of Trip Advisor Review
Ningbo 51
Restaurant Orchidee 75
Chinatown 81

<Table 2: Number of Trip Advisor Review>

 

We expected that the main language used would be French, while English would be used as a secondary language to aid the non-french speakers. However, unlike our expectation, we found that this is not the case with Asian food industries. Asian languages were, even though some differed in extent, spotted in all the Asian food industries, in the menu, price tag and name banner etc. In some cases like the Chinese restaurant ‘Ningbo’ and the Japanese supermarket ‘Uchitomi’, Asian language are even used as the main language, having more importance than French. Role of French was marginalized to supporting or practical purpose, to indicate location of the restaurant for instance.

 

Surprised with this result, we came up with a few reasons to explain frequent presence of Asian language in this francophone region.

 

First reason was for marketing. Presenting the home language of the shop can make the shop become more unique and appealing, thus arousing attention of the visitors and broaden the variety of the customers. Furthermore, it can clearly show which country has the shop originated from, and hence prove the authenticity of it. You may doubt its authenticity of an Asian shop that only uses French. However, when you see the shop using its assumed own Asian language, the authenticity of the shop will be stronger. Hence, the attractiveness to the customers will greatly elevate.

 

Also, it lowers the language barrier of Asians. In Asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan, it’s not common to encounter French in every day lives. So, they need their own language to help them understand what it is. Also, it’s not easy for them to just guess what the language just by looking at it since they are not linguistically similar. If you see the chart about linguistic distance below, Korean and Japanese has the furthest distance with French. So it is very likely that people from Asia would face difficulty in Lausanne, and therefore the translation in their own language is provided by the store owners who wants them as a customer.

<Table 3:  Closest and Furthest Languages>

Furthermore, they could be using their own language to preserve their own identity. By using their own language in a foreign context, they might be trying to remind themselves and show who they are.

 

However, we were surprised to find out that not all foreign restaurants were accompanying their home language just as the Asian restaurants did. For instance, in the Egyptian restaurant and the Italian restaurant above, there were no sign of Arabic or Italian. We thought that they had different reasons for that. First of all, we thought that Arabic language wouldn’t have much marketing power in Lausanne since not a lot of people from Arabic speaking country live in Lausanne or Switzerland. The report from Federal Statistical Office says that the Iraq has a largest number of the people from Arabic speaking nation in Switzerland, with the number of 8598. Since only the countries with considerable amount of people were mentioned specifically, we could infer that people from Egypt, or other Arabic speaking nations would have much more smaller population than this. This is comparatively small number compared to Asians, which is 154,023.

 

Also, in the Italian restaurant, they wouldn’t need Italian because of their cultural similarities with Switzerland. Italian is the second closest language to French, and the article from Italian Insider written by Corrison H. in 2016 says that typically learn French as their second foreign language, so it is easier for Italians to understand French without the aid. For some menus like Risotto, they are even spelled same in Italian. Rather, the menu was translated in English, aiming for the travelers. Even though there were no Italians, English could act as a lingua franca and make Italian people understand it. Therefore, there’s no practical reason to put Italian in the Italian restaurant.

 

  1. Conclusion

In this research paper, we looked into the construction of Asian food industry in Lausanne.  It was found that Asian food industries usually accompany Asian languages, whether it is main or secondary language. The reasons could be attributed to the way it was produced (bottom up), marketing strategy such as gaining authenticity or lowering the language barrier, and presentation of identity.

Though, there were several limitations in this research as well. It might be a being superficial and inaccurate. The study might be difficult to be generalized to whole flon area since there were only 8 stores analyzed. Though, all in all, it is interesting to find out that how Asian food industries were constructed and find out the reasons for that.

 

Reference

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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.

Jasone C & Durk G. (2006) Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages. University of the Basque Country, Fryske Academy. International Journal of Multilingualism. Vol 3, No.1. 67

Département fédéral de l’intérieur DFI, 2017, City Statistics portraits 2017: core cities . 7.

FÉDÉRATION SUISSE DU TOURISME. (2015). swiss tourism in figures 2015. 18.

Ville de Lausanne. History. Available at: http://www.lausanne.ch/en/lausanne-en-bref/lausanne-un-portrait/un-portrait/histoire.html Accessed on : 03/06/2018

Olga K. 2013. Language Distance: The Reason Immigrants Have Trouble Assimilating. The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/language-distance-the-reason-immigrants-have-trouble-assimilating/275561/ Accessed on: 03/06/2018.

Corrinna H. 2016. Italy has most language learners, fewest speakers. Italian Insider. Available at: http://www.italianinsider.it/?q=node/3635 Accessed on: 03/06/2018.

The potential purposes of foreign language uses in restaurants and grocery stores in West Lausanne

Authors: Florence Chollet & Anne-Sophie Resin

Abstract

In this essay, we discuss the potential reasons behind the use of multilingual signs in relation with restaurants and grocery shops in Lausanne. Our study focuses on the area of Chauderon and Avenue d’Echallens, which are both part of the district of West Lausanne. Our research is based on six restaurants and shops which presented signs in both French and at least one foreign language. We made two hypothesis about the use of the foreign language: the first being that it was used to communicate specifically with the local population that is a speaker of the language and the second being that the foreign language was used for commercial purposes and so did not have the same communicative value to it. After analysing the pictures we took and interviewing some people affiliated with the places we visited, we separated our six restaurants and grocery shops into three categories : the ones that fit into our first hypothesis, the ones that fit into our second hypothesis and finally, the ones that did not fit in either of the categories.

Introduction

We do not often notice how many different languages surround us. In this class, we were asked to pay attention to the signs that we encounter on a daily basis (a sign is any form of written information, such as advertisement, road signs, etc…) In this essay, we focus on signs we found in relation on restaurant and grocery shop windows. Our findings are limited to the area of West Lausanne, more precisely the neighborhood of Chauderon and the street of Avenue d’Echallens. We asked ourselves what were the different reasons behind the use of different languages on these signs. A foreign language can be used as a marketing tool because it vehiculates a certain identity. For example, a restaurant with a French name implies that it identifies with the typically delicate french cuisine, which is a form of commodification. But a foreign language can also be present without impling anything other that it is there to vehiculate a message destined to the ones that understand it. For example, a Sri-Lankan owner might post advertisement written in Tamil in his restaurant because he might want to address the Tamil-speaking population specifically, not because it would help him look more authentic as a restaurator. But as we will see in this essay, the line is not always clear.

Theoretical framework

Collins, J. and Slembrouck, S. (2007). Reading Shop Windows in Globalized Neighborhoods: Multilingual Literacy Practices and Indexicality. Journal of Literacy Research.

This research was conducted in Ghent in 2007. It focuses on the perception of the readers of multilingual signs in shops, depending on their fluency in foreign and local languages. “Shop and café signs in multiple languages are familiar features of polyglot immigrant neighborhoods. What passerby make of them, how they are read, is a question rarely addressed” (Collins & Slembrouck 2007 : 335). This study helped us understand more fully the importance of personal interpretation when reading multilingual signs. Even though we cannot discuss the perception of the signs studies due to lack of data, this article reminded us that it was important to look at the demographic context of the area in which we found the signs. 

Parzer, Michal, Astleithner and Rieder (2016). Deliciously Exotic? Immigrant Grocery Shops and Their Non-Migrant Clientele. International Review of Social Research.

This article shows that some non-migrants customers enjoy the culture of migrants and choose to shop in their stores because they offer a special experience. In their case, cultural differences are highlighted and celebrated. However this is to be nuanced, because “on the one hand, this can be seen as an expression of appreciation and recognition of foreign culture. On the other hand, it may also lead to the intensifying of ethnic classification and the strengthening of symbolic boundaries. “ (32)

Mankeka (2002). India Shopping: Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging. Ethnos.

This article takes us to the other side of the counter : this study took place in California and focuses on Indian grocery shops and the meaning that they carry. For one woman interviewed “Language and food are two ways to retain our culture” (83). The researcher explains that “Indian grocery stores form a crucial node in the transnational circulation and consumption of commodities and discourses about India”. (92) Or, as an Indian shop owner said “people don’t just come here to buy groceries. They come here for the whole package.” (80)

Magninin, Miller, Kim and all. (2011). The Psychological Effects of Foreign-Language Restaurant Signs on Potential Diners. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.

This study took place in the United-States, where 105 college students were asked to comment on a restaurant that they visited through photos. They all saw the same restaurant (which was decorated as a typical mexican restaurant), except for the exterior sign: half of the students were shown it English and the other half in Spanish. The same process was repeated with a Korean restaurant that was presented with with a sign in Korean or in English to test the reliability of the first experiment. The participants were asked to rank on a scale from 1 to 10 different traits concerning the restaurant’s brand personality and the authenticity of their food.

Jang, Liu, Namkung (2011). Effects of authentic atmospherics in ethnic restaurants: investigating Chinese restaurants. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

These researchers studied the effects of language and authenticity related to their dining experience in a Chinese restaurant. Through surveys, they asked participants if an authentic chinese ambiance would affect positively their dining experience and looked for a link between positive emotions and positive behavioral intentions, which could be all linked to a positive authentic experience. This study encouraged us to search for restaurants that presented as authentic and look for elements that would emphasize this feeling, particularly in the written and/or oral use of a foreign language.

Contextualisation

For this research, we focused on two different geographical areas: Avenue d’Echallens and Chauderon. The Avenue d’Echallens belongs to the Maupas/Valency neighbourhood and Chauderon belongs to the Centre neighbourhood[1]. Consequently, both are situated in West Lausanne. The type of institutions we targeted are restaurants and grocery stores that presented linguistic characteristics from other countries, cultures and ethnies.

One of the main reasons why we chose these specific neighbourhoods is because we knew their typical characteristics, since we are both residents of Lausanne and thus could find there plenty of grocery stores and restaurants selling products from other countries. Consequently, we started our collection of data on that basis and found lots of institutions that matched what we were looking for in those precise areas.

 

The Avenue d’Echallens is located in West Lausanne. This avenue bounds Chauderon to Prilly, a municipality located on the borders of the city. The LEB (Lausanne Echallens Bercher railway) passes by this street since 1873[2]. Since the installation of the railway, many accidents occurred. For this reason, the authorities of Lausanne decided to build a tunnel to secure the Avenue d’Echallens. The processus is already under way and will last until 2020, which causes an increase in traffic on that Avenue. Concerning its demography, the number of inhabitants is estimated at 3’872.

Chauderon, as the Avenue d’Echallens, is located in West Lausanne. This area is really important for the city since the edification of the Pont Chauderon in 1905 and the construction of Avenue de Beaulieu in 1912. Indeed, at the beginning, Chauderon was simply a little square with a fountain until it became an important crossroad for public transports, trade and business.[3] This neighbourhood connects (through Avenue des Terreaux) to Bel-Air and (through Avenue d’Echallens) to Prilly. Furthermore, the Pont Chauderon is essential since it facilitates traffic to the main train station. Regarding its demography, Chauderon has approximately 2’148 inhabitants.

West Lausanne covers many municipalities and includes Avenue d’Echallens and Chauderon. Consequently, the following statistics, from the Official Lausanne website, provide overall information concerning the social background and the percentage of foreign population in the West Lausanne area.

According to that information, 45,4% of West Lausanne permanent population has a foreign nationality. This indication allowed us to estimate that the areas in which we collected our data would present approximately the same percentage of migrant population.This proportion of migrants might justify or at least be one of the main factors explaining the great numbers of grocery stores and the high concentration of restaurants presenting foreign linguistic characteristics.

As follows, the statistics of the overall population provide an overview of the main nationalities in Lausanne. Therefore, the chart shows a majority of migrants coming from the European Union; a majority of French followed by Portuguese, Italians and Spanish. The proportion of Africans is much lower as well as the number of North Americans. However, the Latino Americans and Asians are more numerous.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_quartiers_de_Lausanne, accessed on 20.05.2018

[2] http://www.leb.ch/ligne-verte/un-peu-d-histoire.html, accessed on 20.05.2018

[3] http://www.notrehistoire.ch/medias/46200, accessed on 28.05.2018

Methodology

As we were collecting data, we walked around central Lausanne, paying close attention to our surroundings. We noticed a lot of foreign-language signs on restaurants showcases, menus and grocery shops windows. We realised that there was an interesting link to study between culture, language and cooking, and decided to start collecting our data with this focus.

Before starting to write, we looked at what others had already done. Many linguistic studies had been conducted on multilingual signs and even the influence of foreign languages on the dining experience of customers. Relying on these previous studies, we started situating our research question.

Later on, we faced difficulties finding data about the languages spoken in our chosen area. Instead, we found some data about nationalities in Lausanne from which we made an hypothesis about the languages spoken. Nevertheless, it is important to note that nationality does not equal language.

Results

We chose to analyse the signs corresponding to six different grocery stores and restaurants located in Avenue d’Echallens and Chauderon which are:

1) “Café Restaurant Chinois Dongpo”

2) “La Nonna Restaurant”

3) “McDonald’s Des Terreaux”

4) “Restaurant Gambatté”

5) “Anonymous Grocery Store”[1]

6) A grocery store whose name we could not translate from Sri-Lankan

Analysis of the signs

Concerning the distributional pattern of languages, on “Café Restaurant Chinois Dongpo”‘s showcase and the two restaurant signs, one can notice big red chinese symbols. French only appears once (in black) to indicate the name of the restaurant but is complemented by chinese symbols. French is only written on the slate to indicate the daily menu, in a non-permanent way. We also find the german name Feldscholössen on top of the chinese name of the restaurant, as well as a « wifi » sign on the window.

[1] The staff we met at this store did not wish to participate in the study, so we decided to anoymize the store’s name and delete its location on the map

Regarding “La Nonna Restaurant”, Italian is present in the name of the restaurant and on the menu. French and Italian are equally distributed : almost everything is translated in both French and Italian: name of dishes, type of meat and complementary information. However, the opening hours are only written in French.

 

“McDonald’s des Terreaux” presents interesting features, such as the use of English words in French phrases. English appears in big capital letters and French is used in smaller font.

 “Restaurant Gambatté”’s main sign on the entrance is written in French only. On the showcase, the logo is written in both French and Chinese. However, as soon as one enters the restaurant, the only language that appears is Chinese : on the walls, boards and decoration.

The « Anonymous Grocery Store » presents English, Tamil and French. On the sign of the shop, the three languages appear. On the showcase, English and Tamil are written in color and in a bigger font than French. A handwritten note, advertising for Sri Lankan movies and other documents in Tamil are fixed on the door on the third picture.

 

The last shop we focused on is a Sri Lankan grocery shop. On the showcase, the only language that can be found is Tamil. On the door, a note in Tamil and another one in French is fixed. The name of the shop and what is sold here is not explicit in French.

Interviews with owners and employees

At the “Restaurant Chinois Dongpo”, an employee we interviewed told us that most people that work there are Chinese. She simply said that it made sense to have a typical chinese decoration in the restaurant.

“La Nonna Restaurant” shows an equal distribution of both languages. When we asked why they used both Italian and French on their menus, the owner answered that it made more sense to write down the original names since they were serving Italian dishes. He also mentioned that Italian people felt more welcome here because of that.

“McDonald’s des Terreaux” was easier to investigate because we both happen to work at McDonald’s. We asked our managers the reason why English was used so much on our displays and menus. We were told that one of the objectives of the brand is to be very consistent, so that a customer knows that he or she could have almost the same experience anywhere in the world. Therefore, McDonald’s uses English for all of its products to emphasize its American origin (which is an important part of it’s marking identity) but also to remain consistent and accessible.

In “Restaurant Gambatté”, only the main sign is written in French. We asked one of the employee why there was Chinese written on the walls. She replied that the inscriptions were in traditional chinese, which is typically used for decorative purposes. She added that the owners, a chinese couple, enjoyed having it in their restaurant.

The “Anonymous Grocery Store” showcases manifests an unequal use of English, Tamil and French. As we were taking pictures of the shop, the owner got out and showed us that she did not want us to take pictures. We tried to explain that it was for a study in the context of the University of Lausanne and asked why she fixed notes and posters in Tamil on the door but she did not understand, since she almost did not speak French at all.

The Sri Lankan grocery shop does not provide any information in French, except a note fixed on the door: French-speaking people cannot figure out what kind of items are sold there, unless they look through the showcase. The hierarchy of languages is clearly defined (Tamil over French) and the distribution of languages is unequal. The cashier told us that the reason why the majority of the information is written in Tamil is because he knows that there is a Tamil-speaking population here and that he wanted to address them directly through their language.

Discussion

The following restaurants fit into our first hypothesis, where the use of a foreign language is for communicative purposes. It is a way for the owners to communicate with the inhabitants of Lausanne that also speak their language. These restaurants or grocery shops do not necessarily exclude the people that cannot understand their language, however some messages are simply not directed to them.

“Restaurant Chinois Dongpo” undoubtedly addresses a Chinese community since the majority of the information is provided in Chinese. The languages are unequally distributed and some complementary information does not have its translation in French. However, the Restaurant does not exclude a potential French-speaking population since the price and details of take-away meals are explicitly written in French on the board at the entrance.

The general prominence of Tamil on the showcase and on the door of “Anonymous” and its use to provide broader and cultural information demonstrate that it targets Tamil-speaking customers. However, French and English-speaking customers are not excluded, since they can understand what is sold in the shop. The linguistic norms of French are, still, incorrect, which could mean that the owner itself may not speak French very well. This hypothesis was confirmed by our interaction with the owner of the shop that forbid us to take any more pictures.

The Sri Lankan grocery store we analysed corresponds to our first hypothesis. French is hardly present on the windows and was not spoken by the employee we talked to. Instead, numerous inscriptions (only in Tamil) advertise for different products, such as fresh crabs and squids. The fact that Tamil is not written in latin alphabet makes it very inaccessible to French speakers, which brings us to the conclusion that it’s presence here is a tool for targeting the Tamil-speaking population of Lausanne.

 The following restaurants fit into our second hypothesis, where foreign languages are used as a marketing tool. The foreign language is often chosen for its associated imagery and aesthetic. Being understood by the speakers of the language is not the main purpose behind its presence.

The “McDonald’s des Terreaux” corresponds to our second hypothesis. It is obvious that McDonald’s is not some kind of authentic restaurant of American tradition; it is a widely-spread chain of fast-food. McDonald’s, as the general manager we interviewed said, prides itself in being accessible and consistent. Although the use of English might contribute to the American ambiance of the fast-food, it is hardly the point.

“La Nonna Restaurant” undeniably corresponds to our second hypothesis. Even if it provides an equal distribution of French and Italian, the owner demonstrated that Italian is used as a commercial tool since they consciously want customers to associate Italian dishes’ names with authenticity as soon as they read the menu. Moreover, the fact that Italian appears before its translation in French indicates a conscious will to put the restaurant’s authenticity in the forefront.

Finally, the following restaurants are the ones that did not fit into either of our hypothesis. The first reason is that we cannot know for certain what the ideas of the owners of the restaurants or shops were due to lack of reliable data. The second reason is that in some places, a foreign language served a double purpose : addressing its speakers while still serving as a marketing tool.

The results concerning Restaurant Gambatté correspond to a cross between our first and second hypothesis. Firstly, the restaurant appeals to a Chinese population since the name of the restaurant and more details about what it served is provided in Chinese, which coincide with hypothesis 1. However, the use of French on the showcase, the menus and the main sign also appeals to a French-speaking population.

Furthermore, the singular use of traditional Chinese, used only for symbolic purpose as the owner said, alongside the traditional Chinese music that is played inside the restaurant serve a marketing function: it emphasizes the authentic look and environment of Restaurant Gambatté. According to this, we could establish a connection to a previous study, which results corresponds to our findings: “Effects of authentic atmospherics in ethnic restaurants: investigating Chinese restaurants” by Jang, Liu, Namkung. The results show that “Chinese menu presentation and Chinese music were important determinants of both types of emotions” (12) and show a general tendency to more positive emotions in an environment that is judged authentic.

Conclusion

The different restaurants and grocery stores we analysed belong to three different categories: in the first category, a foreign language (which most often does not use the latin alphabet) is used authentically to address its speakers on purpose. In the second, it is used as a marketing tool and in the third, it is a combination of the two: it addresses the respective speakers while serving a marketing function.

Some of the limitations we faced concerned the sociopolitical and linguistic background of these areas because we could not find revelant engough information. The statistics from the Ville de Lausanne did provide numbers concerning the nationalities of the inhabitants, but no data concerning the languages they speak.

Since we focused on two small areas, it would have been interesting to target a larger zone, thus creating a larger database including more restaurants and grocery shops presenting linguistic characteristics from other countries.

We would have also liked to have more in-depth conversations with the owners of the shops and restaurants in order to learn more about their actual intentions behind the use of certain languages. During out data collection, it was hard to find the owners, or simply anyone willing to talk to us. With more reliable information, we could have learned more about multilingualism in the world of restauration.

Bibliography

Collins, J. and Slembrouck, S. (2007). Reading Shop Windows in Globalized Neighborhoods: Multilingual Literacy Practices and Indexicality. Journal of Literacy Research.

Jang, Liu, Namkung (2011). Effects of authentic atmospherics in ethnic restaurants: investigating Chinese restaurants. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Mankeka (2002). India Shopping: Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging. Ethnos.

Magninin, Miller and Kim (2011). The Psychological Effects of Foreign-Language Restaurant Signs on Potential Diners. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.

Parzer, Michal, Astleithner and Rieder (2016). Deliciously Exotic? Immigrant Grocery Shops and Their Non-Migrant Clientele. International Review of Social Research.

Commercial use of English in Downtown Lausanne

Commercial use of English in Downtown Lausanne

Carolyn Miller & Gentianne Graham

Abstract

This blog entry focalises on the commercial use of English in top-down banners, posters, and signs throughout the Lausanne city centre. In total eight pictures were studied during this research of which two were restaurants, a yoga studio, a wax bar, swatch, a bank add, and a few clothing stores. It was found that the linguistic landscape was influenced by the commodification of English in the city centre of Lausanne. Throughout this paper this research question will be explored through the results found and will be elaborated on in the discussion portion of this blog entry.

 

Introduction

This blog entry will be covering the way in which English is used in downtown Lausanne for commercial purposes. We will be focusing our attention on the linguistic landscape of English in downtown Lausanne and how this influences a given consumer. When we were walking around downtown Lausanne we notice the evident use of English on banners, posters, and signs of commercial businesses. It was noticed that many of these businesses used English in bigger and broader fonts compared to the main language of use in Lausanne, French. The question is, has English become commodified in downtown Lausanne?To further this research question we will be looking at multiple research papers as well as our own observations to come to a relative conclusion. Throughout this research paper many examples from the Lausanne city centre will be explored to understand what kind of public is attracted to the to this multilingual destination where English is used by businesses. Do people notice the linguistic landscape as they walk around downtown Lausanne or has this become something that is ambiguous to people? In the article Linguistic Landscapes in a Multilingual World by Durk Gorter he explains that the:

linguistic landscape was already multilingual in some places, but today, due to globalization, a pure monolingual linguistic landscape is a rarity, if only because of the spread of English And non-English-speaking countries and the spread of foreign brand names, shop names, and slogans in monolingual English-speaking countries. (2013, p.191)

What Gorter is saying is that to find an urban area that does not use English for commercial use is a rarity due to globalization. Therefore a place such as downtown Lausanne with such a prominent use of English is not unusual as there is a diverse community of people that reside in Lausanne. In this blog entry we will explore all of these aspect through a theoretical framework, contextualisation, methodology, results and a discussion of our findings. In the theoretical framework we will discuss linguistic landscapes, the commodification of language, top-up productions versus bottom-down productions, the construction of space, and commercial discourse. In the contextualisation an overview of the history and social political background of Lausanne will be presented. In the methodology section the results from our findings will be expressed and a reflection of our research process will be given. Lastly we will discuss our observations and results in the discussion portion of this blog entry as well as discuss our research question.

 

Theoretical Framework

In this blog entry we will be focusing on a few specific terms in order to answer our research question. The commodification of language is a subject that is present in downtown Lausanne, it is defined as “the expression we use to describe how a specific object or process is rendered available for conventional exchange in the market.” as Heller, Pujolar & Duchêne (2014, p.545-546) in the Oxford Dictionary (2010). The commodification of English will be touched on throughout this research paper as we explore the linguistic landscape in the city centre of Lausanne. A Linguistic landscape as defined by Landry and Bourhis is the “visibility and salience of languages as on public and commercial signs” (1997, p.23). When walking around in downtown Lausanne there are many different types of visible signs, posters, and banners that are multilingual as they incorporate English along with French or another language. The production that we explored consisted mainly of top-down design and not bottom-up design. Dr. Maria Rosa differentiates top-down as being something that is produced by the government, local councils, or the owner of a building or site in which official languages and strategic multilingualism is used. As compared to bottom-up production that is produced by individuals or small groups that fabricate productions in a non-official manner and would for example use migrant languages (Rosa, 2018). The construction of space is “the emergence of new relations, be they economic, social or linguistic, tends to cause the emergence of new communicative and interactional spaces in a context of visible multilingualism.” (Rosa, 2018).  Language constructs urban areas and it seems as though in downtown Lausanne, English is an important factor in doing so as it is used on many signs, banners and posters. For the purpose of this research we concentrated on commercial discourses which is characterized as “advertising and related signage” (Rosa,2018) instead of the different types of signs such as; Regulatory discourses, infrastructural discourses and transgressive discourses.

 

Contextualisation

For our blog entry we chose to research the linguistic landscape in downtown Lausanne, with close to 130 000 inhabitants, Lausanne is the fourth largest city in Switzerland (Hello Switzerland, 2018). This district was chosen because of the large amounts and varieties of commercial businesses. The city centre includes the featured areas of Rue de Bourg, place and Church Saint-François, Palud Square, Palais de Rumine, Bel-Air Tower and Salle Métropole, Tour de l’Ale, and Lausanne-Flon. Between all of these locations many clothing shops, beautician shops, high end name brands, bakeries, and restaurants can be found. We wanted to analyse the linguistic landscape of this lively area of Lausanne. The main ethnolinguistic group of the city centre is french as it is in the French Canton of Vaud. There is a large variety of migrants in Lausanne which include; “people of French origin, 8% of the total population, are the largest group of residents of foreign origin, of which they account for 18%, followed by the Portuguese (17%), the Italians (11%), and, in equal place, the Spanish and citizens from countries of the former Yugoslavia (8%).”(Lausanne Tourisme, n.d.) This makes it evident that downtown Lausanne is a very international and multilingual area.

The first signs of activity in the Lausanne area were found through 8,000 years old traces of carved flint, some weapons, and hearths that were found where the cathedral is now located. In the 12th century the heart of commercial activity of lausanne was dominated by the port of Ouchy which was protected by a castle. By the 13th century lausanne had about 9,000 French-speaking inhabitants. In the 18th century, Lausanne was booming economically as there was tanners, textile specialists, clockmakers, stone-cutters, printers, and even some bankers were doing trade with Savoy and Geneva, as well as Europe and overseas. The 19th century was characterized by a boom in population of 20,000 people and was politically dominated by conservatives and liberals. The Flon river which used to cut through downtown was covered to allow for more economic development. The 20th century was when the urban development took a dramatic turn and the vineyards were retreated for the installment of roads. Lausanne became the cantonal capital in 1803 after the Canton of Vaud was created as an entity of the Swiss confederation. Since 1874, Lausanne has been home to the main headquarters of the Federal Supreme Court and of the International Olympic Committee since 1915. In 1993 thenternational Olympic Committee awarded it the privileged status of Olympic Capital.

 

Figure 1: Map of Lausanne, the area of relevance are between the numbers 101 to 110 under the district (centre).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Methodology

After this assignment was given to us we debated on where the data collection should happen. It was finally decided that it would take place in downtown Lausanne which is a very central place in Lausanne Switzerland. This area is known for its great shopping, amazing restaurants and fun night clubs. It is a very commercialized area and therefore it was the perfect location to answer our research question.

Once our location was chosen we decided to head downtown and start looking around the area. Our experience consisted of two separate visits to the the area in order to get the jist of it. The first time we visited, we simply walked around to see how present English really was.

Our initial expectations were that it would be quite difficult to find multiple examples of English being used in a commercial way in downtown Lausanne. Having both gone there multiple times and never noticed a strong English influence we expected this to be a little bit challenging. However, once we arrived with a fresh mindset and a clear objective it was very surprising to see how often English was used in commercial ways to promote a business. No pictures were taken during our first visit, this first excusion was just to get an idea of our surroundings and to get a first glimpse of the English influence. During our second trip we walked around and took twenty pictures of English being used to sell. We made sure our pictures represented different aspects of life but were still somehow all used in a commercial way.

Once our pictures were taken we gave ourselves a few days to look at them and think of the ones that would best fit in the purpose of this experience. We got together two days later to choose our top eight pictures based the following criterias; the description, if it was multilingual or Monolingual, the main language, the secondary language, the neighbourhood in which it was located, the medium/support, the activity domain, the type of sign, the production (top-down vs bottom up) and further observations. We analyzed all twenty pictures based on the criterias before choosing the top eight. The decision was quite difficult due to the amount of material we were able to collect and this is not something that we were anticipating. Once the final pictures were chosen we posted them on the shared google maps with our classmates. The main difficulty that we encountered was trying to narrow down the twenty pictures to eight since there was a lot of material that could have been used for this assignment. We gained a lot of knowledge on the amount that English is currently being used in downtown Lausanne.

 

Results

A breakdown of the results found after the analyses done on all eight of our final pictures following the criteria in our methodology.

 

Picture 1:

A multilingual poster for yoga classes that used both French and English as main languages. This was a commercial sign for a Health and well-being activity domain that used the top-down production. The name of the company is in English, however, the courses available were listed in French.

 

 

 

 

Picture 2:

A multilingual French BCV (Banque Cantonale Vaudoise) commercial sign uses the catchphrase “win back” in English by using a Top-down production. In this picture the main language is French and the secondary language is English

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 3:

A Multilingual top down window display on a cafe window with the word sandwich which is known as a English word, however was also a French term used in the 19th century. It is a Commercial sign used in a gastronomy domain.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 4:

A Multilingual commercial top down sign for an outlet shop called Mouton with the main language as French and the secondary language as English. The first words you read are in French, however the line right underneath is in English. This is the only example that used French is such a big way to attract the buyers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 5:

This was a monolingual English poster used for commercial purposes to promote Swatch watches, also known as Swiss watches. This poster was completely in English and situated in downtown Lausanne. It was a top-down production.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 6:

This sign was for a waxing bar in downtown Lausanne. It was a multilingual banner used in a healthcare domain for commercial reasons. It was a top down sign with English as the main language and French as the secondary language since English was the language used to attract the customers.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 7:

A sign for a restaurant called “eat me” that was monolingual English.This poster was a top down production used for gastronomy commercial purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 8:

A multilingual poster for a hairdresser salon with French as the main language and

English as the secondary one. It was a top down production used to promote a beauty salon. The whole poster was in French, however, under the main title the word Hair and Colour are found in English.

 

 

 

After getting all the raw data we analysed all of our results. All 8 of our pictures were used for commercial purposes and were being used in a means to sell a product of attract an audience. Since all the signs were professionally made by the owners they are all considered top-down productions. Out of the 8 pictures 6 were multilingual and 2 were monolingual English usually being the main language being used to attract the buyers.

 

Discussion

The purpose of this blog entry was to analyse the linguistic landscape of top-down signs, banners, and posters in the city centre of Lausanne. What caught our attention was the fact that the construction of the space was dominated by English. Lausanne’s main ethnolinguistic group is French and has been know to be this way since the 13th century.  It can also be noted that the most prominent migrants within the city of lausanne are French, Italian, Spanish, and Yugoslavia. None of these migrants come from monolingual English speaking countries yet English dominates in the construction of space of downtown lausanne. This thus spiked our interest, as we asked ourselves is English being commodified within downtown Lausanne? We chose to select eight pictures of different businesses which included a yoga studio, a wax bar, swatch, a couple restaurants, a bank add, and few clothing stores. For the most part all of these top-down identities were multilingual in French and English yet the English seemed to be the attracting component. The English could be characterized as the attracting component to the consumers because it was either in a different font, in a larger font, in a different color, or surrounded by a different color compared to the French. There was one outlier which was a clothing store called “le mouton” which had French as the main language followed by English. We were interested in the influence that English holds on the consumers and why it is such a popular technique of attraction in all kinds of commercial enterprises. In The Commodification of Languageby Monica Heller she indicates that:

Among the earliest critiques of globalization are those about the use of English by  British and American corporations to open up markets and create consumers, indeed, to eliminate competition and impose the tastes and habits of the English-speaking world on the rest of the planet in ways that, not coincidentally, leave control of products and their circulation squarely in the hands of British and American English-speaking citizens; this process is often referred to as “McDonaldization” (2010, p.105)

What Monica Heller is saying is that the English language has in a way weaned itself into the world of marketing and has almost taken control over non-English speaking communities, such a downtown Lausanne, because of its massive globalization. As Mikko Laitinen also mentions the omnipresence use of English in public spaces is dominated throughout the world and is widely documented. Another interesting research remark made by Ingrid Piller was that “the use of English tends to be associated with modernity, success, fun,and international orientation.” (2003) This is perhaps also another reason why businesses tend to add English into their top-down productions even in non-English speaking communities as it gives a care free affect. Lausanne is a town with a large student population; therefore when the businesses use English they are trying to target the younger consumers.

One of our other theories as to why English is such a present language in downtown Lausanne is that Lausanne is the olympic capital of the world, which is mainly held in English, this perhaps is another reason why English has a large role in the linguistic landscape of Lausanne even though it is not one of the official languages. The Olympics is a world renown event that occurs mostly in English. Therefore, the Olympics is usually associate with the English Language. Lausanne being the Olympic capital it is reasonable to find many English posters throughout the downtown. There are most likely many more factors as to why English is so often being used in the commercial setting. It would be interesting in future research to collect more data to reduce error. Another component that would be important for this topic would be to investigate how English is used in rural areas as well as urban areas. Perhaps urban areas have a more diverse linguistic landscape compared to rural areas because of the people’s diversity?

 

Conclusion

Ultimately, English has been identified in the linguistic landscape of downtown Lausanne on top-down productions as yet another tactic to sell to consumers. Throughout this paper the research question on the commodity of English in the Lausanne city centre has been explored through many lenses. It was found that English is used mainly along side French to enhance and to indicate “modernity, success, fun, and international orientation.” (Laitinen, M., 2003). Our research was limited to studying eight pictures of different commercial businesses that incorporated English into their top-down productions, the research question could have been more explored if there was a larger sample of pictures to study. Businesses are always changing their poster, banners, and signs as the seasons and trends change, perhaps more English is incorporated into their sales tactics in summer as there are more tourists during this season.  For further research it would also be interesting to observe how the commodification of English is in rural areas since we only analysed an urban area.

References

Piller. I.(2003). Advertising as a site for language contact. Annual Review of Applied   

Linguistics 23. P. 170-183

Opdycke, J. B. 1. (1914). News, ads, and sales; the use of English for commercial      purposes. United States.

Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An  empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 23-49.

Danet, B., & Herring, S. C. (2007). The multilingual internet: Language, culture, and      communication online. New York;Oxford;: Oxford University Press.

Heller, M. (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology,39, 101.

Gorter, D. (2013). Linguistic landscapes in a multilingual world.Annual Review of          Applied Linguistics, 33, 190.

Heller, M., Pujolar, J., & Duchêne, A. (2014).Linguistic commodification in tourism.      Journal of Sociolinguistics, 18, 539 – 566.

 

Webography:

Rosa, G.S.M. (2018). Linguistic Landscape [PowerPoint]. Retrieved from Moodle

Unil:https://moodle.unil.ch/pluginfile.php/997085/mod_resource/content/1/Sessio

n%206%20LL%20selection.pdf

Ng, S. (2011). Language and Power. 371-372.

Switzerland tourism (2018 ) Available at: at:https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/flon-area-lausanne.html

Lausanne tourism (n.d) https://www.lausanne-tourisme.ch/en/GP698/city-centre

Ville de Lausanne (n.d)http://www.lausanne.ch/en/lausanne-en-bref/lausanne-un-portrait/un-portrait/histoire.html

Hello Switzerland 2018 http://www.helloswitzerland.ch/-/lausanne-facts-figures

Ville de Lausanne, https://www.lausanne.ch/officiel/statistique/quartiers/cartes-thematiques.html

Ville de Lausanne,

http://www.lausanne.ch/en/lausanne-en-bref/lausanne-un-portrait/un-portrait/histoire.html