Analysing the Linguistic Landscape:

The Case of the District of Le Flon, Lausanne

 

Nuno Paixão Domingues & Sabrina Marquis

 

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Linguistic Landscapes approach has interested a lot of sociolinguists these past few years. In this research paper, we will carry on this movement of analysis of the Linguistic Landscape focusing on the touristic district of Le Flon in Lausanne. Switzerland being a country where an important variety of idioms are in contact with each other, the aim of the research is to observe how multilingualism is present in the linguistic signs observed and to explain the reasons of the results we found. In order to do this, we collected some pictures of the said area to form the data which will be analysed and considered previous studies in other areas around the world. This process allowed us to argue that tourism is a predominant, however not exclusive, factor in the shaping of the Linguistic Landscape of Le Flon. Furthermore, we also noticed and analysed the surprising lack of German signs, in spite of the fact that it is the most spoken language in this country.

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Introduction

 

The phenomenon of globalisation has brought to our society a fundamental notion: multilingualism. Switzerland being a country multilingual by nature because of its four national languages, we thought interesting to observe how these mixed with the movement of globalisation in a given touristic context. Effectively, tourism is one of the factors which helped to empower global proliferation. Consequently, touristic places are invaded by a net of linguistic signs which illustrates this melting-pot. Therefore, the aim of this research paper is to observe and analyse the multilingual signs in a touristic area. Many scholars have already worked on other well-known places around the world like Thailand and Algarve (see below), mobilising the Linguistic Landscape approach to conduct an analysis of the signs present in such areas. Nonetheless, Switzerland is a country where this sort of research has not yet been really engaged, despite being a region characterised by an important variety of nationalities and cultures. As a result, we chose to work on the Linguistic Landscape of the district of Le Flon of Lausanne (city imposed by our teacher). To do so, we took pictures of linguistic signs relevant for our research question which illustrates the Linguistic Landscape of this area. Then, an analysis of these will be conducted in order to see how official and non-official languages are represented in this touristic place. Accordingly, a theoretical framework will be organised to present previous studies and introduce main concepts of the research paper. Afterwards, we will contextualise the area of Le Flon and declare why we chose this particular place. Next, the methodology will introduce our methods and our opinion on the learning process. Finally, the sections of the results and discussion will display our analysis of the data we collected and the answer to the research question with regard to our results and also the ones found in earlier works.

 

Theoretical framework

 

As previously said, earlier studies of this Linguistic Landscape approach shed a light on specific touristic places. We selected four articles which illustrate thoroughly the purpose of our research and focus on different locations: Hahndorf (South Australia), S’Arenal resort (Mallorca, Spain), Almancil (Algarve, Portugal) and Nimmanhemin Road (Chang Mai, Thailand).

First, we will take an interest on the article of Adam Koschade about Hahndorf[1]. This city is the last German settlement in Australia, consequently, it has become a touristic place. This socio-economic factor is decisive, according to the author, in the shaping of the Linguistic Landscape, as explained in the very detailed chapter related to this matter. However, socio-historical and socio-political forces are also fundamental in the analysis of the linguistic signs. Indeed, this city has a strong German heritage and, paradoxically, a deep movement against this colonial origin which have constructed the context which resulted in the Linguistic Landscape selected. This is a remarkable choice of location by Koschade, because we can see through his article the conflict between tourism, history and politics that shaped this place. Also, he gives an enlightening presentation of Hahndorf which genuinely introduces this location to a non-specialist audience.

[1] Koschade, A. 2016. Willkommen in Hahndorf: A Linguistic Landscape of Hahndorf, South Australia. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies 3.1, 692-716.

The second article focuses on the resort of S’Arenal in Mallorca[2]. The research includes a survey of 224 informants’ expectations and perceptions about the Linguistic Landscape from various origins which illustrates really well the differences and similarities between their opinions and reality. Moreover, Antonion Bruyèl-Olmedo and Maria Juan-Garau introduce a normative description of the linguistic signs which highlights the mistakes occurred in these. This first axe is very interesting and demonstrates almost exhaustively what is the opinion of travellers about where they are most likely to find English signs and which language would be the most predominant. The second axe argues that there are a lot of errors in the English linguistic signs, what can affect negatively the resort and the customers. In conclusion, this article shows another approach to the question of Linguistic Landscape giving, for once, the readers of the signs an important role and demonstrating that, even if linguistic signs are made in foreign languages, correctness of these is important to satisfy the visitors.

[2] Bruyèl-Olmedo, A. & Juan Garau, M. 2009. English as a Lingua Franca in the Linguistic Landscape of the Multilingual Resort of S’Arenal in Mallorca. International Journal of Multilingualism 6.4, 386-412.

Then, Kate Torkington, in her article about Almancil, argues that the Linguistic Landscape actually has an impact on identity[3]. To corroborate her thesis, she had to exceed the original place of interest (Rua da República in Almancil) to the “Golden Triangle” area. This way, she could observe that there is an important presence of monolingual linguistic signs (exclusively in Portuguese and English) which demonstrates the creation of boundaries between Portuguese speakers and non-Portuguese speakers. Furthermore, according to her, English is more predominant, because it depicts the commercial discourse of this area where land is being sold to foreigners constructing, as a consequence, an “elitist place-identity”. Her article enlightens the understanding of the important notion of Linguistic Landscape about which a chapter of three and a half page is written. In addition, she explains the legislation of the commercial signs in that particular area in order to show what is the situation concerning the use of foreign languages and to contextualise the location selected, what we found to be a very original and relevant way of contextualisation.

[3] Torkington, K. 2009. Exploring the Linguistic Landscape: The Case of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the Algarve, Portugal. Lancaster Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching 3, 122-145.

Finally, concerning the article about Nimmanhemin Road, Tiwahporn Thongtong argues that tourism is a factor fundamental in order to understand the Linguistic Landscape of touristic places[4]. Indeed, this phenomenon is what will explain the presence of the universal language English or a wide-spread language like Chinese in a road of a city in Thailand. His article is very interesting, because it offers a more linguistic and rhetorical approach of the data, even including Politeness Strategies in his analysis. Also, besides the theoretical dimension, Thongtong states that there is a practical approach to the question. The use of languages such as English and Chinese in the linguistic landscape would enhance foreign language instruction, because of the fact that students would go beyond the classroom to learn and understand the roles of these idioms. In addition, as the data of the article is composed only by signs which type is linked to commercial discourse, it relates easily to our own data.

[4] Thongtong, T. 2016. A Linguistic Landscape Study of Signage on Nimmanhemin Road, a Lanna Chiang Mai Chill-Out Street. MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue 22, 72-87.

In this paper, we will use some concepts already mentioned below which are important for the reader to understand in order to fully grasp our research. The first concept is Linguistic Landscape on which the essay focuses. Linguistic Landscape is “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region”, as defined by Rodrigue Landry and Richard Bourhis in Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality[5]. In other words, every visible sign in written language you can observe in a given context (such as Le Flon in our case) is part of the Linguistic Landscape of the said context. Afterwards, the sign can be of various types of discourses depending on its nature or purpose, nevertheless, the only discourse needed in this paper is the commercial one. This includes all signs which have a function of advertisement or related signage.

[5] Landry, R. & Bourhis, R. 1997. Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16.1, 23-49.

Finally, it is important to distinct the couples top-down/bottom-up and monologic/dialogic. The first one divides signs which are either “official signs issued by public bureaucracies” (top-down) or “non-official signs posted by individuals or businesses” (bottom-up)[6]. Then, the second one separates linguistic manifestations which are either written by one author (monologic) or by several authors (dialogic).

[6] Mitchell, T. 2008. Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Language in Society 37.2, 312-313.

 

Contextualisation

 

To conduct our research on Linguistic Landscape, we had to choose a specific type of institution or neighbourhood within the city of Lausanne. Our final choice was Le Flon, a district of the said city. Because we had an important knowledge and frequentation of this area, we thought it would be enlightening for our own reflection and for the course to study this well-known place.

In order to contextualise Le Flon, we will present you first a brief general background which includes some historical, economic and socio-political elements. In the late eighteenth century, this area was an inhabited valley crossed by a river. However, after the industrial development, in 1874, the Compagnie du Chemin de fer Lausanne-Ouchy became the owner of this unexploited location to establish a route for transport between the port of Ouchy and the place Saint-François. By the end of this project and of the twentieth century, Le Flon was considered the main station of Lausanne. Nonetheless, because of its creative and alternative atmosphere and of the decadence of its buildings, it has a rough reputation.  Only a movement of renovation of the old infrastructures inverted the cause of its notoriety which encouraged businesses like restaurants and offices to settle in this refreshed neighbourhood. It is now administrated by Mobimo, a swiss real estate company which wants to carry on this developmental project.[7]

[7] Short History of The Flon. Quartier du Flon. Available at : https://flon.ch/en/quartier-du-flon/short-history-flon/. Accessed on : 27.05.2018.

Nowadays, this district is a place where you can experience all sorts of activities, because of the diversity of the services proposed (cinema, shopping, catering, night clubs, etc.). However, it is not a residential area, consequently we cannot include a demography of the district.  Tao Lounge Bar, one of the businesses targeted in our data, proposed this map of Le Flon in their site, which we find really representative of its current geographical situation:

 

Figure 1: map of Le Flon, as proposed by Tao Lounge Bar[8]

[8] Tao Lounge Bar. Available at : http://www.tao-lounge-bar.ch/. Accessed on : 27.05.2018.

 

 

 

Methodology

 

In order to find a relevant data collection, we first considered exploring the area of Lausanne’s station. Being the neuralgic point of the city of Lausanne, we assumed that the station and its surroundings would be a great place to conduct our study about multilingual signs in a touristic area. Nonetheless, afterwards, we thought of Le Flon, which has also become a place of great interest in the last decade for travelers and tourism generally speaking. Because of its attractiveness due to its permanent metamorphosis, Le Flon is, indeed, according to Le Temps, now considered as the new center of Lausanne[9].

[9] Skellaug, A. 2017. La Nouvelle Vie du Quartier du Flon. Le Temps. Available at: https://www.letemps.ch/economie/nouvelle-vie-quartier-flon. Accessed on: 02.05.2018.

Our data collection is made up of eight pictures we picked up from all the material we collected. Our data can be assigned to three categories: catering, advertisement, shops and leisure, thus providing a rich panorama with the aim of highlighting how multilingualism is preponderant in this touristic area. Considering that Switzerland is a multilingual country par excellence, our initial expectations were to find a lot of multilingual signs, especially written in German and Italian. Effectively, they are the Swiss official languages. Moreover, we also expected to encounter English signs, because of its universal nature. However, apparently, we were partially wrong. We looked for a long time for German signs without success. Nevertheless, we found, as expected, a lot of Italian, English and French signs, and we even found Japanese ones. We noticed the preponderance of English often used as the main language, sometimes combined with secondary languages, what shows that English is preferred in commercial and touristic areas.

On a more methodological perspective, one of our goals was to enrich our corpus with top-down data. Once again, we did not find what we were looking for, as we only found bottom-up instances. Because the absence of an element is also a significant source of information, here, we understood that the lack of top-down instances is a sign of the importance of commerce and of the individuals’ independence in this touristic area.

 

Results

 

As said above, our collection can be classified in three categories. The data of “Tao Lounge-Bar”, “Bar Restaurant LE TOKYO”, “Wawa’s Asian Kitchen”, “Leonardo” and “Cipriano Wine & Ham” can be assigned to the category catering. Then, the picture taken from “Pépé Cassius” can be assigned to the category shops. The signs of the “Let’s Go Fitness” can be assigned to the category leisure. And finally, the data “Amazing Jewelry” can be assigned to the category advertisement.

 

Catering

Our first data, “Tao Lounge-Bar” uses English as the main language and combines French with it. We can observe a code-switching: “Shishas’ Tao, best arômes”.  The choice to not to translate the word “arôme” in English probably comes from the fact that people do not necessarily know the word “flavor”. In contrast, the use of “best” is not problematic and is rather clever, because everybody knows this expression, what confers this sign of bar a certain style. It also allows the latter to be understood by everyone, what is the main goal of a commercial structure.

Our second data “Bar Restaurant LE TOKYO” is a picture of a Japanese lamp at the entrance of a restaurant. There is no second language and no allusion to English, the text is only written in Japanese as a decoration.

Our third data “Wawa’s Asian Kitchen” is a picture showing an advertisement and the opening hours of the restaurant on the window. The main language is English and the second language is French. Both are present, but are not mixed. The part of the window which concerns the offer, which is the most important part, is written with a bigger font in English : “local products”, “homemade”, “daily fresh”, “original recipe”, “craft beer”. Contrastingly, the part which regards the opening hours, what seems to be less important, because of the small size of the font, is in French: “horaires”, “cuisine non stop”, and “lu, ma, me, je, ve, sa, di” as abbreviations for the week days.

Then, the data taken from “Leonardo” shows a monolingual bar logo on the bay window written in Italian : “Mangi Sano Vivi Bene…”. The choice to write it all in Italian may come from a desire to immerse the customer in a completely Italian atmosphere, or from a need to re-negotiate one’s identity as we will discuss later.

The next data from “Cipriano Wine & Ham” is a sign of bar which includes three languages: English, French and Italian. Because of the correction of “day” to “Wednesday”, this data is a dialogic linguistic manifestation. In this case, it is interesting to see that an Italian bar chose to write all the menu and the advertisement in English and the descriptions in French, Italian being only used for the name of the bar. In so doing, the bar reaches a broader audience always with the aim of being the most attractive.

 

Shops

Our data from “Pépé Cassius” is an advertisement in a board framed on the window of a clothes shop. The main language is English, nonetheless French is also used. As seen above in another data, the main information is written in English while the secondary one, in this case the opening hours, is written in a small font in French. Here, it is interesting and funny to see how a clothing store makes advertisement for a breakfast event in English.

Moreover, the last data taken from “Amazing Jewelry” is an advertisement on the window of a shop that uses English for its slogan, but also French when it comes to give the address of the store. Once again, the English part is written in a more important font and is showcased as the main information, whereas the address which seems to be less important is written in French in a smaller font at the bottom of the advertisement.

 

Leisure

Our data of the “Let’s Go Fitness” is a banner of a fitness center. There is only one language used here. Subsequently, the name of the fitness center and the advertisement are written in English. This is interesting, because a wellness center is not usually a business for tourists. However, the sign is in English, what can show the banalization of the use of English in such signs.

 

Discussion

 

The first observation we can make is that the catering sector is the one in which multilingualism is the most prominent. In a touristic area such as Le Flon, there are a lot of restaurants and bars, what increases the opportunities to mobilize other languages, official or non-official ones, in the aim of reaching as many eventual customers as possible. Throughout the conducting of our research in a touristic area mostly defined by commercial matters, we could observe that no use of foreign language is innocuous. So, in the light of our readings and on the basis of our results, we came out with several hypothesis thus trying to explain the presence of these multilingual signs in our chosen area.

Switzerland being a country directly affected by immigration and tourism, our first assumption, which is obvious but deserves to be taken into account, is that English is preferred in most cases in this kind of areas because of its universality, thus providing a language accessible to a broader public. Our second hypothesis lays in the fact that using English seems to be something trendy nowadays: indeed, what is fashionable is attractive, consequently being an excellent strategy for these businesses. Subsequently, the aim of mixing English and any other language is, again, to reach a broader audience. We also tried to understand why we did not find any German sign. We came out with an assumption based on Torkington’s theory of linguistic landscape and its impact on identity that is applicable more broadly to all languages[10]: a coherent reason for this phenomenon would be that the omnipresence of English oppresses the less popular languages. Indeed, as a potential result of the English’s supremacy, we witnessed two situations: the first one is an absence of a certain language in the Linguistic Landscape, as the example of German in le Flon. The second situation is the choice to avoid using English as “Leonardo” data shows. In this precise case, we asked the manager why he made the choice to use only Italian signs. He told us that writing and speaking only Italian was a way, for Italian people and more generally for people who do not speak English, of affirming themselves and re-negotiating their identity, even though the responsible of that particular business was aware of the usual commercial issues featured by the need of using English as the main language in signs. Finally, we also made the observation that when a data includes multilingual signs, (for instance English and Italian, or English and French), the English ones are either highlighted by their size, or by their position. These two levels of hierarchy (use of English for the main information rather than French or other languages, and the use of a bigger font for the English signs) is a way of showing a precise rank, thus underscoring again the predominance of English in our multilingual country.

[10] Torkington, K. 2009. Exploring the Linguistic Landscape: The Case of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the Algarve, Portugal. Lancaster Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching 3, 122-145.

Our research allowed us to see that even if there are a lot of multilingual signs in touristic areas including the use of French, Italian and Japanese, the most predominant one is English probably because of tourism and the high rate of immigration. This thesis is comparable to what previous studies had shown. Indeed, in the researches conducted about Hahndorf, Almancil, Nimmanhemin Road and S’Arenal, we observed that the common factor of the shaping of the Linguistic Landscape was tourism. The flow of tourists in such places influenced the authors of the linguistic signs, because the researchers did not encounter only signs written in official languages. Effectively, a great diversity of multilingualism characterised these landscapes. In our case, we noticed the same phenomenon what corroborates even more this thesis.

 

Conclusion

 

Switzerland being the nest of several nationalities and cultures is also known as a country of tourism and immigration. This characteristic allows and even requires a constant use of foreign languages in order to make the best of Switzerland’s cultural, political and economic resources. Keeping in mind that we are in a commercial and more precisely in a touristic context, we tried to fully grasp the reasons and consequences of multilingual signs’ omnipresence.

Our research enabled us to observe that English is the most predominant language in the Linguistic Landscape of Le Flon, in spite of the fact that there were a lot of different languages mobilized in the signs of that location. Throughout the analysis of our data collection, we could make several hypotheses of the reason of such a spread of the English language and foreign languages generally speaking. In a multilingual country such as Switzerland, it is not that surprising to see different languages in touristic areas. Nevertheless, we were expecting to see more occurrences of official languages. We consequently made the assumption that some languages, such as German in our research study, lose importance because of the increasing prominence of other languages. Thus, we understood how linguistic landscape has the power to endanger languages and can directly impact it, positively or negatively. Finally, we learned about the construction of Le Flon’s Linguistic Landscape because of the lack of top-down instances. The great independence offered to commercial entities is displayed by the predominance of bottoms-up instances, what shows the importance conferred to tourism in this area.

 

References

 

• Bruyèl-Olmedo, A. & Juan Garau, M. 2009. English as a Lingua Franca in the Linguistic Landscape of the Multilingual Resort of S’Arenal in Mallorca. International Journal of Multilingualism4, 386-412.
• Koschade, A. 2016. Willkommen in Hahndorf: A Linguistic Landscape of Hahndorf, South Australia. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies1, 692-716.
• Landry, R. & Bourhis, R. 1997. Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology1, 23-49.
• Mitchell, T. 2008. Linguistic Landscape: A New Approach to Multilingualism. Language in Society2, 312-313.
• Short History of The Flon. Quartier du Flon. Available at : https://flon.ch/en/quartier-du-flon/short-history-flon/. Accessed on : 27.05.2018.
• Skellaug, A. 2017. La Nouvelle Vie du Quartier du Flon. Le Temps. Available at: https://www.letemps.ch/economie/nouvelle-vie-quartier-flon. Accessed on: 02.06.2018.
• Tao Lounge Bar. Available at : http://www.tao-lounge-bar.ch/. Accessed on : 27.05.2018.
• Thongtong, T. 2016. A Linguistic Landscape Study of Signage on Nimmanhemin Road, a Lanna Chiang Mai Chill-Out Street. MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue 22, 72-87.
• Torkington, K. 2009. Exploring the Linguistic Landscape: The Case of the ‘Golden Triangle’ in the Algarve, Portugal. Lancaster Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching 3, 122-145.