Language Choice of Public Signage in Thai Universities A Case Study of Chulalongkorn University and Kasetsart University
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
As a result of global communication, the role of E nglish as an international language has obviously increased even in a Thai-d ominant society like Bangkok. Huebner (2006) analyzed the language choice on non-government public signs and found the increasingly dominant role of English in several neighborhoods of Bangkok, especially in those in which many Westerners resided. Similarly, Siricharoen (2016) studied multilingualism on public signs at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University and found that Thai-English bilingualism was prominent in the common area s of the faculty. These two studies confirmed the role of Thai as the dominant language and the subordinate role of foreign languages such as English and Chinese.
However, I have noticed that many public signs in Thai universities are written with patterns different from those found in other studies. As a result, this study was conducted to analyze the pattern of language choice on public signs in two Thai state universities. The data were collected at Chulalongkorn University,
located at the city center, and Kasetsart University, located on the outskirts. Similar to previous studies, the analysis reveals the major role of Thai on public signs. However, when analyzing the patterns, I found four additional patterns deviating from the norm of dominant Thai, namely 1) monolingual English signs, 2) signs carrying the same message in English and Thai with English as the main language, 3) signs on which appear a mixture of English and Thai noun phrases and 4) signs on which there is a wider variety in the mixture of English and Thai. The language patterns of these public signs reflect the increasing role of English in the two universities, indicating as Spolsky (2009) observed that the language choice on public signs can reflect
the language policy of the university.
Article Details
References
Backhaus, P. (2007). Linguistic Landscape: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Multilingual Matters: New York.
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Amara, M. H., & 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.
Coulmas, F. (2009). Linguistic landscaping and the seed of the public sphere. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 13-24). New York. NY: Routledge.
Crystal, D., (2012). English as a global language. Cambridge University Press.
Draper, J. & Nilaiyaka, A. (2015) Culture and language promotion in Thailand: implications for the Thai Lao minority of introducing multilingual signage. Asian Ethnicity, 16(2) pp.203-234.
Fishman, J.A., (1972). Domains and the relationship between micro-and macro-sociolinguistics. Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication, pp.435-453.
Giles, H. and Coupland, N., (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Thomson Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.
Holmes, J., (2013). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Routledge.
Huebner, T. (2006). Bangkok’s linguistic landscape: Environmental print, code-mixing and language change. in D. Go rter (ed.) Linguistic landscape: A new Approach to Multilingualism, pp.31- 51.
Jing-Jing, WANG., (2015). Linguistic Landscape on Cam pus in Japan-A Case Study of Signs in Kyushu University. Intercultural Communication Studies, 24(1).
Landry, R. and R. Y. Bourhis. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16.1: 23-49.
Mei, T.L., Abdullah, A.N., Heng, C.S. and Kasim, Z.B.M., (2016). Language Choice and Use of Malaysian Public University Lecturers in the Education Domain. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 7(1), pp. 21-32.
Siricharoen, A. (2016). Multilingualism in the linguistic lands cape of the faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. MAUSYA: Journal of Humanities (22), pp.12-25.
Spolsky, B. (2009). Language Management. Prague: Cambridge University Press.
Spolsky, B. & Lambert, R. (2006). Language planning and policy: models. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics [2nd edition, Vol. 6], 561-575. Oxford: Elsevier.
Tabajunda, D. (2018). Linguistic Schoolscape as Public Communication: A Study of Announcements and Signages in De La Salle University - Dasmariñas. Proceedings of the 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Association for Computation al Linguistics: Hong Kong.