Linguistic landscape refers to the language and other symbol resources in public space, including the symbols on typical signs such as public road signs, billboards, business signs and warning signs, as well as the symbols in dynamic space such as graffiti, electronic display screens, car body advertisements and broadcast propaganda. As an important component of sociolinguistic environment of cities, linguistic landscape reflects the vitality of urban language, influences people's overall cognition and evaluation of cities, and has the important function of creating and disseminating the image of cities.
City image is people's overall cognition and evaluation of a city, and it is important soft power that affects the competitiveness of a city. City image, like the identity and image of social individuals, can be constructed and spread through discourse. Linguistic landscape symbols in public space of cities become the main discourse resources to create and disseminate city image. Appropriate choice and use of linguistic landscape symbols can help construct positive city image, otherwise it may impact or even smear city image, resulting in negative effects.
The choice of linguistic landscape symbols is reflected in all aspects of language. For example, at the level of language code, linguistic landscape with Chinese as the main language and English, French and other languages co-existing can help highlight the vitality of languages of a city and build and spread international, inclusive and modern city image. However, in pursuit of so-called novelty, some shops or merchants abuse and even misuse foreign languages, numbers or other combinations of language codes in their store name and advertising signs, leaving people unaware of what has been displayed and even impressing people with negative image.
At the lexical semantic level, the landscape of city propaganda language and public signs that are very human will create and publicize the warm and friendly city image through flexible means of emotions; the landscape with ethnic and cultural characteristics, such as ancient poetry, traditional Chinese characters and classical style of writing, can render a city's cultural atmosphere and highlight a city's unique culture, for example, the propaganda of Changshu city "Blessed land of the South, welcome to Changshu", is a cordial invitation to show the city image of hospitality; the slogan of Qufu city is "Hometown of Confucius, holy city of the East", which makes use of Confucius to create the image of a famous cultural city.
At the level of pragmatic rules, civilized, polite and ecological social terms are helpful to creating and promoting positive city image, while false, biased and vulgar social terms will lead to a negative evaluation of the city. For example, some slogans are warm and effective, such as "For your health, please wear masks","Put people's safety and health first","No venison, no greed", etc., which highlight the care and respect for life and reverence for nature. But there are also some vulgar slogans with bad taste which are even sensational and exaggerated in wording, disgusting people and unhelpful to city image.
In addition, the choice of linguistic landscape symbols is also reflected in the collocation of multi-model resources such as text, pictures, sounds, colors and spatial layout. These resources complement each other and jointly build the image of modern cities. In the construction of linguistic landscape, we should take account of the needs of the public and constantly meet people's growing desire for a better life.
Wang Xueyu, professor of Nantong University, and Yang Ronghua, associate professor of Hohai University