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Forms and functions of Englishin multilingual signage

KAYMcCORMICKandRAMAKANTAGNIHOTRI

A characterisation of language choice and word play in

multilingual signs in two cities

lntroductionResearch on language contact phenomena

(language switching and mixing, borrowing)rnor,it tttut in a muitilingual setting people's

choice of language(s) is governed not simply

by the need to be understood. Other factors

piuy u role. These include various forms ofpositioning: the ianguage, dialect, accent.a

ipeaker .lioot"t for an interaction consciously

or unconsciously displays particular aspects of

his or her actual or aspired identity' These

aspects cover, for example, being (or not

being) educated,/religious,/from a particular

regiJ" or social grouping. They- position .the

spiaker in relation to the person being. spoken

ti. rh"y may also indicate to the addressee

not only how the speaker perceives him or her

(for eximple as someone with particular back-

ground or attributes) but also as someone

ivith particular aspirations. In multiiingualsocieties language choice in commercial sig-

nage carries oui similar positioning in addi-

tio"n to giving information about products orservicesibeing understood is not always the

sign producer's only or chief consideration' He

or"she needs to trigger aspects of identity and

aspiration that are liltely to create a desire for

whatever is being sold. In this paper we focus

on how English is used in reiation to other lan-

guages in signage, mainly commercial sig-

iugE, i" two-multilingual cities- that are the

."trt."t of an ongoing research project on

bilingual and multilingual signage: Delhi and

Cape Town.'ih" pup"t addresses two related questions

about iignage that is in English or contains

some Eiglish: (a) what transactional and

social meinings might a sign have in the place

in which it is found and how are these mean-

ings conveyed or suggested? And (b) what

kinds of linguistic 'give and take'between Eng-

lish and other languages are evident in signage

in multilingual countries? In other words,

what signs of change can we see that are

related to language contact?

Background to language in the twocitiesBoth Cape Town and Delhi were capital citie^s offormer gritlsh colonies. Among the shared fea-

tures of their coionial legacy is the prominentposition of English, particularly but not exciu-

iively in the upper levels of government, edu-

cation, administration, business, the judiciary'

KAY McCO&MICK [s EmertusProfessor of LinguktLcs at the

IJniversity of CaPe Town' Her

research focuses on Ianguage

cantact, as evidenced in her

book'Language in CoPe

Town's District Six' @AP"2002). E-mail:kaymc@iafrica'com

RAMAKANT AGNI}IOTRI iS

irafessor oftinguisfics of rhe

n ;;;;;w'i ii Jtr,i a" r,o'worked on a varietY ofsociolinguistic and aPPlied

linguistic toPics, including rhe

gr ammar of Indion Englisfuliteracy in I ndiwt languagesond longuage P olicY. Email :

agniirk@yahao.cam

doi: 1 0. 1 01 7/S0 26607 8409990228

EngLish Today 99, Vol. 25, No. 3 (September 2009) ' Printed in the United Kingdom @ 2009 Cambridge University Press 1 1

(Uw

the media and entertainment' This prominence

occurs in spite of the fact that in neither coun-

try is Engliih the home language of a.high per-

centage "of .itir"t-tt. It is, however, becoming

in.r"u"tittgty *idely known as an additional lan-

suase and it re*., as one of the lingua francas

in uiUun areas in both countries' English is seen

as a gate-keeper to high-paying employtne,n,t

uo*id social mobiliry and oLher desirable

soals. This has an effect on Ianguage choice in

io-" .o--"rcial and educational signage' as

we will show.Itttough South Africa has had 11 national

official linguages since 1994, the provinces

have fewer. Thi Western Cape, of which Cape

io*n it the capital, has three: English'

Afrikaans and Xhosa. Official signage is meart

io U" l" all three languages in ail areas of the

cirv. but it is often only in rwo - English and

eit"her Afrjkaans or Xhosa. depending on the

lansuaqe dominance of residents' English has

ir""? ,ft. dominant language in the central

business district (CBD) since the 1820s' Out-

ria" ,n" CBD the city's linguistic demography

still largely reflects the residential segregation

i"gittu,""a and enforced before and during the

uJuiirt"ia era. The city is a magnet - for

,riigrunr, from further north in South Africa

unt lro from other parts of the continent and

the world, but the languages of these migrants

and of tourists are rarely found in signage in

public places.' Deihi, which is not only a city b-ut.uit: u

,tu1", hu, had Hindi and English as official lan-

il;t"t since independence in 7947 ' Recently

;h";i,y has addedUrdu and Panjabi as official

iu"g"ug"t, but these are not used in all official

sigiagJ. Ali four languages.can be seen on

municipal signage in particular -areas sucn as

ihor" .h"t"1he embassies are located' Com-

mercial signage in Hindi and English is -found

ull orr". ielhi, while Urdu and Panjabi are

ionna ott commercial signs in areas where

those languages are spoken by many residents

or business owners. ln the centrai' south and

oin"i miaafe-class business districts, English-

only signage is becoming more common'

Meanings in Place and time

When we examine signage we should be aware

of-iit" .ottt"*t in which the sign is displayed'

How does it fit into the linguistic landscape?

Oo"s it use the language(s) of the majoriry of

putt"tt-Uy, or does it use the language of a

12

minority? Does its wording draw on matters of

current interest, or does it conjure up a time

past, an old tradition? How has the sign pro-'ducer expiolted the images commonly associ-

ated with the language? We need to focus on

the physical and iemporal situatedness of the

signr, ho* they mean and what they index in a

pirticular place and time' But we also have to

t. u*u." thut u sign doesn't have only one

meaning - the actual passers-by m1:1 $eri,ve

iiff"."ti, meanings from those which the

Jesigner had in mind. By looking at. the lan

guafe iand other elements of visual design

ir" ituy be able to read back to what the con-

scious iarget audience was' We return to these

points be1ow.' Non-linguistic forces affect the status of a

country's 1u.tgrlug"t relative to one another

and help to account for the relative 'currencr

,rut.r"' of these languages in particr'rlar fields'

For example, economic concerns may promote

the use oi a language that is known to trigger

fositive associaiioni even if it is not wideli'

irnderstood or used by local people' Kell,v-

Uot-"t (2005: 24) writes that'the use-value o:

languages can be seen to have become

ourl"tJa by their exchange or symbolic y31:'Drawing on the Marxian concept of fetishising

she argiies that English, which, as an interna-

tional "language, is not necessarily associatec

*ittr u purii.u'iut collntry, is often fetishised as

W"*"^','cosmopolitan','cool','trendy'.and'or modein'. Huebner found instances of this in

Bangkok signage, where English phrases-are

,r"i b".u.ri" th"y evoke 'cosmopolitan flair

(2006:48). We have found a similar phenome-

non in Delhi and CaPe Town'In the central business districts of Delhi anc

Cape Town English is the dominant written

tunguug". tn oJhi's Connaught Place the onh

conipicuous commercial signs that -contair'

tuttgiug"t other than English a're those o-

Uunit. ih" ,u-" is true of Adderley Street ir

Cup" fo*". Both cities have budget traveller

u.Jotttrnoaution and shopping districts withir

fairly .lore proximiry of the CBDs and mair

railway stations: Long Street in Cape Town'

ana panar Ganj in nethi' goth areas' whiie

attracting tourists, are, of courser .also .fre

[u"nt"a [y locals. Interestingly, their.linguistic

landscapes are very different in relation to the

use oflinguages other than English'

Signage" in Cape Town's Long Street i'aimJst Jntirely in-English' A search conductec

on one day showed only six signs contatntng

ENGLISH TODAY 99 SePtember 2009

other languages. Two were ephemeral -posters containing French and Portuguese as

well as English - which advertised events ofinterest to the large migrant population fromFrancophone and Lusophone Africa. Two weremore durable - names and foundation datesabove the doors of mosques, one in Arabic andEnglish, the other in Arabic, English andAfrikaans. Two were in the Pan African Market- one durable and one ephemeral. This marketconsists of a myriad small shops selling ethnicarts and crafts, housed on three floors of a

labyrinthine Victorian building in Long Street.At the entrance a carved figure holds a 'Wel-come'sign. It is in English only.

Figure 'l Welcome to Pan African Market,Long Street, Cape Town

In this market one hears many different lan-guages, those of tourist shoppers and those ofvendors from all over Africa, but one reads lit-tle other than English. In the signage therewere two exceptions. One was a hand-paintedsignboard advertising hair styling, where theFrench name is given for each style that is

depicted. The other was a chalkboard in theentrance to the Pan African Caf6 displaying theday's menu.

The dishes with English and Afrikaansnames are given in large, bold letters. Xhosanames for dishes appear only twice, both timesas translations. From their rather squeezed inpositioning, the smaller size of letters and thefact that they are in brackets, we take it thatthey were added as an afterthought. Thisseems to us to index the attitude that Xhosamatters less than the province's other two offi-cial languages. This attitude is not exclusive to

Figure 2 Pan African Caf6's menu for the day,Long Street. Cape Town

this business but is evident in many other situ-ations as we1l.

Pahar Ganj is Delhi's budget tourist area. It isbigger and more developed than Long Street inCape Town. The multilingualism of its signagesuggests a different attitude to its target clientsfrom that of Long Street businesses. Within a

space of about 500 metres there is signage inHindi, Urdu, modern Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian,French, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnameseand English. Language choice is dictatedlargely by the wish to attract buyers andlodgers by addressing them in their own 1an-

guage, or in a lingua franca from their area oforigin. Sign producers seem to share the senti-ment attributed to a former Chancellor of WestGermany: about trading he is reputed to havesaid'If you want to buy from me you can speakyour language, but if you want to sell to meyou must speak my language.'

Among the largest signs in Pahar Ganj arethose of travel agencies and other businesseswhich change money from almost any cur-rency. Most of them have multilingual signs -clearly they do not want to rely on English as a

lingua franca. The fact that most of theminclude information in Chinese, Japanese andHebrew scripts indicates that speakers oftheselanguages form a high proportion of tourists.Of course it should not be assumed that theowners of businesses can speak or write all ofthe languages which they use on their sign-boards. The languages are used to attractclients to the business. Once there they may

FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF ENGLISH IN MULTILINGUAL SIGNAGE 13

(Uw

very well have to resort to gestures or a linguafranca, but by displaying text in other lan-

guages, at least the business owners are reach-

ing out to their speakers. It will be interestingto see whether, in the current economic down-turn, businesses ln Cape Town's tourist areas

break from the status quo and start to use - at

least in signage - more of the languages oftheir potential customers.

The signboards for two adjacent Pahar Ganj

businesses are interesting in a number of ways.

The names o f the busine sses, I mp er ial T oilorin g

House and Lord's Hotel, might be assumed to

hark back to the time of the Raj. (Althoughthere were other empires previously ruling inIndia, the fact that the names are Englishpoints to associations with the British Empire.)-Co--ot

visual images of that period are ofmen, both Indian and British, dressed in uni-forms that are very well cut and stitched.Thetailor's sign informs us that the current cutterwas trained in London. The meaning that is

assumed to be obvious to desirable clients isthat the training was of the highest quality'The hotel's name could refer to English aristoc-

racy and connote the quality of accommoda-tion to which they would be accustomed.

However, it is likely also to evoke a differentassociation which is more contemporary, and

one about which Indians would be less ambiva-lent. Lord's is known to millions in the cricket-

loving nation as one of the world's most

famous cricket grounds. Sign producers often

incorporate cultural references which theyassume or hope will be decoded by their target

audience. In these two signs we see traditionbeing evoked.

We turn now to explore signage in residen-

tial areas that have their own health and edu-

cation institr-rtions and also shops and setwices

which target inhabitants of the area but are notmagnets for people from far afield. In both

areis, while the dominant language is an offi-cial language, it is one with iower status than

the other regional official languages. The areas

are Cape Town's Langa, and Delhi's BaRa

Hindu Rao (the capital R in BaRa denotes a

retroflex [1] rather than alveolar [r]).Langa was established in the first half of the

twentieth century as a residential area forblack people. Fifteen years after the officialend oi apartheid there are no longer laws

determining where people live, but the inhabi-

tants of Langa are still predominantly black

and Xhosa-speaking though one hears other

14

languages there now because it has become

home to migrants from elsewhere. Official sig-

nage on schools and clinics is bilingual in Eng-

lish and Xhosa, with the text in one language

being simply a translation of the text in the

other language. Commercial signage alsc

draws on these two languages to the exclusior:

of Afrikaans, the third oliicial language. anc

other African languages. On one data-gather-ing trip down the main streets of Langa, venfew signboards were seen that did not contairany English, and several were in English onliThose that were exclusively in Xhosa were fo:

healers. Some promised cures (by unspecifiecmeans) for a wide range of ailments. For exam-

ple Dr Fumbe's sign, translated, begins by sal-

ing'We heal people, children, and cars. Anc

the house can also be strengthened,/protected.It goes on to claim 'to create good luck, tc

remove those that bewitch you.'There is not a

single loanword in this rather long text. Ho\"

shotild we interpret the complete absence o'

English? It seems to us that by having mono-

lingual signage in what is 1ocally known a.

'deep Xhosa' the doctor is positioning himsel:firmly as someone who works within the

beliefs and practices oftraditional, often ruralpeople. He is also indicating that his targe:

ilients would have the same beliefs: 'deep

Xhosa' is valued by and taken as a marker o

people who are rural and traditionalist. By con-

trast, speaking English and/or frequently mix-

ing some English into one's spoken Xhosa are

taken to be markers of being urban and more

sophisticated than monolingual Xhosa speak'

ers. In the third section of the paper we exam-

ine the presence of English in other signage

from Langa.BaRa Hindu Rao is one of Delhi's long-estab-

lished neighbourhoods. It is predominantl''Musiim, though many Hindu shopkeepers live

in the same area. Hindi, Urdu and English are

the languages of commercial signage here

Official street signs are in Hindi and Urdu, no:

English. In our discussion of this linguistitlandscape we draw attention to the way 1r.

which the relative status of the two language'(and their speakers) is handled in the place-

ment of text in Urdu, Hindi and English. The

display of languages in this linguistic land-

scape could be seen as revealing traces ofbotl:the official language policy and what Huebne:(2006:32) refers to as the covert language po1-

icy of the community. An official bilingual sigr

for a street named after a Muslim, Mohammec

ENGLISH TODAY 99 SePtember 200!

Ismail, is in Hindi and Urdu, with the Hinditext placed above the Urdu text. Perhaps this

indexes the superior status of Hindi as the offi-cial language of the Union of India even

though it is not the main language of the

neighbourhood? A commercial sign in an adja-

cent street reverses this positioning: the shop's

Urdu name in Arabic script constitutes the top

two iines beneath which is the Hindi version ofthe name in Devanagari script. English doesn'tfeature at all in this spice shop's signage,

whereas it does on the local pharmacy's sign-

board.

Figure 3 Dardmand Medical Store sign' BaRa

Hindu Rao, Delhi

In the Dardmand Medical Store sign, the

Hindi text is placed on the left, which is opti-mal for a ianguage that is read left to right;Urdu is placed on the right, optimal for a lan-guage read from right to left. And English isplaced in the centre - also a very good position.

this should make speakers of each of the lan-guages feel that they have been treated equallyas to prime Position!

While on the topic of ways in which linguis-tic landscapes index power and status, we

would like to comment on a figurative linguis-tic landscape - that of private secular educa-

tion. In the urban areas of both India and

South Africa this domain is dominated by Eng-

lish. This is true across the range, whether forkindergartens, computer classes or physicai

skills training. The dominance is reflected inthe signage, which tends to be in English only'In some cases the advertised instruction willalso be exclusively in that language, and in the

case of classes for children it seems that totalimmersion in English is valued at least as muchas what the children will learn through the

medium of the language. Like others we have

seen in different urban centres in India andSouth Africa, the signboard for the New WingsPlay School in BaRa Hindu Rao suggests bymeans of visual images that children will notonly be immersed in the English language butwill also become familiar with English andAmerican cultural products: on either side ofthe school's name are brightly coloured pic-tures of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Inother areas of Delhi signage advertising classes

for adults in fields as diverse as computer skillsand dance is also in English only. The copy-

writer's inventiveness is evident in a banneradvertising fitness and dance classes. Belowthe list of types of classes available there is aspeech bubble containing direct address topassersby. In it an adjective becomes a verb - a

very apposite one, in our opinion: 'So are you

ready to footloose?'The following section focuses on inventive-

ness in bilingual signage, looking at the give

and take between English and other languages.

Forms of English in combinationwith other languages

Two languages and,/or scripts may be drawnon in the making and interpreting of signage

for a business, a product, a setwice or some

other purpose. These kinds oflanguage combi-nation raise interesting linguistic questions

about the salience of language 'boundaries' or'identities'. Research on various aspects of spo-

ken language in multilingual urban areas (e.g'

Poplack 1980) has shown that while some-

times the languages (or elements from differ-ent languages) are used in a way that seems tobe consciously contrastive, urban vernacularsoften blend or weave elements of different lan-guages into one linguistic code' Boundariesbetween languages and scripts are porous. Ourresearch suggests that sign producers assume

that their target sign readers will find vernacu-1ar weaving of elements of more than one 1an-

guage at least accessible, if not also attractive.The two main strategies for language combi-

nation are alternation and incorporation'There can be alternation of phrases from twolanguages, each retaining its own orthographyand - where relevant - script, or incorporationof elements from two languages into one

phrasal structure, or one orthographic system,

and/or one script. Categorizing strategies as

either alternation or incorporation is not

FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF ENGLISH IN MULTILINGUAL SIGNAGE

(U\ill

always straightforward, and when it is not, this

is because language contact has resulted inchange: what was part of one language is nowalso part of another language.

An example of language alternation ls a sign-

board advertising Flite Footwear which con-

tains two phrases in English and one in Hindi'None of the phrases is a translation of another,

so the addressee is assumed to be bilingual in

Hindi and English.

Figure 4 Advertisement for Flite Footwear,Pahar Ganj, Delhi

The functions serwed by the two languages

are different: product information is in Eng-

lish, while the words addressed to the passer-

by are Hindi only. (The phrase means 'This isthe magic of flight.') The Hindi is written inRoman script. Perhaps this choice was made inorder to retain a sense of wider horizons whileusing a local language. That the advertiser is

appealing to modernity and casualness is indi-cited in the spelling of 'light' as 'lite', and visu-

aily in the dress and gesture of the person

depicted as hailing the passer-by.A different form of language alternation is

found in the signage for Tarun's menswearshop in Delhi's Kamla Nagar, the shopping area

closest to the main campus of the University ofDe1hi. The campus would provide shoppers

from all over India as well as from many otherparts of the world.

In this shop's signage, English words inRoman script are used to denote items of cloth-

ing originally western but now also part ofeveryday dress of most urban Indian men,

while only a Hindi word in Devanagari script is

used for shawls which are often worn in winterby Indian men, less often by western men.

Immediately below the word Tctun's, there isthe phrase the men's slrcppee. Shoppee seems to

be an attempt at an old spelling for'shop', pre-

sumably in order to suggest that the business is

a long-established enterprise and,/or one

16

Figure 5 Tarun's menswear shop signage,Kamla Nagar, Delhi

which is familiar with British tradition. This -.

another example of the strategy seen in th=

Imp er ial T ailo r ing and L or d's H ote I si gns, wher :obvious Englishness is meant to trigger pos:-

tive associations.Something of particular interest in signag=

which incorporates loanwords is the presenc=

or absence of evidence of nativisation, which -.

an index of contact-induced change. Nativisa-

tion can be indicated in various ways in writte-language. Our first example is a signboard tie;to a tall tree in Cape Town's Langa.

Figure 6 Advertisement for plumber, Langa,

Cape Town

It includes two English loanwords, plumbe-

and phone, which are firmly established i-

urban Xhosa. Both take Xhosa morphemes: th:noLln gets a class-marker prefix, and the ver-

gets an 'applicative' suffix. However, interesr-

ingly, orthographically the verb is nativised bu-

the noun is not. The same process can ofcouts.go in the other direction, with words fror:'

another language being incorporated into anc

nativised in English. An example is a dish listec

on the English signboard of a fast food shop irLanga. In Xhosa, this raditional chicken dish i'

ENGLISH TODAY 99 SePtember 200i

caIled umleqwa, but on the sign the class prefix'u-' which would be obligatory in Xhosa has

been omitted, suggesting that the loanwordhas been incorporated into English, or at least

into the local variety of the language.In bilingual environments where the lan-

guages use different scripts, nativisation can be

signaled in signage by using one script only butincluding words or phrases from a languagewhich does not normally share that script. Forexample, on the signboard for a sari shop inChandani Chowk, Delhi, two of the key wordsare English loanwords, fancy and retail- Theitnativisation is evident in the choice of Devana-

gari script for these words as well as for the

rest of the text which is in Hindi. The same

process but with Hindi loanwords nativised as

English can be seen in the English signage for a

clothing shop in Kamla Nagar. Located on a

street corner, the shop has its professionallydone signage in Hindi on a board above themain entrance. Seemingly as an afterthought.there is an English version in the side-street.

On a narrow strip of wall between a displaywindow and a doorway, there is a cramped,rather unskilfully painted English version ofthe names of products made or sold in theshop.

Here we have the Hindi names of Indian gar-

ments written in Roman script. There is an

Figure 7 Sign on wall of women's clothingshop, Kamla Nagar, Delhi

orthodox way of spelling the names of thesegarments in English, but here the unorthodoxspelling suggests the influence of the Devana-gari orthographic system in which the form ofthe consonant 'contains' the following vowel.So, for example, duptto (usually spelled<dupatta> in English) does not indicate thevowel which follows the <p>. There is some

inconsistency, however, since the vowel fo1-

lowing the <t > is indicated.

ConclusionMultilingual signage provides a window on thesocio-historical context of the space where it isiocated. Through anaiysis of this kind of sig-

nage we can detect perceptions of the relativesocio-economic status of people in the area.

Choice of language(s) in the signs shows whichgroups of people - speakers,/readers of whichlanguages - are regarded as important enoughto be targeted for various products and ser-

vices. In addition, our study suggests that Eng-

lish has several other functions in multilingualsignage. While being used to give information,it can also evoke connotations which the busi-ness owner assumes potential clients wouldfind attractive. Multilingual signage is linguis-tically interesting for what it shows of theproducts and processes of language contactsuch as lexical borrowing and nativisation. I

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Om Arora, Oscar Masinyane andThapelo Mfulo for their assistance in photograph-ing and translating some of the signage used in thisarticle

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Environmental print, codemixing and language

change. InternationaL J ournaL of Multilingualism 3.7,

3 1-51.Kelly-Ho1mes, H. 2OO5. Advertising as Mubilingual

Communication Basingstoke and New York:

Palgrave Macmillan.Poplack, S. 1980. 'sometimes I'11 start a sentence in

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FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF ENGLISH IN MULTILINGUAL SIGNAGE