Localising English in Lleida

THE LLEIDA TIMES: INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE LOCAL BUSINESS. by Martí Monerris, Íngrid Torrent and Lluba Zolota 1. Introduction The chosen Linguistic Landscape token is a poster displayed on the window of an upcoming ioga space, which was being renovated when the picture was taken. Since the new ioga space aims at making money with this announcement (i.e. the place is a commerce), the LL token is of a commercial type. It is a monoglossic poster, with English appearing as the more foregrounded language alongside Catalan, although we also find pictures and handwritten notes, which will be further analysed in a later section. 2. Contextualisation Our LL token is located in the city of Lleida, at Carrer Pallars, 3, situated in the Centre Històric neighbourhood (see Figure 1 below). Within the neighbourhood, it is quite near the Turó de la Seu Vella and is next to the Local Police Station (see Figure 2 below). Although being surrounded mainly by buildings, a few meters down the street, one...

SEEK ‘EM ALL:  POWER OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE: FROM GLOBAL HEAVY METAL HISTORY TO LLEIDA’S CULTURAL LANDSCAPE Figure 1. Seek ‘em all Introduction The linguistic landscape analysed (see figure 1) in this blog entry is a commercial poster advertising a tribute concert called ‘SEEK'EM ALL’ by Tributo to Metallica, commemorating the 40th anniversary of ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica. The token can be found in the city of Lleida, and has the aim to promote a live event to be held in the Cotton Club.  The poster fits into the category of culture and entertainment, specifically music industry. This poster is considered a bottom-up, non-official commercial sign stated by Mooney & Evans, (2015:92). The poster is multilingual, but its predominant language is English, visible in the title and in ‘Master of Puppets’. On the other hand, the Spanish is presented with the intention of informing about the event: ‘Tributo a Metallica’, ‘Friday 30th January at 9:30 p.m.’. This bilin...

    Introduction: - Support: Shop logo  - Activity domain: commerce - Main languages: English - Secondary languages: Spanish - Alphabets: Roman alphabet - Type of sign: commercial - Production: bottom-up, polyglossic Contextualization: - Address: - Neighborhood’s demographic profile with data (use censuses) - Map of the neighborhood - Street view map with the surroundings. Methodology: - Workings of the fieldwork visits - Explanation of top-down languages policies in Lleida and Catalonia - Explanation of bottom-up language policies of the emplacement - Explanation of linguistic context with one picture Results and discussion: - Picture of the token - Explanation of multiple values of the token with a rationale for our arguments: what are the values of english in this context and why?  - Social meanings attributed to it concerning local and global languages in context and Englishization processes in Lleida: Concluding thoughts: - More personal opinion on the usage of...