Bacoaization: Linguistic Fetishes in a Burguer Bar
Bacoaization: Linguistic Fetishes in a Burger Bar
1.Introduction
With globalisation, English is nowadays present in almost every corner of the world, changing and shaping the environments and connecting with many local languages. It could be stated that English is a global language which has reached even the most remote local community. “Languages vary in three major ways which are interestingly interrelated-over time [synchronically and diachronically], in physical space, and socially. Language change-variation over time- has its origins in spatial (or regional) and social variation” (Holmes, 2008:205). In relation to what Holmes claims, we have analyzed the English language of our linguistic landscape taking into account these three items: Temporal (present), regional and social uses of English in contact with other local languages in Lleida, Catalonia.
In this project, we have looked at the presence of English in a local area (Zona Alta) in Lleida, Spain. The linguistic landscape that we have chosen to analyse is the restaurant "Bacoa", in a square in the centre of the town. Our token, which is the unit of analysis of the linguistic landscape, is a menu of the restaurant mentioned above. The support of the token, that is to say the text typology, is therefore menu. Its activity domain is commerce since it is a business that offers products in exchange of money and hospitality since it is a business that entertains the guests and it provides products and services, which makes the type of sign to be classified as commercial. Its main language is Catalan since it is located in a Catalan city, but it contains secondary languages such as Spanish, a co-official language with Catalan, and English. The alphabet that can be found in the LL token is the Roman alphabet.
2.Contextualisation
Our LL token can be found in Zona Alta, specifically in Plaça Ricard Vinyes, 7, which is a very transit square. There we can find a big amount of different types of locals, from restaurants and bars to boutiques. Nevertheless, it is known for its restaurant’s atmosphere.
Ricard Vinyes is situated in an upper and middle-class neighbourhood since it is the biggest commercial area of Lleida, where we find day and night entertainment establishments, top-quality restaurants and exclusive and quality shops with personalized service. This may be the reason why there is 75.84% of locals and only 24.16% of migrants. It is a big difference between locals and migrants and even more if we compare it with another neighbourhood called Centre històric in which the difference between locals and migrants is almost 50%-50% according to Paeria, 2010. (See table 1 below)
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| Figure 1. A map of the neighbourhood. Paeria 2010 |
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| Figure 2. A map of Bacoa and its surrounding. Captured by authors |
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| Table 1. Percentages of locals and migrants in different neighbourhoods of Lleida. Paeria |
Bacoa is nowadays a restaurant chain. Its founders are a Spanish woman and a half Australian man whose purpose was to create a place to eat with an Australian barbecue atmosphere. Originally, however, it was a small hamburger restaurant set in Barcelona, but as time went by, the business grew and it became what it is today. Moreover, this type of burger restaurants, inspired in the fast-food culture but in a more sophisticated environment, are recently becoming very successful.
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Figure 3. A street view map of Bacoa’s surroundings. Captured by authors
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3.Methodology
From a critical sociolinguistic perspective our data includes: ethnographic participant observation, census data and a LL token. So firstly we chose the LL token, then collected the census data and finally confirmed the information that we had previously collected and the suppositions that we had made with our ethnographic participant observation.
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| Figure 4. Menu displayed on a restaurant wall. Captured by authors. |
On the one hand, we entered the establishment’s web page to find out about the policies, censuses and registries of the bar and its area. This helped us have an idea of the style of the place, the type of food they serve and the customers that might go there.
The policy that the bacoa company uses is a bottom-up language policy of emplacement. This policy is used by citizens to communicate or put their message across to other citizens. In this case, this is a business purpose. The LL that we have chosen is a private business with a bottom-up language policy with a made up name. It has a mixture of Spanish and English (as the company comes from Australia) and uses the word Barbecue which in Spanish and Catalan is “barbacoa”. We also did some online research on the percentage of immigrants and locals in the neighbourhood, language variation, internationalization in the food market, etc.
On the other hand, we taped into the ethnographic part of the research that is to say the fieldwork and observation. In order to do so, we visited the linguistic landscape three times.
The first visit was on Wednesday the 13th of March of 2019 at 11 am. The Burger Bar was closed as its weekday timetable is from 1 pm to 00 am. Nevertheless, we took a look at its surroundings and observed that it is an area with a lot of local people, restaurants and bars. It seemed like a medium-high class neighbourhood.
The second field trip was the 27th of March of 2019 at midday. This day we observed the clients and took notice of the fact that they were mostly local citizens as they didn’t have a touristy aspect or spoke any different languages apart from Catalan or Spanish. We also took the photos on this date.
In the third and last trip, we finally entered the restaurant. We asked some questions in Catalan to the bartenders and waiters and they kindly answered. We took some field notes and found out that the customers that went there were mostly local families, young people and occasionally, as a couple of times a month, English speaking people and international mobility students. The waiters told us that in order to get the job, they just needed Catalan and Spanish but most of them also spoke English. They were young people used to linguistic and cultural diversity. This was on the 29th of March of 2019 at 14:20 pm.
We finally put together the data collected and the field notes to come up with this blog.
4. Results and discussion
The token that we have focused on to analyse our Linguistic Landscape is a menu combining different languages. There are two versions of the menu, one where the dominant language, in which the description of the different food options is written, is Catalan, and one where it is Spanish, and both feature several words in English. However, in the Catalan version, there are also instances of Spanish, which makes our token rather interesting. In figure 5, which is this version, the Catalan one, we can see an example of how the three languages are combined together. If we take a look at the ‘Gran Vegano’ burger, its name is in Spanish, the description ‘Cruixent de cigrons i espinacs [...]’ [“Crispy” of chickpeas and spinaches] is in Catalan and the name of the section of the menu ‘Vegan & Veggie’ is in English.
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Figure 5. Menu. Captured by authors
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| Figure 6. Menu. Captured by authors |
Tokens in linguistic landscapes are given different values and purposes. As regards our chosen token, the menu, we associate the presence of English in it to the productive value, because it is for marketing purposes that they have chosen to write ‘French Fries’, ‘Vegan & Veggie’ and ‘Double Burger’ instead of the equivalents words in Catalan. Another value that can be associated with the token is the aesthetic one since the English words in the menu, written in black and white add to its appealing. We also think that the social value is present in our token, since, even if it was unintentionally, the presence of English helps to integrate international citizens into the city, because, given the global status of English, everyone who speaks it can feel included through it.
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Figure 7. The exterior of the restaurant. Captured by authors.
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Following that, as for the social meanings that we have attributed to our token, we agreed that modernization is the ultimate significance. If the restaurant did not have an intention to appeal as a modern space in the eyes of their customers, they would have had all their information written in Catalan or Spanish, following the top-down language policies of the city. We could see this sense of modernization, on the one hand, by the use of English, given the Englishization phenomenon and the global status of the language. As many researchers have stated, "often the English language [unsurprisingly, the most frequently used languages for advertising in non-English-speaking countries] is used to associate a product with a social stereotype of modernity, progress and globalisation" (Eldelman & Gorter 2010; 97).
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Figure 8. Slogan. Captured by authors
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In our token and throughout the restaurant there are many instances of English fetishes. This means that the English that is featured is in the form of ‘chunks’ (Kelly-Holmes, 2005). Even if customers can’t speak English, they understand the words ‘burger’, ‘double burger’, ‘french fries’ or ‘veggie’.
Besides this objectified, crafted and marketed English, we also spotted a sign containing the company’s slogan ‘real food tastes better’. In this case, we would not say the business has chosen a linguistic fetish because you need to understand English to get the meaning. That is why we concluded that this text conveys a message to those customers who know English and an association with modernity and openness to those who do not comprehend the message but still identify it is English.
5. Concluding thoughts
We have concluded that Linguistic Landscapes are an innovative and very interesting tool to help us, students, to learn about the English language in context in a way that we can apply to the reality the theory that we study in class.
In our personal opinion, the use of linguistic landscaping as a pedagogical tool to learn about and to do sociolinguistics is quite crucial to raise awareness about the presence of not only English but also multilingualism in our town. It has encouraged us to see the language in a different way that we saw it before and realize that language says a lot of things, even if we sometimes overlook it.
This project has also helped us to know the city, to discover neighbourhoods that we had not visited before and taken notice of the internationality that Lleida really has. We’ve realized that behind the decision that companies make to feature an English word to be the image of their business, internationalization is a highly requested reason.
Also thanks to TEP, which stands for Technology of Empowerment and Participation, we could carry on this project. TEP allowed us to look for information, use Google maps and post in this blog. It is pretty amazing the amount of work and discovery, that can be done through the net.
6. References
Edelman, L., Gorter, D., Kelly-Holmes, H., & Mautner, G. (2010). Linguistic landscapes and the market. Language and globalization.
Holmes, J., & Wilson, N. (2017). An introduction to sociolinguistics. Routledge.
Kelly-Holmes, H. (2014). Linguistic fetish: The sociolinguistics of visual multilingualism. Visual communication, 4, 135-151.
Figure 1 retrived from https://www.gifex.com/detail/2011-04-14-13447/Mapa_de_Lerida_2010.html
Table 1 retrieved from http://paeria.cat/butlletieconomic/2012/03-juliol/06-poblacio.pdf
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