Beauty Hair, English's presence in the beauty world
BEAUTY HAIR:
Authors: Alba Martín, Lamya Yassine el Ouatik, Meritxell Martínez and Rosa Martín
Figure 1. Beauty
hair linguistic landscape taken by authors (6th of March, 2020).
1. INTRODUCTION
The Linguistic Landscape "Beauty Hair" can be easily spotted in
the well-known neighbourhood Centre Històric
in Lleida. Specifically, in Avinguda de
Blondel, 90. Not only the street but also the neighbourhood that surrounds
our token is extremely popular among the inhabitants of Lleida. Besides, it is
due to the concentration of a great number of services such as Granier (a café), Zara (clothes workshop) or even Dr.
Mobile.
The token is located in the oldest
neighbourhood of Lleida, which is constantly witnessing the collision and
confluence of a variety of people from many different countries, as well as their
languages and cultures. For instance, according to La Paeria 78,43% of the inhabitants of Lleida have the Spanish
nationality, while 21,57% are foreigners. In fact, according to the Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya,
11.774 are from Africa, 885 from North America and the Centre of America, 2.978
from South America, 2.064 are from Asia and Oceania and 1.228 from the rest of
Europe. Plus, it is where we can observe the conjunction of infinite services-
from hotels to toy shops -, which makes it even more attractive for the
inhabitants.
Regards our LL token, it is
displayed in a board of a unisex beauty shop by the shop assistants, which
makes it a bottom-up sign, integrally in
English. In this case, we are dealing with a monoglossic sign. Yet, we must pay
attention to the blurry Catalan words placed underneath "Beauty
hair": RENTAR I MARCAR 14€. Hence, if we take into account the previous
information we affirm that we are dealing with multilingualism, where only for
public window-shop presentation English is foregrounded, and Catalan,
backgrounded. On the other hand, the LL token's activity domain is commerce
since it is a business aimed at the industry of fashion, although this workshop
is focused on tailor-made clothes.
2. CONTEXTUALIZATION
The address of the linguistic
landscape we have chosen is Avinguda de
Blondel, 90. It is located in Centre
Històric, a very popular neighbourhood in Lleida. In Figure 2 we can see the location of it among the rest of zones,
marked with number 1. Moreover, it is really close to the largest commercial
street in Lleida, Carrer Major. We
can see the exact position of the landscape in Figure 3.
 |
| Figure 2. Centre Històric. Source: GIFEX (2011). Retrieved from: https://www.gifex.com/fullsize2/2011-04-14-13453/Barrios_de_la_ciudad_de_Lerida.html) |
 |
| Figure 3. Neighbourhood. Picture taken from Google Maps. (4th of April, 2020) |
The majority of the population in
this area are migrants. As we can observe in Table 1, almost 45% of the
inhabitants of this neighbourhood come from other countries, originally. The
socio-economic profile of the people living in this neighbourhood would be
mostly middle-class. As this zone contains the epicentre of the economic
activity of Lleida, the process of gentrification has taken place in the street
that contains the biggest number of commercial businesses, Carrer Major. In the streets that surround it, the effect is not so
present. In the case of the location of our linguistic landscape this would not
take place. Plus, most of the people who transit this zone come from other
parts of Lleida or from neighbouring villages. Although in this neighbourhood
we find the main commercial street of Lleida, we can also find streets that are
completely migrant-populated, and its inhabitants have a middle-lower
socio-economic profile.
Because of the fact that this
neighbourhood largely concentrates a huge number of commercial businesses, it
makes sense that our linguistic landscape is located there, as our target here
is to explore the economic side of the Englishisation process in Lleida, as
well as the social meanings that are implied.
3. METHODOLOGY
In our case, because of the circumstances that we are living for the
pandemic of COVID-19 we were not able to visit our linguistic landscapes so it
is difficult to explain the fieldwork visits, because of this pandemic. We took
the pictures on the 6th of March of 2020, and we could not take more because of
the circumstances.
When talking about top-down
language policies, in Catalonia are the same ones as in Lleida, so the official
language is Catalan. In Catalonia, the official language is Catalan, but as
Catalonia is an autonomous community from Spain, Spanish is the second language
used. “All types of lettering must be normally written in Catalan” (BOP, 2014).
“ The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names,
place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings
combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or
urban agglomeration.” (Gorter, 2006) So,
in Catalonia there must be almost by law, Catalan and Spanish language in all
the public spaces. More concretely in Lleida, who manages these policies, is La Paeria. Nevertheless, there are
different institutions that can manage these policies: The Spanish Government,
The Catalan Government and the local government. “Outside the Catalan language,
advertising must be preferably in a double Catalan version and in the language
proper to the territory where it is addressed or in Spanish” (BOP, 2014).
In the case of Beauty Hair, the
bottom-up policies are the ones followed by the enterprise, as it is a huge
enterprise and known internationally. It was founded ten years ago. The main
language used at the shop is Catalan, but it also has English and Spanish. We
think that it is because as the globalisation, that having English in this
little shop makes it more international. The citizens that come from other countries
can also understand what they are selling because of this combination of the
two languages: Catalan, for the local people and English, for the outsiders, as
well as for commercial purposes.
We observed that the people that
live or wander around the area are most of them Catalan and Spanish speakers (even
though there are also people from different countries), this explains why the
shop is all mainly written in Catalan, and means that the public attending this shop might be from the area.
In the area of this shop, there is
variation of different languages. This shop is surrounded by Catalan commerces
(Plusfresc, Bon paper, Casa Terés…)
or Spanish (Fermiñán).
4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Figure 4: Beauty hair linguistic landscape taken by
authors (6th of March, 2020).
As can be seen in our token, its main values are aesthetic,
identity and social value. To categorise these we will be following the
European Observatory of Linguistic Landscapes criteria.
First of all, we found the
aesthetic value. As it can be seen, the name of the hair salon has been
strategically put together to give a sense of contemporaneity and fashion.
Because of the previous, we can affirm that the name gives a feeling of beauty.
Moreover, we can spot some traces of cultural appreciation, in this case
referring to the English culture to give the sign a modernity touch.
Secondly, we can find the identity
value. When analysing the language landscape, we can’t help but ask ourselves
why we can find English in a hair salon in Lleida. The justification behind
this could be that the person behind the name of the salon acknowledges the
modernity touch it adds to the name.
In third place we have the social
value. Because this is a hair salon, a place available to attend to the
community’s needs, our token is categorized as a place of social use for socialisation
and local networking purposes.
Finally we have the productive
value, which can be easily justified by the fact that this is a hair salon so
it has a commercial rationale, and financial benefits.
When reflecting upon the language
choices behind the name of the salon, we realise that these may be linked to
multilingualism and globalisation. What type of clients are the owners trying
to attract with this sign? It is obvious that they are trying to reach local
clienthood, due to the fact that the prices are in Catalan. But, in addition,
they are also trying to reach people who understand English.
As mentioned previously, because
English is a global language, the name of the salon can also attract tourist or
Erasmus students staying in Lleida. So, when analysing our token we see that
there’s reasoning behind it, and that our language landscape is one of the
multiple pieces of evidence that prove that Lleida is a multicultural city with
many languages coexisting in it.
5. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
We can all agree that after this
project we will not see the outside world with the same eyes. It is as if a
blindfold that had been covering our eyes had finally slipped away and now we
can see much more of what was right in front of our eyes. Not only does this
research prove that a place’s culture is like a puzzle formed by so many other
cultures, but it also shows that we are all influenced by each other and our
surroundings.
We are all a beautiful combination
of traditions, languages, beliefs… and the places we live in, as humans; they
are a reflection of our own beings and of our social organisation through
language. Being able to see and realise that this is incredibly fulfilling, not
only as students but also as humans.
Finally, this project also
contributes to encouraging students to learn outside university. In addition,
it also helps us to learn new methods of learning sociolinguistics through new
ICTs.
6. REFERENCES
- Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The Study of the Linguistic
Landscape as a New Approach to Multilingualism. In: Linguistic landscape: a New Approach to
Multilingualism (ed. by D. Gorter). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 1-6.
- Institut d’Estadística de
Catalunya (2020, February 26) Padró municipal d’habitants. Població. Per
nacionalitat (continents) Lleida. [Data file]. Retrieved from Padró municipal d'habitants. Població. Per
nacionalitat (continents). Lleida
- - La Paeria (2018). Ordenança
municipal de civisme i convivència de la ciutat de Lleida. Lleida Participa.
Lleida, ES. Retrieved from: http://www.lleidaparticipa.cat/public/197/docs/6c2e2ab8cee8ef11cc82f1e8621d78b5.pdf
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