L'Agulla d'Or: let's dress in languages
L'AGULLA D'OR:
Authors: Alba Martín, Lamya Yassine el Ouatik, Meritxell Martínez and Rosa Martín
Figure 1: L’agulla
d’or linguistic landscape. Picture taken by authors (6th of March, 2020).
1. INTRODUCTION
As Edelman and Gorter stated in
their article Linguistic and the Market “a linguistic landscape consists of the
languages used on signs in public space”(2010, p.96). Linguistic landscapes
(LL’s) tend to describe and may act as a mirror image of particular societies,
history and cultures. In this case, “L’agulla
d’or”, a designer workshop, is one of the infinite linguistic landscapes
that are portrayed in the well-known neighbourhood Centre Històric in Lleida. Specifically, in Avinguda de Blondel, 31. Not only the street but also the
neighbourhood that surrounds our token are extremely popular between the
inhabitants of Lleida, as well as the people from outside Lleida.
With a commercial purpose, this
board sign uses a combination of three different languages: Catalan, English and
French. While Catalan (L’agulla d’or)
is an official language in Lleida, English (“Fashion” and “by”) would be a
worldwide “lingua franca” (Trousdale, 2010). On the other side, we have the word
“atelier” which is an Old French word: astelier.
Thus, we are dealing with a sign which portrays multilingualism, although
Catalan is foregrounded and predominates, in this linguistic landscape in this
linguistic landscape. Furthermore, the name of this fashion atelier was chosen
by its owner. Therefore it follows the bottom-up language policies. Since they
are non-official signs created by “commercial enterprises of by private
organizations or persons” (Gorton, 2006, p.3).
2. CONTEXTUALIZATION
This landscape is located in Avinguda de Blondel, 31. This location
is inside the neighbourhood Centre
Històric. In Figure 2 you can see
the position of the zone within the city of Lleida. This neighbourhood is the
oldest part of Lleida, which is constantly witnessing the collision of people,
languages and cultures. Plus, it is where we can observe the conjunction of
infinite services - from hotels to toy shops, which make it even more
attractive and effective for the inhabitants. Hence, it contains the highest
number of commercial businesses of the city,
Carrer Major, and our landscape is located in a parallel street. You can see
the exact position 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) |
In this area we find people from
multiple nationalities, and, as you can see in Table 2, it is the zone with the
highest percentage of migrant population. Almost 45% of the population in the
area comes from other countries, and this also explains the vast variety of
languages that we can identify on the different signs on the street, such as
commercial businesses who want to express their linguistic background or who
use English to give an impression of modernity and an international look.
The fact it concentrates the most
commercial establishments, implies gentrification happening in Carrer Major. However, this effect does
not take place in the surrounding streets, so the location of our linguistic
landscape is not influenced by it. The socio-economic profile of the population
of this neighbourhood is middle class. Despite the fact that in this area of
the city we find the most commercial streets in Lleida, in the adjoining
streets, which are mostly migrant-populated, the socio-economic profile could
be considered middle-lower class. Moreover, most of the people whom you see on
the streets are from other neighbourhoods of Lleida, 59% of the people, or from
villages surrounding the city, which represent 41% of the total of visitors of
the area.
A vast variety of linguistic
landscapes that use other languages for commercial reasons can be found in this
area, and this is the case of our example. It is common in this neighbourhood
to find signs including other languages such as Catalan or Spanish, to express
locality and foreign languages to attract people from different nationalities
and to look more international.
3. METHODOLOGY
In our case, due to the
circumstances that we are living in because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were
not able to visit our linguistic landscapes. Due to the previous, the fieldwork
visits are slightly ambiguous.
When commenting on top-down
language policies, in Catalonia are the same ones as in Lleida, so the official
language is Catalan. As Gorter stated, “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 a minimum amount of Catalan in all the public spaces.
In Lleida’s case, the entity that manages these policies is La Paeria. Nevertheless, there are
different institutions that can manage these policies: The Spanish Government, La Generalitat de Catalunya, and lastly,
the local political entities as Lleida’s mayor.
In the case of L’Agulla d’Or, it follows bottom-up policies because it is a small
enterprise. The main language used in commerce is Catalan, but this token also
has English. This is closely related to the concept of globalisation, and the
fact that having English in this little shop allows additional international interest,
such as tourists. So even though the shop is most likely to have local
clienthood, with the incorporation of English it can look appealing to
foreigners.
4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
As can be seen in our language landscape, this specific token presents
multiple values. To categorise these we will be following the European
Observatory of Linguistic Landscapes criteria.
First of all we have the aesthetic value. Because this sign belongs to a
fashion taller, its name needs to be fashionable as well. This idea could also
be supported by the fact that the needle in the sign is shiny, so that could be
an example of multimodality.
Moreover, we can observe a relationship with commerce. As Edelman said,
“Often the English language is used to associate a product with a social
stereotype of modernity, progress and globalization.” (2010, p.97). In other
words, it can be seen how the English language has started to be incorporated
in Lleida, specifically in local shops and establishments that engage with
global economic language profiles, which use English as a hegemonic lingua
franca.
When analysing the language landscape we can see that there are three
main languages in the sign: Catalan, English and French. The addition of the
word ‘atelier’ gives a sense of beauty and delicacy, contrary to English which
is usually related to innovation, modernity and cosmopolitanism. Because of the
connotation that carries the French language we can say that the sign implies
cultural appreciation.
Secondly, we have the identity value; we can see that the word in French
has modern, elitist, prestigious and fashionable connotations. So,
consequently, we can see that the person behind the name of the fashion taller
was aware of those connotations.
We could also agree that this also has productive value due to the fact
that it is a shop and there are financial benefits attached to it. This
characteristic along with the aesthetic or artistic side is key to the modality
analysis of the token.
Finally, we could agree that the presence of multiple languages in the
token is a result of global languages accommodating into local Catalan and
Spanish societies and rules.
5. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
We are so grateful to the idea of creating
this project. Since it helped us to view our surroundings in a completely
different way. Indeed, our point of view of the world has changed drastically.
We could not elaborate this project without the help of Google map which is an
ICT (Information and Communication
Technology), TAC (Technologies for
the Acquisition of Knowledge), and TEP (Technologies
of Empowerment and Participation) (Prego-Vázquez & Zas Varela, 2019,
p.281) tool. Although, we must say that
we had some drawbacks since we could not get closer to our Language Landscapes
due to our current situation (worldwide pandemic). We believe that if we had
the opportunity to visit our token more often, we could have done better.
Nevertheless, one of the positive aspects of this project is that we had the
opportunity of describing the outside (our token, its neighbourhood, etc.) even
though we have been quarantined for more than twenty days. It is great to still
be connected to our neighbourhoods and streets.
Regarding our linguistic landscape, we believe that it is an ideal
example of English localization. Certainly, the first words that are read are
in Catalan (L’agulla d’or) which we
thought that it gives a hint of local pride and patriotism, when -actually-
Catalan is used because it is demanded by top-down language policies in Lleida
which are controlled by the council La
Paeria. Article 14 states that any type of public sign must be written in
Catalan: “la retolació pública [...] s’ha
de redactar normalment en català” (Ajuntament
de Lleida, 2018).
On the other hand, we believe that English and French are used to
“beautify” the product. It seems that these international languages are not
only used for financial interests, but also to make it more attractive in the
eyes of the client and give it a touch of modernity as well as open-mindness.
6. REFERENCES
-
Ajuntament
de Lleida (2018). “L’Ajuntament compleix el Reglament per a l’ús de la llengua
catalana a la Paeria”. Available in: L’Ajuntament compleix el
Reglament per a l’ús de la llengua catalana a la Paeria
-
Edelman, L and Gorter, D. (2010) Linguistic
landscapes and the market. In: Languages and the Market (ed.) by H.
Kelly-Holmes & G. Mautner. London: Palgrave: 96-108.
-
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.
- Prego-Vázquez, G. & Zas Varela, L.
(2018). Paisaje lingüístico: Un recurso TIC-TAC-TEP para el aula. Lingue Linguaggi 25: 277-295
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