"Tea Bubble: Identi-teas of a local shop”

    "Tea Bubble: Identi-teas of a local shop”

by The Bubbletears.  

Laura Cañada, Laura Moset & Laura Oller

Image 1. Token - Menu of the Tea Bubble Side 1. Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020).

INTRODUCTION

Globalization has become so present in our society that when we see an advertisement, a sign or a banner written in another language we no longer question the motivation the creator had to chose that language. However, as Jaworski and Thurlow (2010a, as cited in Bolton, 2012) suggest, studying these Linguistic Landscapes could give us not only information on the linguistic form of the language and how it is written, but also a much wider range of issues such as the values and the social meanings as well as the political, economic and cultural ones.

Our token under analysis can be found in a small tea shop in Lleida called Tea Bubble. The English name of the shop is already a clear example of a LL but it is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the linguistic diversity that actually takes place inside this commerce. In there, we found instances of language use for commercial purposes, but we specially chose it as we think the place has a clear use of global (Chinese and English) and local (Catalan and Spanish) languages to express identity. For this project, we will only focus on the shop’s menu but we recommend visiting it to experience the multicultural space it actually is.

This introduction is the thinking behind our choice of token we will consider, which is the following: a menu taken from a tea shop in centre Lleida, near Rambla Ferran, called Tea Bubble. Our token can be found in paper form and as a poster hanged on the tea shop as a commercial type of sign, which indicates the activity domain; in this case, commerce as well as hospitality. We choose this token because of the different variety of languages that can be found in it. On the outside of the tea shop, we can read the main sign in Catalan (being a secondary language since it is the only time it appears), English and Spanish. The token (the menu) has three main languages because it is written in English, Spanish and Chinese, making our token have a display of different alphabets, those being the Roman alphabet and the Simplified Mandarin Chinese alphabet (digraphia; which is “used to describe the use of more than one writing system for the same language and by the same speech community” (Angermeyer, 2012, p. 264).). We also observed the presence of alpha-numeracy, meaning that the prices in the menu use dots (international system) instead of commas (local system). Finally, as we will explain later, it is a monoglossic token where each language is treated separately because we cannot find any combinations of those languages within a sentence.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

Image 2 Token - Menu of the Tea Bubble (Side 2). Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020).

The token we decided to analyze is located in Carrer Baixada de la Trinitat, 6, 8, in the neighbourhood “Rambla de Ferran/ Estació”, in Lleida. The location of the shop is significant as it is situated in the delimiting of two different areas of Lleida, and as it belongs to a transit zone that connects the city with other Catalan (as well as Spanish cities) though high-speed train transport.

On the one hand, the shop is located in a street that exits to, on one side, neighbourhood 1 (Centre Històric) and, on the other, neighbourhood 2 (Rambla Ferran/Estació) as marked in Figure 1. According to Aguilar and Bellet (2014), due to the age, the degradation and the commercial and residential desertion of the two neighbourhoods, especially in “Centre Històric”, population with scarce economic means settled in these areas. Thus, we are in front of an impoverished socio-economic profile of residents who crisscross with commuters of heterogeneous backgrounds (like tourists with high income that buy in the 'longest commercial street'). In terms of migration, a study done by La Paeria (2012) shows that 59,64% of the population is Spanish and 40,36% of the inhabitants are migrants, which is a remarkable percentage as it is the second area in Lleida with more migrants, after the “Centre Històric”.

Figure 1. Map of Lleida's neighbourhoods (Gifex, n.d.).

On the other hand, the shop is located next to the “Eix Comercial”, popularly known as the longest commercial street in Spain, which is situated in the centre of the city. The “Eix Comercial” is also geographically situated in the “Centre Històric”. However, this part of the area differs from “Centre Historic” profile as it is arguably the busiest street of the city where the inhabitants of Lleida from all socioeconomic backgrounds go shopping. In addition, due to its location in the centre of the city and its commercial and historical interest, “Eix Comercial” is one of the main touristic areas in Lleida.

Tea Bubble is a very recent business in Lleida, its inauguration being in May 2019 since the authors were present that day. Bubble tea is a tea-based drink from Taiwan which is seasoned with tapioca balls, also known as pearls, a large amount of this drink’s appeal. The versatility of flavours and the combination of colours offer a unique and sensory experience. Bubble tea is also known as “Boba” which is Taiwanese for “pearl” referring to the tapioca balls that characterize this drink. Bubble tea has become a trend in the US, especially among youngsters, due to its aesthetic presentation which makes it worth to post on social media networks such as Instagram. The drink’s popularity has spread globally, arriving in Lleida as well, which denotes the process of globalisation and modernisation of the city. In fact, similar shops selling bubble tea can also be found in global cities in Catalunya such as Barcelona, where we can find places such as Zenzoo or Bobibar, both bubble tea shops. In addition, bubble tea shops are also getting into Madrid’s society, so we could say that bubble tea is a current fashion as it can be bought in the majority of big cities.

The shop on which our paper focuses is situated around local shops like Teens (a clothes shop) and franchises such as TOUS (a jewellery shop) or CASAS (a shoe shop), which are a sign of the area’s commercial value. The owners of Tea Bubble have Asian complexity as well as the majority of its customers as we will mention afterwards. Finally, the average price for a bubble tea in Tea Bubble is of 3,5€ which is an average price considering the newness and uniqueness of the drink. Thus, the price denotes that the targeted consumer of Tea Bubble is both the upper and the middle-class population. 

Figure 2. Map of the area where the token is located and its surroundings. Retrieved from GoogleMaps by the authors (01/04/20).

METHODOLOGY

For this project, we used ethnographic participant observation and official demographic and socioeconomic city hall data. We first chose our token and analyzed it to later make suppositions which we then validated with the official data. If it were not for the current situation that we are in lockdown due to COVID-19, we would have wanted to further corroborate our assumptions by conducting an interview with the owners and possible customers.

Although we had already been there on multiple occasions, we could only visit it once with the intention to study it as our linguistic token, once again due to the current situation, it may remain like this for the rest of the assignment. For this reason, we could not analyze the variability through the time of our token.

During our only visit on the 28th of February 2020 at 12 p.m., we took two photos of our linguistic token (the menu) and also of the context (street as in Image 3 and 4, as well as post-it notes, that we will analyze later on) as we found it necessary for our analysis. This visit and our previous experience were enough for us to know about the place, their product and the people who may go. We observed that a big percentage of the customers showed Asian complexion and that most of them used Chinese to communicate with the workers. With us, they understood Catalan and responded in Spanish.

Image 3. Tea Bubble - View from the outside 1. Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020).

On another note, we believe our token follows the established local top-down policies because according to Lleida City Hall’s top-down language policies, all public signs should be in Catalan as well as Spanish because the government imposes it (Ajuntament de Lleida, 2018). This is not met in the name of the shop which is all in English however we could find Catalan on the shop’s sunshade (“Sucs Naturals” and “Delicatessen”) and also Spanish in the menu which is in Chinese, Spanish, and English. So it is a possibility these languages are present because they are obliged to by the Spanish, Catalan, and local (Paeria) government. It also has a bottom-up policy as it is created by citizens trying to communicate with other citizens, in this case, to convey a commercial message for commercial exchange. It is created by a local private shop of Lleida, probably the owners are Chinese and thus both Chinese (as it is the language of the owners) and English (because of its use as a lingua franca) have an important role in the name and menu of the shop. We also found that Tea Bubble does not belong to any multinational and has nothing to do with other shops with similar names.

In the neighbourhood, there is no visible Chinese community, there are no other shops, cafes or restaurants near where Chinese is given the same “status” as Spanish or Catalan like in the menu of Tea Bubble. So, as Mooney and Evans (2015) claim, the use of these invisible languages “adds to the semiotic landscape and claims ownership of the space it is placed [...], suggesting an emerging, or otherwise invisible, [...] network” (p.97). We thought that the use of Chinese and English could be a result of the owners’ intention to cater for a more international audience, or, because they are Chinese, to cater for their own community and thus, the reason why we thought there is a strong sense of identity in the shop.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Image 4. Tea Bubble - View from the outside 2. Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020).

Concerning values, we followed the European Linguistic Landscape observatory list. It can be discussed that our token has multiple values, starting with identity values, as mentioned before, and as can be observed within all the languages that are involved in the token. In this case, the message that the token is giving to us is that the people that run Tea Bubble have a global and modern view of identity and diversity. This diversity can be a clear indication of the globalization of the world nowadays, using the mother tongue language of the brand in the menu (our token), Chinese; and then English as a vehicle of communication and lingua franca to finally include the local languages that are Spanish; and finally in a background-position Catalan. Using all these languages including all the identities within them is making a statement within the place it is located in multicultural diversity.

Another value would be productive, which could be considered the most important since its main aim is to sell a product and for people to consume it. And with this, the presence of English influences the productive value, because of marketing purposes of this shop since it’s not a franchise that can be found in other cities. Another value could be the aesthetic one because we can see different images and colours within the organization of the menu that gives it a special meaning and visual attraction. Moreover, we think that our token has social values as well since it defines a social group of people. We attribute different social meanings to our token, even if it was unintentionally because the presence of so many languages helps integrate multiple groups of international citizens into the city. We would like to add a plus, within this part, because inside the tea shop we could find a part with seats and games for people to go and enjoy their beverage, and in that part, there is a wall where the customers can leave a message as seen in Image 5 and 6. These are notes posted by individuals as individual messages to either partners or friends, as well as bottom-up statements. A lot of these notes are multimodal because they include different languages (we find English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Catalan, German (Danke), Romanian (I ♥ Fasole, which means beans) and others that do not appear in our images) and characters, as well as emoticons, which indicates that the majority of these notes has been posted by young customers. Since one of the authors has some knowledge of Chinese, we can guess that some of the notes are written by young customers as well, for example in image 6 there is a yellow note in Chinese which we assume that says “Girl, work hard for your dreams”.

Image 5. Message wall inside Tea Bubble 1. Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020).

Image 6. Message wall inside Tea Bubble 2. Picture taken by the authors (28/02/2020)

In these multimodal images, it can be observed a higher level of multiculturalism and diversity of languages that are both monoglossic and polyglossic in some of the different post-its present in the images. For example in Image 6, in a heart-shaped note, it says “Siempre tuya” in Spanish and “Petit” in Catalan. To analyze these post-it notes would be a whole new and different essay.
Finally, we have observed in our token that there is a sense of structuration and hierarchisation since English appears as the most relevant because the commercial brand name is in that language. Also, Chinese is used to mark the “identity” and the specialisation of the product as well as indicating its origin. And to finish, Spanish appears as the local ongoing language and Catalan just in the sunshade almost totally downplayed.
We can indicate that the use of English in our token may denote “The desire to communicate effectively in multiple markets […], “a European flavour” […], “quality credibility”, “technological/ medical/ knowledge innovation and advancement” (Martin 2010: 83).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

With this assignment, we have found out that Linguistic Landscapes are a very interesting and pedagogical tool for learning more about the sociolinguistics field. Personally, we would say that being the agents and getting actively involved in the project has allowed us to comprehend better sociolinguistics and its research scope. In addition, thanks to this project, we have become more familiarized with TKA (Technology of Knowledge Acquisition) by using Google Maps and Blogger, technological tools required to do this project.

Furthermore, doing this project has allowed us to discover Lleida from another point of view: a sociolinguistic one. Before starting this project, we assumed we knew the city like the back of our hand. By becoming ethnographers, apart from discovering new parts of the city, we have discovered that surprisingly, Lleida is a city surrounded by a multilingual and multicultural diversity. We have also realised how much we are surrounded by language and how much there is behind the choice of a specific language or language combination to convey a message. We were impressed about how something so current and apparently simple as a shop sign or a menu can provide us with so much information about a community or a place. Regarding our token, we have found that although it is a place that we visit periodically, we realised that we did not pay attention to the linguistic landscapes that we can find in this place.
Throughout the project, we have encountered some challenges. One limitation is that due to the fact that we were in lockdown, we were not able to visit the token on several occasions to carry out a more accurate ethnographic study.
In conclusion, the analysis of a linguistic landscape has allowed us to become aware of the importance of sociolinguistics as language plays an essential role in our lives on a daily basis.

REFERENCES AND WEB SOURCES

Aguilar, L., Bellet, C. (2014). La ciudad evitada y omitida: El Centro Histórico de Lleida, del vacío a espacio marginal. In Territorios inconclusos y sociedades rotas. Madrid: Grupo de Geografía Urbana (GGU) and Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles (AGE).

Angermeyer, P. S. (2012). Bilingualism Meets Digraphia: Script Alternation and Hybridity in Russian-American Writing and Beyond: Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer. In Sebba, M., Mahootian, S., & Jonsson, C. (Eds.), Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing (pp. 264-281). Routledge.

Bolton, K. (2012) World Englishes and linguistic landscapes. World Englishes. 31 (1): 30–33

Gifex (n.d.) Barrios de Ciudad de Lleida. Retrieved from https://www.gifex.com/Europa/Espana/Cataluna/Lerida/Lerida/Politicos.html

La Paeria (2012). Butlletí Socioeconòmic de Lleida. Retrieved from http://paeria.cat/butlletieconomic/2012/03-juliol/06-poblacio.pdf

Martin, E. (2010) Language policy and multilingual advertising in France. In: Language and the Market (ed.) by H. Kelly Holmes & G. Mautner. London: Palgrave. 83-95

Mooney, A. & Evans, B. (2015). Linguistic Landscapes. In: Language, society and Power. London & New York: Routledge. 86-107