CocÓ Nails &Beauty Lounge: where English and body care collide 

Ànnia Segarra, Anna Vadrí, Zínia Pascual

1. INTRODUCTION 

This LL token has been found in Carrer de la Palma,  in a commercial zone in the city of Lleida. The support of the token is a glass, and it belongs to a beauty place. According to Mooney and Evans, the activity domain held in there belongs to commerce, thus, the type of sign is commercial. The main languages found in the token are English ("Beauty Lounge") and Spanish ("Cocó"). Talking about the alphabet, it is clearly roman. 

As it can bee seen in the map below, this shop is located in a commercial area in Lleida very close to important spots of the city . For instance, in the south part of the map we can localize the Cathedral and the Museum. In the Eastern corner of the map there is the University of Lleida. 

Support: Glass 

Activity domain: Commerce

Type of sign: Commercial  

Main/Foregrounded Languages: English and Catalan 

Secondary/Foregrounded Languages: none

Alphabets: Roman alphabet 

2. CONTEXTUALISATION

CocÓ Beauty & Lounge is located in Carrer la Palma, 17. In the neighbourhood of the Centre Històric of the city which is mainly inhabited by migrant-population, being the 42.5% of the total inhabitants of the neighbourhood (Cerezuela, 2015). The Centre Històric used to be one of the arteries connecting to the Eix Comercial in which Carrer Major is found. It would be commercial and highly populated in the past, but during the 60s and 80s it had suffered depopulation (Cerezuela, 2015) since people wanted to go to newer areas with more facilities and advantages. Between 1996 and 2001, it considerably grew with Spanish people thanks to social policies and buildings’ improvements. From 2001 onwards, the number of inhabitants rapidly increased with foreigners that had low income and resources. This growth was mostly due to the mortgage and renting prices, which were lower through time. (Cerezuela, 2015)

Figure 1 shows the beauty lounge inside of the neighbourhood, and figure 2 shows the street view of where it is located (which, by the time the picture was taken, the salon was not there yet). The beauty and lounge salon belongs to one of the most impoverished areas of the city which, little by little, is undergoing generational renewal through gentrification, with particularly migrant-run shops.. In 2014, the Centre Històric was inhabited by 10.450 people of whom 42.5% were migrant population (Cerezuela, 2015). Even though this street connects directly with the Eix Comercial, it is marginalized, whereas the Carrer Major is frequented by people from all over Lleida and usually of higher incomes. What is curious about this establishment is that even if it is in a lower-income area, it offers higher-income services which are not usually regarded in the place where they are located, since there are cheaper shops run by migrants.

Figure 1. Map of the Centre Històric. Source: Google Maps

Figure 2. Street view of the nails salon. Source: Google Maps.

3. METHODOLOGY

The procedure followed for the data-gathering was carried out through ethnographic observation consisting in visiting the linguistic token three times. The first time we visited the token was on the 26th of February while we were looking for a linguistic landscape to work on. This first visit was carried out by the whole group. The second time the token was visited was on the 1st of March by one single member of the group. This visit consisted on taking a picture of the token after having decided amongst the different options of linguistic landscapes that we found on the 26th of February. The third and last visit was on the 12th of March, when all three members of the group visited the linguistic landscape and saw that it had not been removed. They also focused on the linguistic situation surrounding the chosen token (languages spoken and languages seen in written form). After having done those three visits, we noticed that the majority of people concurring that street are foreigners, from North-African countries or Eastern-European ones, thus, the linguistic situation of the location of the token is a varied and inconsistent one, surrounded by international population.

In the city of Lleida, top-down policies are enhanced by the use of the Catalan language, enhanced by Lleida’s city hall. All the public banners, or names of roads are in Catalan in the city, while traffic rules or signs are in Spanish according to the traffic law. On the other hand, public banners should usually be written in Catalan language, but when it comes to our token, we find the word Cocó which is a Spanish noun and Nails & Beauty Lounge that is written in English language. In the article 32.1 of the law 1/1998 approved by the Catalan Government, it is stated that the establishments must be able to assist clients whether they speak Catalan or Spanish. However, finding Catalan staff speakers inside of the salon is not usual, as their L1 is Spanish. It was seen that this commerce used bottom-up policies in which they did not implement Catalan language but others, and thus, they did not follow Catalan language policies. On the other hand, it is also important to bear in mind that even if language policies want to enhance Catalan language, other international languages can also be used so as to become a more globalised society. It is a way of making it more international and commercial. 

The linguistic context of the token is determined by the languages heard nearby the establishment and the languages used by the workers there. Outside of the nails and beauty lounge, we find an environment in which many languages can be heard. Since it is found in the Centre Històric of the city where many nationalities are put together, we found Easter-European accents such as Romanian, Arabic languages and some Hindi ones since there is a Kebab restaurant nearby. Also, a vocational training centre is found close to the salon, in which Catalan and Spanish languages were heard. 

Inside of the nail salon and, as previously mentioned, the predominant language is Spanish since it is the L1 of the owners but, if needed, they can also speak Catalan to those clients who might prefer it. The predominance of Spanish language is highly seen in the chart of services that they offer which, at the same time it offers English terms referring to some specific activities they carry out. As seen in Figure 3, most of the services offered are in Spanish except for some such as eyelashes lifting or the term polygel, which are in English. Moreover, we also see the name of the establishment in English language. 

 

Figure 3. Offer of services. 

Figure 4. Picture of the token. Source: Picture taken by authors (12th March 2021) 

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In regards to the values and according to the Linguistic Landscape Observatory, we have been able to identify in our LL token some values, among which we can highlight the following. The way we have been able to identify theses values was by having a look on the contents worked in class and see that English can be used as a way to enhance commercial activities and to make products gain a prestige in linguistic landscapes. It also has to be said that it means an instance of the process of Englishization in the town of Lleida, and specially, in the Centre Historic. Due to the fact that English appears to be more prestigious and it is a Lingua Franca, commercial domains have included it more and more in their businesses. For one thing, the productive value is the first that we want to talk about, when using English in the part of the sign where it reads Nails & Beauty Lounge, there is a clear intention to make foreigners understand what activity is held in that place in order to attract more people interested in the business. If a popular lingua franca is used in a specific spot on a business there are more possibilities that the majority of people understand that language. Chances are that the economic benefits are greater and the business reaches more people than it would if it were only written in Catalan or Spanish. Moreover, the two women that run this business are from a Latin country, we know this because one of the authors of these research is a frequent costumer of the place and she knows the owners. This fact has been considered as an identity value, for it has a meaning that recalls not only the identity of the local people (Spanish) but also the owners’ identity. In this case, the token analysed is a place where customers can go and have their nails done.

5. CONCLUSION

With this assignment, we have found out that Linguistic Landscapes are a very impressive and pedagogical medium for learning more about the sociolinguistics area. We would say that getting actively committed to the project has allowed us to understand sociolinguistics better and its research field. Thanks to this project, we have become more familiarised with the Technology of Knowledge Acquisition (TKA) as well as Technologies of Empowerment and Citizenship Participation (TEP) by using Google Maps and Blogger.

Moreover, this project has allowed us to discover Lleida from another perspective: a sociolinguistic one. Before starting this project, we assumed we knew the city quite well. By becoming ethnographers, aside from getting to know new parts of the city, we have discovered that Lleida is surrounded by multicultural and multilingual variety. Also, we have realised how much the language surrounds us and how much there is behind a particular language or language combination to conduct a message. We were fascinated about how something so simple as a salon/shop sign or a menu can provide us with so much information about a place. About our token, we have seen that although it is a place that we see, and one of us, visit periodically, we realised that we did not pay attention to the linguistic landscapes that we can find in this salon.

Throughout the project, we have encountered some challenges. One limitation was that since we were in county lockdown, and we have restrictions, we could not visit the token on different occasions to conduct more accurate ethnographic research.

In conclusion, this linguistic landscape analysis has allowed us to become more aware of sociolinguistics's value as language plays an essential role in our daily lives.

REFERENCES

Bakhyt, A., and Mandel, K.M. (2018). The Concept of Multilingualism. Philology series, 4, 16-24. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333673766_The_Concept_of_Multilingualism
 
Cerezuela, A. (2015). Dinàmica i estructura comercial al cor del Centre Històric de Lleida (Thesis). University of Lleida, Spain. Retrieved from https://repositori.udl.cat/bitstream/handle/10459.1/57031/acerezuelas.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The study of the linguistic landscape as a new approach to multilingualism. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 1-6.
La Paeria (2019). Butlletí econòmic. Source from: http://paeria.cat/butlletieconomic/2012/03-juliol/06-poblacio.pdf