Re-Read

Re-Read. LLIBRERIA LOWCOST 

A second life to your stories. The use of English in commerce.

Linguistic token Re-Read banner. Picture taken by Helena Barrufet (March 4, 2021)

INTRODUCTION

This project aims to examine and identify a specific ‘token’ that includes English inside a Linguistic Landscape (LL) in a globalized city. The token investigated is the commercial sign of 'Re-Read. Llibreria Low-cost'. Linguistic Landscapes have largely been investigated (Backhaus, 2007; Mooney, 2015; Sayers, 2010); in consonance with Landry and Bourhis (1997, cited in Sabaté-Dalmau, 2021) LLs are defined as “communicative inscriptions in the public space” which currently have a paramount role in society. The project has been conducted in Lleida, Catalonia. The fact of analyzing the students’ city intends to generate debate, stimulate critical thinking, create awareness of the role of English nowadays and foster respect towards multilingualism. 

According to Bolton (2012), in the last twenty years or so, globalization has become a cultural, economic, and political force that has led to a process of ‘Americanization’ of popular culture. Not only has this ‘Americanization’ influenced aspects such as the lifestyle or even the gastronomy of the different inhabitants of diverse countries, but it has also had an effect on their Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) in the Catalan/Spanish bilingual contexts.

In this entry of the blog, the part of LL that will be analyzed is a commercial banner that can be found next to the main commercial street in Lleida. The token belongs to a secondhand bookshop called ‘Re-Read. Llibreria Lowcost’. This shop belongs to a Spanish chain that was born in Barcelona in 2012, seduced by the idea of a secondhand modest bookstore (Serrato, 2015). Nowadays, it counts with more than 25 shops, the majority of them franchises, all along the Spanish territory. The enterprise employs the same system in all the stores: These books come from owners that decide to dispose of them. On the one hand, if they want to sell their old books, they will be paid 20 cents per book, no matter the language, or the genre of their product. On the other hand, if the customer prefers to buy books, he or she will find secondhand books at very appealing prices: 1 book costs 3€, 2 books 5€, and 5 books 10€.

In this bookshop banner, there are two languages present: the main language, English, and the secondary language, Catalan. Therefore, our token presents multilingualism operating in the Latin alphabet. As Sayers (2010) stated, using English may be intended to represent different meanings, such as an advance and sophisticated language or a fashion and ‘cool’ election. English is an extremely common language in commercial signs and in the domain of commerce. The banner consists of two parts, the heading ‘Re-read’ and the subheading ‘Llibreria Low Cost’. While the heading is written totally in English, we find  bilingualism in the second part of the banner 'Catalan-English' which portrays a feeling of 'local pride' (Edelman & Gorter, 2010)

CONTEXT

The bookshop can be found in Carrer de Pi i Margall, 13, 25004 Lleida as can be seen in Figure 2. It is in a small street surrounded by local small commerce as is shown in Figure 3. The street is adjacent to the principal commercial street in Lleida, Carrer Major. It is not in the neighborhood of Centre Històric but Príncep de Viana – Clot (Figure 1). This fact is surprising because the adjacent area is more commercial and having a shop there gives, generally, more visibility to the commerce (FACEC, 2014). However, as it is a national chain, it is already known among book consumers and it has success. Something curious about the neighborhood concerning its name is the square’s name ‘Clot’. Its cultural name is ‘Clot de les Granotes’ (Frog’s hole); however, in terms of administration, it is ‘Plaça de la Constitució’ (Constitution square). There is an article in the local newspaper, Segre (Clot o Constitució?), about this issue.

On the subject of neighborhood population data, according to the information of the census of 2012 found in the webpage of Paeria of Lleida (Paeria, 2012) 69.06% of the inhabitants are Spanish and the remaining 30.94% are foreigners. It is the third most populated neighborhood by people from other countries; it is a migrant-populated area. Moreover, it is one of the most populated zones of the city, in 2018 it had more than 11,000 inhabitants. There is no remarkable differentiation in percentage with respect to age between its inhabitants; apart from that, it is divided equally in matters of gender (Paeria, 2018). As it is close to the district of Centre Històric, it is sometimes considered part of the historic center of the city. For this reason, it can be deduced that it is part of the older district of the city. Concerning Figure 3, and in relation to the closer commerce area, we can also assume that the area is not a touristic one despite being very central. In terms of socio-economic profile, as it is close to the historic center, there is some paramount information relevant to this aspect which should be taken into account. As stated by Giró i Parramona (2001: 63) it is considered a socially deteriorated area, with problems for daily subsistence.

Figure 1. Neigborhood Princep de Viana - Clot. Source: Google Maps, 2021.

Figure 2. Carrer Pi i Margall, 13. Source: Google Maps, 2021.

Figure 3. Carrer Pi i Margall, 13, street view. Source: Google Maps, 2018.

METHODOLOGY

The procedure followed for the correct development of the data collection had to be carried out by visiting the LL chosen at least three times. The first visit (February 24, 2021), was done since we were all aware of the existence of this bookstore and we were already conscious of its bilingual landscape; we thought that it would be a valuable object of analysis. The second visit (March 4, 2021) had a completely different objective; we decided to take the photo and focus on the neighborhood in which ‘Re-Read’ was located, i.e., the kind of commerce that characterized the area. Our third and last visit (March 10, 2021) was carried out in order to prove our hypothesis of the zone, for instance, which people inhabited it. We also decided to analyze the shop by entering it and studying how it was organized and the assortment of languages that could be found in the books that were sold there since the organisation and the order in which the books could be placed would already reflect the intention of the bookstore owner and who the main target is according to the language priorities applied. It is worth noting that the classification of the books was meticulously planned: at the entrance of the shop, we could find books written in local languages (Catalan and Spanish), and at the back of the store we had the foreign language section (English, Chinese and French among others). Therefore, we should mention the relevance that both Catalan and Spanish have in the area. As we can see in figure 3 the LLs surrounding our token contain one of the local languages spoken in Catalonia, Catalan. This fact reflects how important the idea of local is in this zone and it also portrays how every establishment seems to have the same ideology regarding language constructions. 

In order to be able to explain the phenomenon of hybridization, defined as "a process whereby separate and disparate entities or processes generate another entity or process (the hybrid), which shares certain features with each of its sources but which is not purely compositional" (Sanchez-Stockhammer, 2012), we must take into account the legal policies that condition the creation of banners. Regarding Article 14 of top-down language policies in Lleida (BOP, 2014), it firmly states which language must be used in all kinds of banners: Catalan. However, if we keep looking at the articles found through this document which determine language policies in the city, we find article 17.2., which claims that there is no need for the banner to be exclusively written in Catalan if its target is to attract other language speakers, i.e., in this case, the use English is allowed since the bookstore's owner purpose is to address a wide public that does not speak only local languages. Nonetheless, Catalan or Spanish should always be present, even if they do not appear as the primary languages. 

Although top-down language policies somehow force the usage of a local language, when visiting the area, we realized that this one is characterized by a considerable amount of local commerce establishments. It would seem that, in the end, there is some kind of correlation or even hybridization between both top-down and bottom-up policies. The establishment is obliged to use Catalan, nevertheless, due to the frequency with which other local languages are employed in this zone, the decision to employ a local language was probably done willingly, without any kind of objection. Thus, the bookshop owner is imposing a bottom-up policy by employing English in its banner. 

Notwithstanding, if we want an in-depth investigation, we should not only be conscious of the languages employed in the chosen LL, but also of the languages surrounding it.

Figure 4. LLs languages surrounding our token. Carrer Pi i Margall, 13. Source: Google Maps, 2018.

Figure 5. LLs languages surrounding our token. Carrer Pi i Margall, 13. Source: Google Maps, 2018.

As we have previously mentioned, this zone is characterized by local commerce; this is clearly reflected in the LLs that can be seen in figures 4 and 5. For instance "Floristeria", "Perruqueria i estètica" and "Fruites i verdures" are clear examples of the relevance of local languages. Despite the predominance of local commerce, as stated before, this neighborhood has an index of immigrants of 30.94% which would explain why you could hear some of the passers-by speak Romanian or Arabic apart from the local languages of the country: Catalan and Spanish. The influence of other languages is also reflected in some other LLs that surround our token, such as "Bar cafeteria Yang" and "Jar Toys joguines" which hybridize Chinese and Catalan and English and Catalan respectively.

Our LL clearly has a message to transmit when employing English, and through the use of this language, it is conveying the message that the books that can be found in the bookstore are not only written in local languages. When we visited the store, we saw that the languages that appeared the most were English, French, and Chinese (notice that these three languages are powerful in terms of relevance and influence in society regarding commercial reputation). However, local languages still have an important role and, consequently, the shop assistants mostly employed Catalan to talk to customers. Therefore, despite considering Catalan an important language to promote due to its value in Catalonia, the undeniable globalization of English has promoted its usage to attract and adapt to a bigger audience.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This landscape token indexes aesthetic, productive, and identity values. Firstly, the aesthetic value is transmitted by the use of English and the alliteration with the r sound in ‘Re-Read’. The use of this literary figure is to give the banner the meaning of reading something again and highlighting the fact that a book can be reused by a new reader. The aesthetic value in this sense is closely related to the productive value, as the linguistic landscape is a commercial one, from a book shop. The productive value is given to this shop because of its function. Moreover, ‘Lowcost’ is related to the money you pay for a product or a service; in this case the price of the books. This shows again the presence of the productive value.

Last but not least, the identity value is present because of the word ‘Llibreria’, in Catalan. ‘Re-Read’, as it has been mentioned in the previous part, is a Spanish chain, which means that in other parts of Spain the word ‘Librería’, in Spanish, is going to be used. In the case of Bilbao, in the autonomy of the Basque Country, the word meaning bookstore in Basque (‘Liburudenda’) is used, as we can see in Figure 7. The value of identity is present in those Spanish autonomies where there is another official language apart from Spanish.  

Figure 6. Street view of Re-Read in Bilbao. Source: Google Maps, 2019.

Moreover, the use of Catalan is a resource employed to highlight its importance in Catalonia, as it is one of its official languages apart from Spanish. This fact does not only concern bottom-up and top-down language policies in Catalonia and Lleida, but also the people’s self-identity of as regards the area in which the bookstore is located. As regards to reinforcement of minority languages, the use of Catalan highlights again the importance of it.

Finally, the use of English can be related to the interculturality viewpoint. English is mainly used as a lingua franca and as a language that allows intercultural communication. For that reason, the words ‘Re-Read’ and ‘Lowcost’ are used as symbols to ensure that the target audience understands the message conveyed by the enterprise without taking into account his or her L1. English is an international language and it is strongly related to modernity and the superiority of technology (Baumgardner, 2006). Innovation is what nowadays commerce pursues, for that reason English is what connects them to the present world and to modernity itself.

CONCLUSION

Once the project was finished and we had to reflect on the analysis and the results obtained, all the members of the group agreed that the aims were more than achieved. One of the main ideas of the project was to stimulate students’ critical thinking and make students consider the influence of English as a lingua franca in their adjacent environment. According to Sayers (2010) due to the daily bombard with those signs, they become part of the scenery and it is hard to notice them on a conscious level. Nevertheless, after looking at the city from the perspective of a sociolinguist, many things have changed. Abundant information is now displayed: information and voices have been there for so long, although they were invisible to us. As Mooney (2015) stated, “we find these voices only if we know how to look”. 

Another crucial part of the project was to move knowledge from the classroom to the street. The methodology of this project assimilated three basic concepts (ICT, TEP, and TAC*) that challenged to generate participative and significant knowledge (Prego-Vázquez & Zas Varela, 2018). Firstly, by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) we were encouraged to be part of the creation of a virtual map of our city and help to expand the virtual LLs of Lleida. Besides, we were able to create a blog entry to share our results with the ones of our classmates. Thus, even if we only analyzed one linguistic token, we had the analysis of numerous tokens together, which will enable us to have a deeper insight into the LLs that characterize our city. Secondly, with regards to the use of Technologies of Empowerment and Participation (TEP), we were the ones in charge of choosing the token and identifying its possible meaning. In addition, we conducted fieldwork through different zones of our city by analyzing the signs in the neighborhood and its inhabitants. Finally, the Technologies for Acquisition of Knowledge (TAC) allowed us to absorb multiple concepts concerning the field of sociolinguistics since we have been working on them for a long period and we have observed their applications in first person.

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Helena Barrufet, Lorena Rancu & Albina Vyalenko