Santa Gloria Coffee & Bakery: Exploring Local-languages and advertising English contact in Lleida

Santa Gloria Coffee & Bakery: Exploring Local-languages and advertising English contact in Lleida

BY  ARIADNA AGUSTÍ , CARLA ENFEDAQUE & AIDA SÁNCHEZ

 

Figure 1. Linguistic Landscape.
Source: Ariadna's phone; picture taken by Ariadna Agustí, 28/02/2023

1. INTRODUCTION

This project's main objective is to examine and identify a specific 'token' which contains English in contact with local languages inside a Linguistic Landscape (LL) in a globalised city, in this case, Lleida, Catalonia, which is a bilingual society with Catalan (a minority language) and Spanish (a majority, state language). The token that we have decided to work on is the commercial sign of 'SantaGloria Coffee & Bakery' (see Figure 1). This analysis will raise awareness of the current functions, uses and social meanings of English in the commercial realm, in the above-mentioned city, and promote a metalinguistic awareness and the development of an ethics of respect for multilingualism among students.

In the entry of the blog, we provide the analysis of a LL, which is an advertising sign of a bakery called 'Santa Gloria Coffee & Bakery' that is located in Carrer Sant Antoni. This establishment is part of the 'Santagloria Coffee & Bakery' franchise. This bakery company was born in 1963 by a Spanish baker who started baking bread, and it has not stopped since then. After all these years, other products have been incorporated into the menu, such as smoothies, cakes, pastries and frappés. There are several bakeries around Spain and even in Andorra (SantaGloria Coffee & Bakery, 2022).

 

In this advertising sign that we analyse here, we can observe four different languages, the main one being Catalan, followed by Spanish, English, and Italian. This token shows multilingualism in the Roman alphabet. Moreover, its type of sign is commercial and the activity domains are commerce and hospitality as it consists of a bakery and it is open to all the citizens in Lleida. The values of the sign are aesthetic, productive, and identity (as detailed in the results section) and its production is monoglossic (with the use of Roman script only) and bottom-up because it is not created by any governmental institution.

2. CONTEXTUALISATION

The token that we have chosen is located in Carrer Sant Antoni, 31, 25002 Lleida (see Figure 2).

This street is within the commercial axis of Lleida because it is next to Carrer Major, which is one of the largest commercial streets in Europe and has around an average of 8,076 pedestrians per day (Segre, 2019). Furthermore, one could say that it is the street that follows it, therefore, our LL is in a very commercial and tourist place.

Figure 2. Map of the location.
Source: Google Maps.
Retrieved on 12/03/2023 by the authors.

In its surroundings, we can find shops, restaurants and other establishments where the use of English is very present (see Figure 3), and it is especially used for commercial purposes in supports such as shop names, window displays, and banners, among others. Therefore, we can say that this area of the city has plenty of language diversity, such as Catalan or English, for instance "Trendy" as can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Street view of the surroundings.
Source: Google Maps.
Retrieved on 12/03/2023 by the authors.

In addition, this area is always in growth and change because establishments move out and new ones open up, which may attract people from other cultures. Moreover, as this street can be considered part of the Historical Centre of Lleida (see Figure 4), it has a high cultural diversity, since, according to Segre (2022), there are neighbours of 87 nationalities (Segre, 2022).

Figure 4. Map of the neighbourhoods of Lleida.
Source: Gifex, 2011.
https://www.gifex.com/fullsize2/2011-04-14-13453/Barrios_de_la_ciudad_de_Lerida.html

3. METHODOLOGY

The methodology we have followed in order to carry out the project has been an ethnographic observation, following a critical sociolinguistics qualitative approach to language in society. The data for our linguistic token has been collected during three fieldwork visits to the place. The first visit was on the 24th of February 2023 by one team member, who unexpectedly saw the bakery while going on a walk around the neighbourhood of 'Centre Històric' and photographed the advertising sign. It caught our attention because, even though we had already seen the advertisement before, we had never noticed its multilingualism and the duality of globalisation and local business languages. The second visit was on the 6th of March 2023 by two members of the group, this time the aim was to take a photo of our token in its usual surroundings and observe if the street was also multilingual and multicultural. Finally, the third visit was on the 18th of March 2023 by one team member, with the objective of confirming our analysis and checking that there had not been any changes in the languages displayed.

Regarding the linguistic policies that regulate what languages establishments must use in their advertising signs, our linguistic token acts in accordance with the top-down language regulations passed by the Lleida City Council (BOP, 2014). Article 14 from the official bulletin claims that all public advertisement signs must be written in Catalan, although Article 17.2 claims that there can be multilingualism in advertisements, that is Catalan plus another language, depending on the linguistic repertoires of the customers they are addressing to it. Our linguistic token also abides by article 32.3 of the Act 1/1998 passed by the Government of Catalonia. This claims that fixed signs and banners intended for the public have to be written in Catalan. However, this policy does not affect commercial names, which can contain other languages, as we can observe in our token, which involves both Spanish (SantaGloria) and English (Coffee & Bakery).

Nevertheless, in order to develop a deep analysis of our linguistic token, apart from studying the languages involved in the advertising sign itself, we should also consider the linguistic repertoire of its surroundings.

Figure 5. LLs languages surrounding our token, involving different languages.
Carrer Sant Antoni, 31.
Source: Ariadna's phone; picture taken by Ariadna Agustí, 05/03/2023.

Figure 6. LLs languages surrounding our token, involving different languages.
Carrer Sant Antoni, 31.
Source: Ariadna's phone; picture taken by Ariadna Agustí, 05/03/2023.

Our linguistic token is situated in one of the principal commercial streets in Lleida (La Paeria, n.d.), as is clearly noticeable in the LLs that appear in Figures 5-6. The street is usually visited by both locals and tourists, therefore both advertising signs and commercial names can be found in Catalan and in other languages, such as English or Spanish. For instance, we can identify local languages like "Forn de pa" or "La perfumeria"; but we can also spot the presence of foreign languages, such as English in "T&H Nails", "Canada House" or "Springfield"; Italian in "Giacomo Mazzalli"; or even French in "Garnier". Thus, this reinforces our claim that the street is multilingual and there is a great diversity of languages in the shops and establishments.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This linguistic token has three values, productive, aesthetic, and identity, which have been established by following the categorisation established by the European observatory of linguistic landscapes (Linguistic Landscape Observatory. (2023). Glossary. Olot. http://www.catpaisatge.net/eng/glossari.php).

First of all, it has a productive value, which prevails, since the token is about an establishment that produces money through its products, so it provides financial benefit. It is essential to mention the productive value first because the overall purpose of the bakery is to make money, in order to keep it open for many more years and also to make improvements in the place. 

 

Besides the productive value, it has an aesthetic one since the owners have thought of a proper name for the bakery and also because of the presented image which contains different colours and some borders in the corners, displaying a particular branding identity, with the use of amalgamations ("Santa Gloria"). Therefore, our token contains multimodality, which is the combination of images and text in order to attract customers. As you can see in Figure 1, the image contains some food, which is just an example of what one can buy in the establishment. In addition, when the second picture was taken, we took the opportunity to take a look at the products that the bakery had, apart from the one in the image of the advertising sign, and we saw that there is a wide variety of different pastries, such as croissants, cakes, cookies, sandwiches, etc. Furthermore, the waiters and waitresses had no problem serving the customers in both Catalan and Spanish.

 

Finally, it has identity value because the use of English aligns with the positive stereotypes of English as an international, cosmopolitan language, it also indexes professionalism and modernity in food serving (Gorter and Cenoz, 2009). Moreover, other languages involved in our token, such as Italian, are also used as an advertising tool with words that are known all around the world and transmit an idea of authenticity, for example, words like caprese. Furthermore, the presence of Catalan in this linguistic token reflects the importance that it has in Catalonia, as it is one of the two official languages together with Spanish (historically minoritised). Catalan being the main language of the advertising sign also shows that it is the most spoken language in Lleida, moreover, there are several official articles from the Catalan Government and from the Lleida City Council which state that advertising signs must be written in Catalan (this is explained in section 3 of this project). But also, to provide instrumental, necessary information for understanding relevant aspects of the food - and it is part of the logo.

Through our linguistic token, we can see the use of English when advertising a product. In the advertising poster, we can see the use of English in the words "Coffee & Bakery". This phenomenon of using different languages in the same token is called multilingualism. However, it is not real natural multilingualism, but a studied and premeditated collection of languages in order to attract the public (fetish). Non-English local users understand the message by connotation and get the idea through inference, as these loanwords have been accommodated into the Catalan sociolinguistics dynamics. According to Edelman & Gorter (2010), when Engish is used in advertisement, it has different functions, which can be observed in our token. In the name of the bakery "SantaGloria Coffee & Bakery", an interplay can be noticed between global and local economies because it combines Spanish, with a globalised and iconised language as English.

In these cases, English is used in advertising signs as innovative advertising strategies, creating messages which can be regarded as a form of public discourse aimed at selling and attracting a certain profile of customers, either local citizens or tourists.

5. CONCLUSION

After carrying out this project, we realised that, before, we had never been particularly mindful of our surroundings, the languages that we are exposed to, and the cultural diversity among us. Additionally, it has given us a greater insight into Sociolinguistics and how languages are constantly co-existing. We had the opportunity to discover a completely different perspective of ordinary landscapes that we see every day but never perceive that are multilingual.

Furthermore, we have become aware of the importance of English in our environment, especially when it comes to commerce and advertising. Lleida may not be as big as well-known as Barcelona or Madrid but the English language is still very present here. With that we can affirm that Lleida is currently facing a process of Englishisation, even though we are unaware of it since it is used in clothing, window displays, banners, and shop names... seeing English in all of these, already feels normal to us.

Besides this, thanks to TKA (Technology of Knowledge Acquisition) and TEP (Technology of Empowerment and Participation) we have learned how to use the blog and the map very effectively and efficiently, which is an aspect that we did not know previously, and they were both used to democratise the knowledge that we provide of Lleida's multilingualism and to open it to society at large. We have enjoyed using these tools since they are very practical and we may find them useful in the future, either for other projects or for work.

All in all, we can conclude by saying that learning about Sociolinguistics and analysing linguistic landscapes are effective methods for raising awareness about cultural and language diversity, as well as encouraging individuals in becoming more conscious of their environment and feel empowered as knowledge generators.

6. REFERENCES

ACN. (2019, May 22). La calle Major de Lleida es la más rentable de Europa para abrir un comercio. Segre.com. Retrieved from https://www.segre.com/es/noticias/lleida/2019/05/22/la_calle_major_lleida_mas_rentable_europa_para_abrir_comercio_76944_1092.html

Act No. 1, of 7th January 1998, on linguistic policy. Ministry of the Presidency, Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from https://llengua.gencat.cat/permalink/78000b57-5382-11e4-8f3f-000c29cdf219

Backhaus, P. (Ed.). (2007). Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo (Vol. 136). Multilingual Matters. Retrieved from https://books.google.es/books?hl=ca&lr=&id=Nl0mPajCyxsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=linguistic+landscapes&ots=QLpev7fBzj&sig=U5JCf290PvEFtY8STJXpXYpTXV0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=linguistic%20landscapes&f=false

Edelman, L., & Gorter, D. (2010). Linguistic landscapes and the market. In: Kelly-Holmes, H. & Mautner, G. (eds.), Language and the Market (96-108). London: Palgrave.

Gifex. (2011). Barrios de la ciudad de Lérida. Retrieved from https://www.gifex.com/fullsize2/2011-04-14-13453/Barrios_de_la_ciudad_de_Lerida.html

Gorter, D. & Cenoz, J. (2009). Language economy and linguistic landscape economy and linguistic landscape. In: Shohamy, E. & Gorter, D. (eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (55-69). New York / London: Routledge.

La Paeria (n.d). Federació d'Associacions de Comerciants de l'Eix Comarcal de Lleida. Retrived from https://comercmercatsconsum.paeria.cat/comerc-i-mercats/associacions-i-entitats-de-comerc/associacions-de-comerciants/federacio-dassociacions-de-comerciants-de-leix-comercial-de-lleida

Mooney, A. & Evans, B. (2015). Chapter 5. Linguistic Landscapes. In: Language, society and Power. London & New York: Routledge. 86-107.

Sabaté-Dalmau, M. (2022) 'Localizing English in town': a linguistic landscape project for a Critical Linguistics Education on multilingualism, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25:10, 3580-3596, DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2022.2067978

Segre (2022, September 24). La Paeria constata el deterioror del Centro Histórico de Lleida: degradación, okupas, incivismo, delincuencia, prostitución y falta de limpieza. Segre.com. Retrieved from https://www.segre.com/es/noticias/lleida/2022/09/24/el_pleno_constata_deterioro_del_barri_antic_aprueba_propuestas_para_reactivarlo_184644_1092.html