TEN BARBER SHOP: THE USE OF "ADVERTISING ENGLISH" IN LLEIDA - Arnau & Marc

 

Pay TEN for a TEN out of TEN cut on TEN Barber Shop: THE USE OF "ADVERTISING ENGLISH" IN LLEIDA

by Gombau and Ribó

Figure 1: our linguistic landscape token: Barbershop. Source: picture taken by authors (25/02/2023)

1.    INTRODUCTION:

This task plans to notice the Englishization in the city of Lleida. As students, we ventured out onto the Lleida streets to investigate the development of the English language and its integration into Catalan culture, in a society which is bilingual in a minority (Catalan) and majority language where the presence of English is relatively new. The project is based on the fundamental idea that learning about the languages spoken in the city can shed light on the ways in which language and society are intertwined and influence community behaviour on the values, social meaning and uses of local/global languages in contact. Because they are part of our environment, words and images on walls can influence our behaviour and the sociolinguistic configurations of Catalonia; in this case, Lleida.

The chosen token we aimed to analyze is a billboard from a barber shop located in Av, Francesc Macià, 11 (25007). It is located in the historic centre of Lleida and it is named Ten Barber Shop. The writing that appears on the shop sign is found in two different languages; English (the predominant language in this case) and Spanish, using them to try and catch the eye of foreign customers. We would like to mention that the linguistic landscape is top-down. The activity domain of our token is commercial, using the sign and its colours to make a profit from the business. The information appearing in the sign is written using the Roman alphabet, stating the name of the business in English (Ten Barber Shop) and the schedule they have in Spanish (See figure 2). However, the main heading is written in English.

In this project we will analyze the symbology of our token (origins, meaning…) as well as the relation between language and commerce productivity and the local and global language contact in Lleida, focusing on the Englishisation of the city. 

 2.    CONTEXTUALIZATION:

Our token is located on Av, Francesc Macià (See the map in figure 2); a street that belongs to the Centre Històric neighbourhood, which is of course the most ancient part of the city. This neighbourhood is also used as the connecting pathway between both sides of the city, allowing citizens to go from Ricard Vinyes (located in the north of the city) all the way to Cap-Pont (located on the south).

Figure 2:  Map of Lleida's neighbourhoods. Source: (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2023)

Our token is surrounded by the commercial street of Lleida; Carrer Major, one of the longest in Europe with more than 4km of length.

The barber pole’s colours are a legacy of a long-gone era when people went to barbers, not just for a haircut or shave but also for bloodletting and other medical procedures (Nix, 2018).

The typical colours of the barber shop logo are red, white and blue. The red colour was used to symbolize the blood itself that was donated in barbershops as bloodletting-covered organizations. The white colour symbolizes the bandages used to stop bleeding during the bloodletting procedures. The blue colour was mainly used to inform that a barbershop was also ready for bloodletting procedures and tried to mimic the colours of the veins that were cut during those practices.

We also made an overview of the two following commerces on each side of Ten Barber Shop to see the linguistic landscapes that surround the area. We found the following examples:

-    Albert Lajar: Interiorisme

-    Aroms: Innovació i Estètica

-    Bershka

-    Snipes

With these 4 examples, we can see that there is a mixture of establishments that use English to sell their products or services to reach the maximum number of clients possible and establishments that use Catalan to sell their products or services.

We also wanted to mention that, we made a conclusion on why some establishments tend to use one language or another. We think that establishments that try to sell physical products such as shoes, clothes, perfumes... use English in order to Americanize their shops and reach the maximum amount of clients possible, and also because they don't need to make clear what the product is about, for example; a shoe shop that has no need to put on their products "sabata de color vermell amb camare de gel de la marca Nike" because it is something obvious for everybody. On the other side, establishments that use Catalan or Spanish to sell their products or services, are establishments that need to make an explanation of what they are trying to sell, for example; if we put "get your pack of acrylic nails and all body shave for half the price" on the city of Lleida, there will be plenty of people that will not understand what is saying. But, if we write "consegueix el teu pac de ungles acriliques i depilacio sencera a meitat de preu" people will fully understand what the commerce is talking about and for instance, make more clients.

We can say with certainty that the language policy in place here is bottom-up because it is a private emplacement and the owners are free to use language however they please. Founded by the owners, who also require that clients receive information in the local tongues.

As we can see in Cots (2013), bottom-up policies are connected to Spolsky's work on the ideologies, languages, and beliefs of the society, where those are shaped by cultural, historical, economic, and political factors. Therefore, when the owners chose the location's name, the national administration had no say in the matter. Because English is regarded as "the default foreign language and one of the keys to internationalization," we think that this choice was made (Cots, 2013, 4).

3.    METHODOLOGY:

We went to the barbershop 3 more times to do research on the type of clients they had. The first visit took place on the 25^th of February at 10am, the second visit was made on the 1^st of March at 6pm and the last one took place on the 8^th of March at 7.30pm. We decided to do it this way so we could have a larger display of hours.

While doing it, we came to the realization that 6 out of 10 clients of the barber shop were South American, most of them from the Dominican Republic. Despite being an Americanised Barber Shop, all the clients of this establishment used Spanish to communicate with them.

Apart from this, we decided to check another barber shop named Lluis Perruquers (See figure 4) to see if the majority of their clients were also Dominicans. To our surprise, this was not the case since more than 80% of their client were born and raised in Spain.

 

		Figure 4: Lluis Perruquers. Source: Google Maps. Retrieved 10/03/2023.

We believe this difference in clients' nationalities is caused by the name of the establishment. Having an English name leads younger people and south-American people to be more likely to use this establishment, on the other hand, older people tend to use establishments like Lluis Perruquers, whose name indexes a Catalan origin, because they feel more connected with the place since they can understand where they are entering (a local and well established emplacement).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1) The values of a linguistic landscape can be different and cover many areas of interest like reflecting identity or beliefs. Our linguistic landscape’s values are aesthetic, productive and social according to the landscape observatory of Catalonia (2023).

Profit value: this is, for us, the most important value since there is no more intention than making money, as it is a business and its main objective is selling its services. This barber shop uses English advertising which is a form of the language that has a commercial function and can be understandable by local residents. We can say that it is an attention picker for “specific” and potential customers. If a company's main goals do not include international trade or customer service, learning a foreign language will likely be of little use. It's crucial to keep in mind, however, that even regions that are less open to foreign trade find it challenging to fend off the effects of globalization.

Aesthetic values: It has an aesthetic value because of its mixed use of both English and Spanish. Uses English in parts where there is no need to be understandable and Spanish for crucial information parts. 

We can also see its aesthetic values in the colours of the rotating pole, and the rotating pole itself. We can see with this that we are in front of a barbershop just by the colours of the pole. Also, they are catchy colours and the fact that the pole is rotating makes a visual effect on the diagonal colour lines that seem like they're going up and down. Also, with these examples, we can make an extrapolation on the corners of the door that have the same colour pattern as the pole. Finally, we can see the aesthetic values of the colour of the letters, we think they have chosen this colour to make them easier to read and a bit catchier.

Social value: Englishized or Americanized hair salons tend to have clients with more ethnic diversity than hair salons that have Catalan advertisements. With this, we want to explain that Ten Barber Shop has a social value because of its gathering point capability for Latin American and non-local citizens of the city. This makes them feel like they are not in the typical place to cut your hair you can find in Spain, but in a suburban American Barber Shop without losing its professionalism.

Identity value: As mentioned previously, it is a gathering point for Latin American citizens, mainly the Dominican, who find this establishment a place where they can feel like they were at home or even country. Also, we can say that going to places like this, which have an Americanized and Ghetto-style ambient, can lead to local citizens.

 CONCLUSIONS

We think that teaching students sociolinguistics is an excellent new pedagogical idea. This implies that in addition to mastering all the complex ideas taught in class, one must also put them into practice in order to confirm that what has been learned is actually taking place at the moment. It also encourages students to pursue sociolinguistics as a field of study because they find it to be a fascinating subject.

Projects are also a more enjoyable way to put our learning into practice and have a significant impact on students' learning. In other words, through this project, students are given the tools they need to educate their peers and the rest of the world. Additionally, the social significance, values, and statuses attached to multilingual practices, as well as how the diversity of LLs contributes to raising awareness of the growing importance of English in society, help society understand the new era of globalization.

Finally, we have benefited greatly from using TEP (Technologies of Empowerment and Participation) and TKA (Technologies of Knowledge Acquisition). We weren't used to using these technologies, so it was new to us. Although using the map (TKA) was completely new to us, it was simple to use and very helpful in helping us track down all the LLs in Lleida. Regarding the blog (TEP), we hadn't used it before, but we believe that it is a good way to expose projects, even though there are many ways to increase the effectiveness of the website.

REFERENCES

Cots, J. M. (2013) Introducing English medium instruction at the university of Lleida: Intervention, beliefs and practices. In Doiz, A., et al. (eds.) English-medium instruction at universities: Global challenges.

Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters

Sabate-Dalmau, M. (2023), Handout Unit 2 [Online] Available at https://cv.udl.cat/access/content/group/101266- 2223/Part%20A%20Sociolinguistics/Unit%202/Hand-out_and_Ppt_Unit_2_19_20.pdf

Sabate-Dalmau, M. (2023), Handout Unit 3 [Online] Available at https://cv.udl.cat/access/content/group/101266- 2223/Part%20A%20Sociolinguistics/Unit%203/Hand-out_and_Ppt_Unit_3_19_20.pdf

Reid, N. (2021, June 4). Barber Pole History - Uppercut Deluxe. Uppercut Deluxe EU. https://eu.uppercutdeluxe.com/blogs/blog/barber-pole-history-uppercut- deluxe#:~:text=The%20bloody%20bandages%20associated%20with,they%20were%20open%20for%2 0business.