When the evening lights are lit: exploring the linguistic landscape of Singapore’s Chinatown at night

• Hui Zhang ^[1] ; Mark Fifer Seilhamer ^[2] ; Yin Ling Cheung ^[2]
  1. [1] Tianshui Normal University

     Tianshui Normal University

     China

     
  2. [2] Nanyang Technological University

     Nanyang Technological University

     Singapur

     
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 45, Nº. 4, 2024, págs. 1152-1170
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Responding to a recent call for interdisciplinary research into ‘night studies’, the present study attempts to put the nighttime at the centre of the sociolinguistic enquiry, seeking to explore how the nocturnal linguistic landscape (LL) differs from the diurnal LL by drawing on Singapore’s Chinatown as the research site. A total of 1091 LL items constitute the database. Altogether 808 LL items were collected during the daytime and 283 of these LL items were found to be illuminated during nighttime site visits. The quantitative analysis reveals that the nocturnal LL differs from the diurnal LL in several ways: at the top-down level, the nocturnal LL shows a strong monolingual English tendency, while the diurnal LL has a tendency towards multilingualism; at the bottom-up level, fewer languages are used in the nocturnal signs than in the diurnal signs and Chinese is used as the prominent language in nocturnal signs, whereas English has a leading position in the diurnal signs. Our findings complicate previous scholarly understanding of bilingual and multilingual configurations in Singapore, suggesting that the LL has its own unique representation at night. The potential for integrating nighttime as a new dimension to examine LL is discussed .