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Koh Lipe, Satun is a famous tourist destination along the Andaman Sea, Southern Thailand where linguistic landscape is structured mainly in English. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signage in this island displays distinctiveness of linguistic elements and linguistic diversity manifested in a variety of English lexicons. Thus, this study aims to analyze lexical characteristics of English in 370 signs along three popular beaches of the island -- Pattaya Beach, Sunrise Beach, and Sunset Beach. It also discusses a reflection of the features on glocalization of English. Through the use of Linguistic Landscape, Multilingualism, and World Englishes approaches, an analysis of photographed data showed that textual formations of the signage highlight outstanding lexical and semantic dimensions of words. There appear to be English nouns, affixation, proper nouns in register of English, English compound nouns, hybrid compound nouns, acronyms, clipping, loanwords, loan translation, phrasal verbs, coinage, Tinglish words, and lexical repetition. Moreover, these lexical items present crucial linguistic formation in English that contacts other indigenous, Asian, and European languages, and they are formed to provide governmental information and to advertise local products and services of tourism for local and international tourists. Hence, these characteristics mirror glocalized English in a southern Thai context of tourism.

Linguistic landscape studies (LLS) involve analyzing public signs in specific areas (e.g., streets, entire cities) to reveal the socio-cultural and sociolinguistic structures present. Turkey has been influenced by various cultures, particularly following the refugee influx starting in 2011 and recent internationalization efforts. Such social phenomenon's linguistic repercussions on multiculturalism, linguistic diversity, and vitality is an underexplored area. Therefore, this study explores the linguistic landscape of Turkey's capital, Ankara, to understand the extent of multilingualism in public spaces. Over a year, 1,291 signs were photographed across central areas of Ankara. Researchers were trained to ensure data collection, sorting, and analysis consistency. The study employed descriptive statistics with a quantitative approach to analyze language choice and prominence. Findings revealed that the linguistic landscape of Ankara was mainly Turkish monolingual and English-Turkish bilingual. The study's implications are mainly for language teacher educators,so they embed linguistically aware language teacher education models, and for language education policymakers, they incorporate authentic, multimodal, and multilingual LL to English as a foreign language education.

A key focus of linguistic landscape research is the interaction among local language policies, the visibility of minority languages on public signage, and the perceptions of residents regarding language use. In China, ongoing urbanization and eased household registration requirements have precipitated an influx of ethnic minority migrants from autonomous regions to urban locales. This migration raises crucial questions about the integration and acceptance of ethnic minority migrants within the sociolinguistic fabric of urban China. Combining a linguistic landscape analysis and interviews with public sign owners, this study examines attitudes towards Tibetan language and Tibetan migrants in "Little Lhasa" in Chengdu, a major city in western China. Our findings reveal that various social actors, including Han residents, the Neighbourhood Committee, and the municipal authorities, prudently leverage the semiotic potentials of the Tibetan script in crafting public signs. The visibility of Tibetan in the local linguistic landscape reflects ideologies of acceptance, hesitation, or concern regarding Tibetan migrants. Although Tibetan migrants have conceded aspects of their language use in exchange for integration into urban life, they have not yet gained wider community acceptance. This study offers an innovative linguistic landscape lens on the implicit language policy in an ethnic minority migrant community in urban China. It illuminates a reflective case where language planning is much needed for mitigating bias and misunderstanding in multi-ethnic communities.

Learning Analytics is concerned with the use of data collected in educational settings to support learning processes. We take a Learning Analytics approach to study the use of immediate feedback in digital classification tasks in mathematics. Feedback serves as an opportunity for learning, however its mere existence does not guarantee its use and effectiveness, as what matters is how learners interact with it. Therefore, our research questions are focused on that interaction. The data consisted of 266 object movements for classifying polygons, and 524 shape movements for classifying traffic signs, under the topic of symmetry. Participants included 29 elementary school students (9-12 years old) from Israel and Germany. Analyzing students' success, feedback use, and the associations between them, we demonstrate how not acting upon feedback is negatively associated with success, and how this undesired behavior slightly reduces along the learning process.

Prior research suggests that the use of multimedia instruction along with video modeling increases the ability of individuals with intellectual disability (ID) to independently complete tasks. However, the previous research has not always included instruction of the underlying vocabulary, nor has it always resulted in skill maintenance. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effectiveness of multimedia instruction using video modeling to teach pedestrian safety signs to participants with ID to support skills needed for community. The effectiveness of the multimedia intervention was measured using a randomized control trial utilizing a pre-/posttest design. Participants' knowledge grew significantly from pre-to posttest, and there were no significant differences between the groups. Current results are similar to prior research findings indicating multimedia instruction is effective in teaching skill acquisition. We discuss practical implications of these findings as well as future research on teaching pedestrian safety to postsecondary individuals with ID.

Gendered washrooms and changerooms are sites of tension for many transgender and/or gender non-conforming users. However, these are not the only groups impacted by the exclusive provision of gendered spaces. As gender-neutral facilities become increasingly standardized across multiple sectors, we consider how the rising trend of "universal design" can be realistically adapted within post-secondary institutions. This article proposes the concept of "inclusive design" and provides specific recommendations to improve user experience in gendered and gender-neutral facilities alike on campus.

This article describes how to help students connect what they learn in the language classroom to the outside world as they learn to understand, produce, and analyze spoken, written, visual, and cultural information in their second language (L2). As learners make connections between course material and the physical and virtual spaces where the L2 is used, they are introduced to the concept of "linguistic landscape" (LL), which refers to language on signs, advertisements, in graffiti, and other public venues. The examples come from a Hebrew class, where students gain deeper understanding of diverse intercultural realites in Israel and are prepared to function in authentic communicative situations. Colleagues in other languages could also use LL as a basis to explore intercultural realities of any multilingual space--from Berlin to Québec or in students' own environments.

This paper explores the presence of the Tibetan language in the linguistic landscape of Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province in Northwest China. Qinghai constitutes the main part of Amdo, one of the historical and cultural regions of greater Tibet. The majority of the inhabitants of Xining are Han Chinese (the major ethnic group in China), and a small percentage are from minorities, mainly Tibetans and Hui (Chinese-speaking Muslims). This city is characterised by intense economic and infrastructural development and attracts people from different areas of the province. The research is based on photographs of public signs that display the Tibetan language gathered between 2017 and 2022. The paper analyses the language choices, content, and visual elements of the signs and discusses the different uses of Tibetan signs in Xining. Moreover, it explores the use of the Tibetan language in public space in light of the current language policies and language ideologies in China, particularly in the Amdo region.

Affluent in semiotic resources and containing great communicability, Chinese university emblems have yet to attract much academic research. Drawing on studies of social semiotics, typographic landscaping and multimodal concepts, this paper explores the linguistic and social dimension of meaning-making practice and the entanglement of Chinese and Western elements in Chinese university emblems. Examining 156 university emblems in mainland China, this research developed a denotational inventory of Chinese university emblems. Adopting Kress and van Leeuwen's grammar of visual design, this research also scrutinised the connotative meaning of the visual contents. The findings show that the ensemble of meaning-making is achieved by the orchestration of three pivotal frameworks: synchronisation of various semiotic modes, influence of the social reality of China and imbuement of domestic and foreign ideologies. Consequently, the neo-Chinese style of modern Chinese university emblem design is constructed. With its integrative approach, the nuanced and comprehensive analysis of this research will generate fresh insights into the exploration of the social semiotic and typographic landscaping of university emblems in China.

Given that societies across the globe are increasingly multicultural and multilingual, the notion of communicative competence grounded in constricting definitions of national cultures and languages reflects neither our instructional realities nor the sociolinguistic reality of the languages and cultures we teach. To foster students' development of second language (L2) competence grounded in an awareness of the symbolic construction of language and culture as well as "tolerance for ambiguity" (Kramsch, 2006), students must create with L2, rather than just reproduce what they have learned. After briefly outlining changing conceptions of language competency, this paper first describes how public uses of language and images through signs and graffiti make up a given place's linguistic landscape (LL), defines an evolving concept, and illustrates how it can be effectively used in L2 instruction. Then it highlights how a variety of LL-based activities help language learners become cognizant of their own sociolinguistic contexts and provides concrete examples from intermediate to advanced-level classes in two distinctly different German programs. The different approaches encourage students to combine LL-based activities with visual, literary, and film analysis to develop symbolic competencies that prepare them to negotiate unpredictable and diverse cultural norms.

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 .

This study demonstrates that linguistic landscape analysis is a powerful tool for assessing the effectiveness of a university language policy, as it provides "in situ" evidence for discursive patterns shaping language use in public space. It uses the official language policy of a Norwegian institution of higher education (Høgskulen på Vestlandet, HVL) as a case study, contrasting its language guidelines with the linguistic make-up of the signage in the linguistic landscape on one of its campuses. The comparison shows that the linguistic landscape prioritizes the national representational level (use of Bokmål) in its bottom-up signage, while the language policy of the university mainly highlights regional and international aspects (connected to the parallel use of Nynorsk and English). At the same time, it is shown that the top-down signage issued by the university does not efficiently implement its language policy goals, as bilingual Nynorsk-English signs are rare, Nynorsk faces substantial competition from Bokmål, and English is both neglected and constructed as a less important variety.

Recent linguistic landscape (LL) research has witnessed a change in focus to untypical, peripheral and fluid signs. Compared to typical (or permanent, fixed, etc.) signs which tend to be subject to strong policy intervention, language use on untypical signs is often more autonomous, thus could better reflect the "de facto" language choice and preferences of local residents. Comparing the linguistic patterns between typical and untypical signs therefore provides a way to investigate the tension between mandated language policies and residents' language choice. In this study, we adopted the dichotomous terms proposed by Shang, G., and X. Zhou. 2020. "[foreign characters omitted] [Peripheral Linguistic Landscape: Sign Types, Features and Research Perspectives]." [foreign characters omitted] 5 (4): 37-47., namely 'typical' and 'peripheral', to explore the language use on public signs in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. By comparing typical and peripheral signs in Kashgar, the study found a significant discrepancy: Chinese is prioritised on typical signs due to top-down policy promotion, while Uyghur is used extensively on peripheral signs by local residents. This study demonstrates the importance of analysing peripheral linguistic landscape in strong-policy nations/regions.

In the study, we compared the effectiveness and efficiency of two error correction (EC) procedures --a model of the correct response (MoCR) and remove and re-present (RRp)--when using discrete trial training (DTT) in teaching to identify the community signs to children with autism spectrum disorder. We also examined the maintenance and generalization effects on children's behaviours and the preferences of neurotypical peers about the EC procedures. Four children participated in the study. We used an adapted alternating treatments design. The findings demonstrated that MoCR and RRp did not differ significantly in terms of their effectiveness, although DTT with MoCR was more efficient than DTT with RRp for all participants. Moreover, the findings revealed that all participants had maintained the behaviours, while three of the four participants were able to generalize. The neurotypical peers had a more definite preference for MoCR over RRp. Implications for future research were discussed.

Chinatowns in Canada and the United States are marked by cultural hybridity, where the translation of various types, verbal and non-verbal, takes place to produce distinct urban meanings. On the basis of an ethnographic observation, this article reveals the role of translation in the signification and imagination of Chinatowns. Cultural diaspora in relation to multimodal translation is designed as a theoretical framework, under which linguistic, aesthetic and cross-cultural tensions are explained. It argues that the urban meanings of Chinatowns are generated through an omnipresent practice of translation enacted by the interplay of text, image and culture across time and space. In the meantime, Chinatowns have evolved from ethnic enclaves into cosmopolitan prototypes for future cities. A translational perspective on Chinatowns incorporates visual semiotics into verbal languages to unpack cross-cultural relations, which informs a great deal about the nature of translation.

Since the end of the twentieth century, there have been a large number of Africans in Guangzhou occupying multiple emplacements and engaging in diverse activities so that a whole zone of the urban area is designated 'Little Africa.' The article investigates the linguistic landscape in the African living areas of Guangzhou from a multimodality perspective, focusing on how street sign translation becomes an important means of cross-cultural communication and a symbol of 'low-end glocalization' and 'grassroots cosmopolitanism'. The translation landscape in the present study was investigated through an ethnographic process of photographing the translations and examining them within their contexts and spaces. The prevalence of bilingual, multilingual, and monolingual English signs in multifarious modes in the African inhabited area of Guangzhou deviates itself from other places of the city to create a translational and transnational space for people of heterogeneous ethnicities to develop social supporting networks and maintain structures of solidarity. The unusually diversified, multimodal translations, on the one hand, reflect the 'glocalized' nature of this African enclave while, on the other hand, demonstrating a 'transient' sense of belonging for foreigners.

As a former treaty port and a current Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in China, Shantou occupies unique position in China's interaction with colonialism and globalisation. Through an analysis of English translations in the linguistic landscape (LL) in Shantou, it was found that international, local and regional factors work together to shape the city's LL. Shantou's resistance to the hegemony of English is encoded in the creative strategies that are adopted in translation, which include transliteration punning, cultural manipulation and hybrid translation. Drawing on the model of English as a lingua franca (ELF), this paper analyses how these strategies reflect the creative, flexible potential of English. These creative strategies can be interpreted as an expression of foreignisation, through which the sign writer consciously deviates from established norms in English to preserve local cultural traits and articulate local identity. Since LL reflects how meaning is negotiated in authentic social settings, incorporating LL projects in the classroom allows language learners and translator trainees to assume an active role in meaning negotiation in their sociolinguistic context. Ultimately, LL projects can empower students to exercise agency in articulating their own culture and constructing their social identity.

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed critical discourse analysis of these policy activities indicated considerable tension between official texts' legislations on, and public élites' debate about public signage and "on the ground" sociolinguistic practices. While official texts and public debates base the dominant languages on monolingual, postcolonial and highly compartmentalized language ideologies, the sociolinguistic practices within these localities are marked by the emergence of an English-leaning trend in public signage. Nevertheless, this trend is heavily qualified by the concurrent use of identifiable language clusters, creative wordplay, multiscriptal practices, the commodification of heritage, national and supranational symbols, and an overall resistance to big commercial names as well as subversion of the official legislations and public debates. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the approach to multilingualism adopted in this study for illuminating the connections between Tunisia's dominant languages, language policy and linguistic landscapes.

This paper is an initial attempt to characterise the schoolscape of a four-century old higher education institution in the Philippines and the oldest existing university in Asia, The Royal, Catholic, and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST). Through a systematic inventory of 2,410 visual signs, the analysis of the functional sign categorisations, the sign distributions (i.e., top-down and bottom-up), and the languages (un)represented in the UST schoolscape was conducted. The critical approach to language ideology and the linguistic landscape approach likewise afforded the present study an analytic lens that examines the schoolscape of UST that is able to project messages about the school's hidden curriculum and the language ideologies it promotes and legitimises. The study offers a discussion on the position of English in the university schoolscape and how it seems to have othered, silenced, and peripheralized Philippine languages.

The use of partially-automated systems require drivers to supervise the system functioning and resume manual control whenever necessary. Yet literature on vehicle automation show that drivers may spend more time looking away from the road when the partially-automated system is operational. In this study we answer the question of whether this pattern is a manifestation of inattentional blindness or, more dangerously, it is also accompanied by a greater attentional processing of the driving scene. Participants drove a simulated vehicle in manual or partially-automated mode. Fixations were recorded by means of a head-mounted eye-tracker. A surprise two-alternative forced-choice recognition task was administered at the end of the data collection whereby participants were quizzed on the presence of roadside billboards that they encountered during the two drives. Data showed that participants were more likely to fixate and recognize billboards when the automated system was operational. Furthermore, whereas fixations toward billboards decreased toward the end of the automated drive, the performance in the recognition task did not suffer. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that the use of the partially-automated driving system may result in an increase in attention allocation toward peripheral objects in the road scene which is detrimental to the drivers' ability to supervise the automated system and resume manual control of the vehicle.

In an increasingly globalised and multilingual world, the use of different scripts in the same semiotic landscape is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon. For this reason, it is vital to conduct research focusing on multiscriptality in order to better understand the linguistic and semiotic functions of the use of multiple scripts that have become more or less officialised by the political-administrative power. This study examines the use of Latin characters in Greece and Bulgaria, the only two European Union member societies that formally adopt different scripts. Using both a qualitative and a quantitative approach, we analyse the coexistence of the national and Latin alphabets in the graphic texts of commercial signs in two urban areas: the Ladadika district in Thessaloniki, Greece and the Kapana district in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The results show that the advancement of the Latin alphabet is not homogeneous; sometimes unconventionally represents the national language; is not completely preferred to the recessive national script, but creates with it new orthographic-communicative forms; and can take place regardless of the overwhelming prestige of Global English. This paper demonstrates the importance of studying multiscriptality and the Romanisation process in the context of contemporary multilingualism.

The topic of linguistic landscapes (LLs) is very important in the area of sociolinguistics of multilingual societies. A linguistic landscape reflects the underlying ideologies regarding languages and their speakers, linguistic diversity, language statuses and perceived values. This study investigated multilingual LL of Cyprus under the conceptual framework of Geo-semiotics by implementing an in-depth qualitative and quantitative landscape analysis of visible semiotic signs in public space, trying to interpret their indexicality and deeper layers of meaning in relation to multilingualism situation in the country, the link between discourse and space, as well as the perceptions and attitudes of the Greek Cypriot population towards multilingualism and multilingual LL. We used photographic material in our data collection - 4,200 photos of all geographical areas of Cyprus, which were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively and interpreted in terms of language, arrangement of displayed text and images, LL genre, visual semiotics, placement and surroundings in line with the principles of the symbolic construction of the public space. It was found that sign readers have a positive attitude towards multilingualism and multilingual signs in Cyprus and that the LL in Cyprus is complex and unique and is related to the political economy of language and space.

Postsecondary science faculty face challenges in balancing the engagement of undergraduates and concomitantly ensuring they gain and retain knowledge, either in standard lectures or labs as well as in outdoor activities. Designing on-campus trails with interpretive signs may provide a unique avenue to inform students across majors of local biodiversity and tie in concepts related to ecology, organismal biology, and conservation. In this article, we evaluate the efficacy of course-specific interpretive signs deployed around a small on-campus natural area to engage first-year students. We assessed students' overall engagement level and retention of information conveyed across specific signs via a student-guided nature walk where students examined signs and answered both a pre- and post-activity survey, rated their favorite sign, and provided a short reflection on this outdoor activity. Students' responses indicated that they retained general information on specific signs, most notably regarding reptiles and what types of mammals are found around campus. Overall, students rated this activity as engaging, with 87.7% combined agreeing or strongly agreeing that signs helped them learn about the biodiversity and ecosystems on campus.

Not only does language practice in shop signs generate a sense of place with particular meanings to visitors, it also indicates the kind of economic activity performed in that place. By investigating and comparing the shop name signs in the two largest foreign migrant neighbourhoods in Guangzhou, specifically, Baohan Straight Street (African community) and Yuanjing Road (Korean community), this study aims to reveal the distinctive economic patterns reflected by the two different linguistic landscapes and to shed new light on the relationship between linguistic landscape and economy. Quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to interpret the messages the shop name signs convey, including an examination of language choices and combinations as well as other visual resources used in the signs. The findings suggest that the foreign languages, namely, English and Korean, perform contrasting functions, with the former providing more practical information while the latter being more of an index of "Korean authenticity." The disparate linguistic landscapes in these two contexts emerge as an outcome of two specific economic patterns, namely, "low-end globalisation" and "symbolic economy."

Recent work on linguistic landscapes at schools (schoolscapes) has highlighted the complex dialogic relationship between the semiotics of public signage in educational spaces and policies seeking to enforce dominant ideologies. In this paper, we discuss the results of research conducted in the Deep South of Thailand, a minority region in which the predominant language, ethnicity and religion are different from the rest of the nation, and which has over the last century been exposed to significant assimilatory pressure. Drawing on an analysis of language use in two Islamic schools in the region, as well as interviews and focus groups with administrators, teachers and students, we focus on the temporality of meanings - how schoolscapes are anchored in narratives of the past, present and future. Historical memories evoked by particular elements of the schoolscapes are discussed, particularly in light of the efforts of the local population to resist assimilatory policies. We also discuss the aspirations of our participants for the future, observing that, while recent language policy in Thailand has focussed primarily on promoting Thai and English, our participants saw a much more varied plurilingualism as relevant to their lives.

This paper proposes a concept of "campus vitality" of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number, distribution, and proportion of users; usage and visibility in campus domains; and institutional and user attitudes toward the languages. The application of this framework in a second-tier university in China reveals some sociolinguistic information: the presence of more languages on campus does not necessarily increase students' diversity experiences; English supremacy in higher education in China is posing a threat to the status of the national language in the academic domain, an issue that has drawn administrative attention from the government; a more balanced ecology is not only desirable but also achievable if the seven-factor framework is followed by government and by university management.

To have a better understanding of the sociolinguistic surroundings of Japanese Brazilians as return migrants in Japan, this study investigates language use in their communities from a perspective of linguistic landscape (LL), paying particular attention to their ethnic identity as to how they are viewed by the host society, including language policies, and how they view themselves in Japan. Although it has been said in the literature that they are 'socially invisible', the results revealed a certain level of social interactions with the host society that are materialised as LL items, including ideologically charged signs representing social inclusion as community members. In terms of ethnic identity, the observed signs, such as those installed by the host society reflecting the language policies in response to cultural differences and those installed by Japanese Brazilians representing active manifestation and construction of identity, encapsulate the discussion in the literature regarding the shift in ethnic identity from the previously maintained Japaneseness to Brazilianness through their transnational experiences and practices. In addition, such ethnic identity expressed by Japanese Brazilians is emphasised in its further use for ethnic commodification by the host society.

Partially autonomous vehicles can help minimize human errors. However, being free from some driving subtasks can result in a low vigilance state, which can affect the driver's attention towards the road. The present study first tested whether drivers of partially autonomous vehicles would benefit from the addition of auditory versions of the messages presented in variable message signs (VMS), particularly, when they find themselves in a monotonous driving situation. A second aim was to test whether the addition of auditory messages would also produce an indirect effect on the driver's vigilance, improving performance on other driving subtasks not related to the message processing. Forty-three volunteers participated in a driving simulator study. They completed two tasks: (a) a VMS task, where they had to regain manual control of the car if the VMS message was critical, and (b) a car-following task, where they had to pay attention to the preceding car to respond to occasional brake events. Behavioral and EEG data were registered. Overall, results indicated that the addition of audio messages helped drivers process VMS information more effectively and maintain a higher level of vigilance throughout the driving time. These findings would provide useful information for the development of partially automated vehicles, as their design must guarantee that the driver remains attentive enough to assume control when necessary.

The study is aimed at exploring Master's students' sense-making of various second language (L2) texts and its correlation with interpretation depth and the students' intercultural competence. The significance of this research lies in the fact that it provides an insight on culture-specific issues challenging for advanced and proficient Ukrainian learners of English when they make sense of L2 vocabulary, interactions, public, mass and social media discourse. The study is based on a questionnaire with open-ended questions filled in by forty Ukrainian Master's students. The subjects were asked to interpret several English vocabulary items, idioms, linguistic landscape signs as well as mass media and social media texts. The findings suggest that the students' intercultural competence rests on the information obtained from English textbooks as well as from current mass and social media content. When facing ambiguity or uncertainty, the students tend to show a lack of cultural awareness and resort to first language (L1) assumptions in their sense-making, which may entail a wrong or inaccurate understanding. The students' interpretation of public, mass and social media texts reveals their insufficient background knowledge of L2 culture, which does not lead to inaccuracies in sense-making but prevents comprehensive understanding of messages. The study argues that Master's students majoring in English need to enhance their cultural awareness, to develop their intercultural competence and to be prepared for continuous learning of L2 cultural schemata.

Shop signs are a visible indication of the linguistic landscape of a place, hence the need for public policies to control, particularly, bottom-up signs in situations where there are issues, such ensuring consistency and correct representation in the second language. To investigate the linguistic landscape of bilingual shop signs in Saudi Arabia, this study examines the lettering in bilingual shop signs in shopping malls in Riyadh and Jeddah in terms of relative size, information, and the quality of English-Arabic (E-A) and Arabic-English (A-E) transliteration or translation. This was done in view of the national policy in Saudi Arabia which aims to ensure correct Arabisation when inconsistencies have been observed in the Arab world. Moreover, it gives an indication of the linguistic landscape, which is necessary given the need to prepare the kingdom for the Saudi 2030 Vision and cater to the growing number of international visitors. Altogether, 184 signboards were observed and categorised, of which 68 were shortlisted for further analysis. Of these, 54 were A-E signs and 17 were E-A signs, with two in both categories. The majority (83.3%) of signs were bilingual with slight variation in relative size and display of information. Same sized lettering was displayed in 66.7%, and the same information in 64.8%. Remedial suggestions are given for language policy-makers to address the issue found of a few inconsistent and erroneous transliterations and spellings, which together accounted for 9.3%. Overall, the case is not as bad in Saudi Arabia as noted in some other Arab countries.

Background: In South Africa, developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. However, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers. Objectives: An intervention project was set up to discover how community signs could be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching learners to be critical readers. The focus of the study was teaching English second language learners to use language as an instrument for creative and critical thinking. Method: In this 'study within a study', the learners' role has been elevated to that of researchers. As 'researchers', the learners collected community signs from around their township and conducted interviews with community members. They analysed the signs and interview transcripts using Fairclough's method of critical discourse analysis. The social semantic theory was used to anchor this study. Results: The first attempt at being critical readers was the categorisation of data. Three categories that formed broad themes were observed. The learners' responses gave insight into their own 'processes' of reception and processes of production of the signs. The results suggest learners developing an ability to read signs as instantiations of township discourses. Conclusion: Teaching critical literacy awareness can be achieved when teachers use texts drawn from familiar contexts. The study contributes to knowledge on how unconventional texts can be used in the classroom to develop criticality among learners.

The world is familiar with Chinese wine but neglects its attractive partner, Thumb Fight ([foreign characters omitted]). The Thumb Fight is a precious traditional Chinese drinking game. However, its rare research still focuses on its history, not the translation process during its dynamic playing logic. The semiotic is access to logic from Peircean. The translation process during Thumb Fight can be developed under the guidance of translation semiotics. This article analyzes the Thumb Fight playing process's signs translating process based on the translation semiotics with Peirce's triadic sign relations. All sign interaction is translating from translation semiotics in the broadest sense. The significant signs involved in translating are thought signs, finger signs, and oral signs. The article starts from a single player's side to divide its translation sign system into three stages: opening ceremony, fighting progress, and winning result. Furthermore, to better understand its dynamic competition process, the article constructs a translation conceptual framework to analyze its signs translation, with the signs-objects-interpretant triadic relations. In the following standard case study, the theoretical analysis framework of translation semiotics can effectively show the process and behavior of signs translation.

This paper offers a comprehensive survey of translation ethics within the theoretical frame of Lady Welby's meaning triad concerning the relationship between ethics and translation in the meaning process of sign activities. The paper mainly discusses such aspects as: (1) the relationship between meaning triad and translation ethics, (2) upward translation as a method to maximize ethical value and (3) enhancement of translation ethics as a goal of upward translation. The results of the paper can be found as the following: (1) the evolutionary process of meaning from sense to meaning and then to significance is the path for the improvement of translators' cognitive ability and the sublimation of translator or interpreter's ethics and morality; (2) Upward translation serves as a key to enhancing translators' ethical consciousness; and (3) translation, meaning and ethics are correlated and interrelated mechanisms. Therefore, the implications of the dynamic and dialogic view of translation and meaning will provide an interdisciplinary theoretical vision for the construction of translation ethics.

Many pragmaticists claimed that pragmatics developed mainly from 1970s and 1980s, taking the emergence of its series of pragmatic theories (e.g., Cooperative Principle, Conversation Implicature, Relevance Theory, etc.), methodology, and the official issue of "Journal of Pragmatics" (1977) in Amsterdam as its marks. However, few scholars reinstate the historical truth of the real development of pragmatics by comparing and reviewing the semiotic thoughts between Peirce and Morris so as to discover the development and prosperity of pragmatics in Morris's times (around 1930s). As one of the founders of modern semiotics, Morris's major contribution derives from his proposal of trichotomy theory of semiosis, that is, syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics, grounded on which Morris intends to establish an all-inclusive general theory of signs. Substantially, Morris's semiotic theory involves rich pragmatic thought which is inherited and developed from Peirce theory of signs that has logic and pragmaticism as its foundations. This paper aims to reveal the formation and development of pragmatics in Morris's behavioral semiotics by means of comparing the semiotic thoughts between Peirce and Morris from the perspective of dynamic history. Specifically, this paper involves the analysis of the philosophical foundations of pragmatics, disciplinary classification, the establishment of pragmatics, theory of sign inquiry, the relevant specific semiotic views, and three semiotic dimensions of Morris's pragmatics, which are conducive to explore the pragmatic origin and development from the perspective of Morris's semiotic thoughts. As such, Pragmatics in Morris's behavioral semiotics is established and developed in a systematic and formal way.

This article is aimed to demonstrate how language policy at the local school level may create space for translanguaging. Focus is on a Mother Tongue (MT) classroom for Somali in a primary school in Sweden by way of an analysis of layers of language policy, with focus on spatial aspects. The empirical material consists of policy documents, interviews and observations documented through field notes and photographs from an MT Somali classroom with grade six students. Through the use of a framework of language policy as layered and linguistic landscaping with a focus on aspects of time, place and social factors, the analysis shows how the mother tongue classroom may constitute a demarcated room, while simultaneously interacting with other spaces both inside and outside school. The understanding of policy as layered made power relations visible in terms of language that moves between layers. It also made visible how school discourses shift between micro/macro, management/practice and inside/outside in the creation of space dominated by Somali and Swedish. It became apparent that an environment that supports the use of Somali inside the MT classroom may increase the likelihood of the pupils using Somali outside the classroom.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what semiotic analysis can reveal about how welcoming and inclusive a science library space is for patrons. A space was examined in terms of its messaging to patrons of various genders, abilities, races, ethnicities, nationalities, and disciplines. Findings are presented about the space's messaging regarding the disciplines it serves, inclusion of patrons from minoritized demographics, and general expectations of visitors. Recommendations for library practice and future research are discussed.

Objective: This study examined the characteristics and quality of publicly available COVID-19 information education and communication (IEC) materials in India between March and December 2020. Design: An explanatory sequential mixed-method design was employed to examine the characteristics and quality of 265 purposefully selected IEC materials. Setting: The IEC materials analysed were those published between March and December 2020 on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare website, Government of India. Methods: A checklist was utilised to examine the quality and characteristics of the materials. Thereafter, qualitative analysis provided insights into the contents of the materials with specific focus on the 'COVID-19 continuum of care'. Results: The majority (73.96%, n = 196) of the selected materials were directed towards the general public and had a focus on prevention (67.55 %, n = 179). Despite COVID-19-associated stigma, only 56 (21.13%) of the materials addressed this issue. However, most (95.47%, n = 253) of the materials adhered to quality standards for contents, readability and aesthetics. This qualitative analysis focused on the contents of selected IEC materials using the concept of 'continuum of care'. The analysis identified three important themes: prevention to early diagnosis and treatment; mitigation of stigma and discrimination surrounding COVID-19; and addressing the infodemic caused by COVID-19. Conclusion: The quality of materials was mostly satisfactory and appropriate to the emergent requirements. Strengthening audience engagement and attractiveness of the materials might enhance readability and actionability. A bottom--up approach to the development of future IEC materials, involving the community might widen the coverage of vulnerable populations in future crisis events.

The Maybachufer Market is an urban street market in Berlin-Neukölln that constitutes a highly diverse urban context by bringing together people of different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Through linguistic ethnography, this paper explores the negotiation of various resources in everyday communicative practices and activities of this urban space. The market setting with its multiethnic and multilingual community constitutes a spatial repertoire with a rich pool of resources. Although German, Turkish, and English are prominent as local and international lingua francas, various other languages and resources are used in the market activities involving different types and modes of interaction. The study shows that the respective communicative practices, which seem random at first glance, in fact follow specific interactional patterns with respect to communicative goals and interactional roles, including different social relations and identity constructions. While exploring everyday activities and the linguistic behaviours at a highly diverse urban market, the study contributes to our understanding of spatial repertoires, metrolingual and convivial practices, and communicative patterns in multilingual and multiethnic interactions in highly diverse urban spaces.

Objective: To assess the characteristics of campus populations who were opposed to a vape-free campus policy and examine factors associated with opposition to a vape-free campus policy among those who indicated support for a tobacco-free policy. Participants: Faculty, staff, and students (N=2210) in a Midwestern university participated. Methods: Individuals were invited to a campus-wide online survey about the tobacco-free policy on campus in spring 2018. Pearson's X[subscript 2], t-test, and binary logistic regression were used for analysis. Results: Age, gender, current tobacco use, perceived harmfulness of e-cigarettes, and perceived harmfulness of secondhand smoke were significantly associated with opposition to the vape-free campus policy. Conclusions: Our data highlight the importance of various demographic factors that are associated with opposition to the vape-free policy. The current field needs to use informative approaches to improve knowledge of overall tobacco in health campaigns and public health programs on campus and within community outreach programs.

In "The Light of Day," Eric Ambler creates a dysphoric Istanbul through the opposition of East and West. However, its Turkish translation "Gün Isigi" by Adnan Semih Yazicioglu tends to create a very different narrative by transforming signs related to Istanbul and some Orientalist clichés. In this study, the image of the East as constructed by the West is analyzed through Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism" (1979). The novel is divided into segments to highlight the parts taking place in Istanbul, and the clash between East and West is analyzed through the concept of isotopy and the semiotic square (Greimas & Courtés, 1982). The author's perception of the city is treated through Sündüz Öztürk Kasar's (2012) concept of "watermark translation", defining the representations of Istanbul as a translation executed in the author's mind (p. 267). To highlight the traces of the translator as covert co-author and evaluate the consequences of this interference, the meaning transformations in the target text are analyzed using the "Systematics of Designification in Translation" by Öztürk Kasar (2020a, p. 160). In connection with this, the importance of placing semiotics in the instruction of literary translation is stressed, with an emphasis on the function of the comparative analysis of the source and target texts, which may provide translation and interpretation students with an awareness that can enable them to avoid unintended meaning transformations, as well as stand behind their translation decisions of all kinds, including intended meaning transformations.

This paper examines yard signs as a site for public pedagogy that engages two concurrent, and comorbid, public health crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and racism. Specifically, I reflect on how yard signs responding to the George Floyd murder in my own Minneapolis neighborhood exist during a kairotic moment; as myself and my students are increasingly confined to our own homes, and as the boundaries between school and home are blurred, the public health crisis of racism and the specific community response of yard signs present opportunities for examining how these signs can act as entry points into difficult conversations among neighbors, classmates, and colleagues. While such signs are certainly examples of epideictic rhetoric, participating in either "praise or blame," I suggest that communication teachers can frame them as public pedagogy that "strikes a harmony between learning through public engagement and understanding these public encounters in the space of the classroom" (Holmes, 2016). As such, they can act not only as artifacts of community belonging, but as artifacts to promote reflection, conversation, and inquiry.

Choices regarding how signs are displayed in schools send messages regarding the status of languages and speakers of those languages. The monolingual paradigm can be implicitly reified by the position, shape, color, etc. of languages in relation to English on school signage (Przymus & Kohler, 2018). This can have a negative impact for culturally and linguistically diverse youth. In combining bilingual/multicultural education with linguistic landscape research, we uncover a hidden curriculum of raciolinguistic ideologies (Alim, 2016), and confront the hegemony found on some of the most overlooked and under questioned representations of curriculum - signs in schools.

This article opens an analytical window into the creation of multilingual guerrilla translations by participants in a preservice language teacher program at a public university in the United States. As an intervention responding to the prevalence of English monolingual signage on this highly diverse university campus, the college students invited a public audience into a joint critical interrogation of implicit institutional language policies, as their signage offered a necessarily incomplete and intentionally makeshift alternative to the official English displays. Inspired by the three-phase model of critical pedagogy, this grassroots endeavor embraced Freire's notion of transformative praxis defined by the symbiotic relation of action and reflection. A closer examination of the scaffolding, which guided the planning and implementation, lends insight into activity design with the potential to nurture an activist aptitude among students. Comments from participants suggest that the conceptual stepping stones towards students' collective critical engagement had a positive influence on their perception of language (teacher) advocacy and activism.

The name of the worship place is closely related to history, ideology, power, and society. Naming a worship place is a symbol of how power is represented through text in public spaces. This study aims to look at an environmental print by investigating the performance of religions in Malang, Indonesia, through the use of language in the names of worship places. Data was taken through photography totaling 157 names of worship places including mosques, churches, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples, and Chinese temples. Linguistic landscape analysis was carried out to investigate information and symbolic functions. The results show that writing the name of a place of worship involves seven languages, namely Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, English, Javanese, Sanskrit, Dutch, and Chinese. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual forms emerge with Bahasa Indonesia's involvement in all patterns. These findings indicate that Bahasa Indonesia has a high level of language competence in society, in addition to language policy, power, and prestige. Bahasa Indonesian is used in all places of worship. It is also found in English. These two languages combine to support the existence of religious ideologies in the region. Other languages are only able to characterize religious and ethnic identities.

This study explores the important communicative roles carried out by road signs both directly and indirectly. The qualitative analysis is based on a corpus of 150 road signs collected from signage on state and local highways and roadways in seven U.S. states. Road signs were identified as either full, grammatical sentences or as block language. They were further analyzed as speech acts and their performativity was briefly explored in three areas: agency, lexis, and emplacement. Road sign ambiguity in regard to punctuation and syntactic ambiguity was also identified. The findings pointed to several areas for future research including drivers' behavioral reactions, road safety and wayfinding potential.

This research examines the visibility of English in the schoolscape of two Israeli teacher training colleges. English in Israel is part of a complex, multilingual reality. Not an official language, it carries prestige and is common in media, commerce, industry, and science. In higher education, its presence, however, is limited, despite being a mandatory, curricular subject. This study examines all signage in English posted in two colleges, focusing on the forms and types of language displayed, informative, commercial, and educational. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with international students. No student is accepted without testing in English, nor are students granted a degree without successfully attaining nationally-set standards, yet English displayed in the colleges is predominantly of the top-down type and does not stem from the institutions themselves. Furthermore, visible English is mainly for informative and commercial purposes, not educational. Educational English is often accompanied by a commercial agenda. Research confirms that the presence of English in one's surroundings not only exposes students to linguistic information but has practical value. The findings of this research reveal limited visibility of English, due perhaps to the perceived threat of English to the Hebrew language.

Tiny though it is, The Hague's Chinatown is clearly presented as such, with Chinese lanterns, municipal street signage in Chinese characters, and sayings in Classical Chinese lining the streets. Doing fieldwork in the area, however, has shown that it proves to be less Chinese than its visual representation suggests. Few Chinese still inhabit the area, which used to flourish after it had ceased to be a Jewish neighbourhood. Now, only about forty per cent of the establishments -- primarily restaurants, nail parlours and food shops -- are of Chinese origin. Despite municipal attempts to present Chinatown as a tourist attraction, the area has become more generally Asian in character than Chinese, while it also includes establishments that represent The Hague's other major ethnic communities (Moroccan, Turkish and Surinamese). Though the Chinese language is clearly visible throughout the area, the script predominantly used proves to be informational rather than having a symbolic function, in contrast to what is found in Chinatowns elsewhere. The answer to the question in the title of this paper therefore proved to be negative, while the ongoing changes are typically characteristic of superdiverse cities elsewhere in the world.

The FedEx logo makes clever use of figure-ground ambiguity to create an "invisible" arrow in the background space between "E" and "x". Most designers believe the hidden arrow can convey an unconscious impression of speed and precision about the FedEx brand, which may influence subsequent behavior. To test this assumption, we designed similar images with hidden arrows to serve as endogenous (but camouflaged) directional cues in a Posner's orienting task, where a cueing effect would suggest subliminal processing of the hidden arrow. Overall, we observed no cue congruency effect, unless the arrow is explicitly highlighted (Experiment 4). However, there was a general effect of prior knowledge: when people were under pressure to suppress background information, those who knew about the arrow could do so faster in all congruence conditions (i.e., neutral, congruent, incongruent), although they fail to report seeing the arrow during the experiment. This was true in participants from North America who had heard of the FedEx arrow before (Experiment 1 & 3), and also in our Taiwanese sample who were just informed of such design (Experiment 2). These results can be well explained by the Biased Competition Model in figure-ground research, and together suggest: (1) people do not unconsciously perceive the FedEx arrow, at least not enough to exhibit a cueing effect in attention, but (2) knowing about the arrow can fundamentally change the way we visually process these negative-space logos in the future, making people react faster to images with negative space regardless of the hidden content.