Language Visibility and Invisible Languages: The Street Name Signs of Taipei City
In: International Journal of Taiwan StudiesSearch for other papers by Henning Klöter in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article examines the street name signs of Taipei City in their ideological, linguistic, and semiotic dimensions. These different levels of analysis correlate with different processes of sign development. Combining critical toponymy and linguistic landscape research, it is claimed that in ideological and linguistic terms the post-war period has been one of the fundamental changes that has been arguably unparalleled elsewhere. By contrast, the ideological about-turn after the 1980s has had relatively little influence on the contents of street name signs. Alluding to Western-style modernity, semiotic features like the colour of the signs and the direction of writing are later innovations. It is also argued that in the broader context of their multilingual environment, there is an enormous discrepancy between visible normativity and audible multilingualism.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Azaryahu, Moaz (2009) ‘Naming the past: The significance of commemorative street names’, in Lawrence D. Berg and Jani Vuolteenaho (eds), Critical Toponymies: The Contested Politics of Place Naming, London and New York: Routledge, 53–70.
-
Azaryahu, Moaz (2017) ‘Revisiting East Berlin and Haifa: A comparative perspective on renaming the past’, in Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, and Maoz Azaryahu (eds), The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, London: Routledge, 56–73.
-
Backhaus, Peter (2007) Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
-
Chang, Bi-yu (2015) Place, Identity and National Imagination in Postwar Taiwan, London and New York: Routledge.
-
Chen, Su-chiao (2020) ‘Language policy and practice in Taiwan in the early twenty-first century’, in Henning Klöter and Mårten Söderblom Saarela (eds), Language Diversity in the Sinophone World: Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices, London and New York: Routledge, 122–141.
-
Comajoan-Colomé, Llorenç and Long, Ethan (2012) ‘The Linguistic landscape of three streets in Barcelona: Patterns of language visibility in public space’, in Durk Gorter, Heiko F. Marten, and Luk Van Mensel (eds), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 183–203.
-
Cumbe, César (2016) ‘Formal and informal toponymic inscriptions in Maputo: Towards socio-linguistics and anthropology of street naming’, in Liora Bigon (ed.), Place Names in Africa: Colonial Urban Legacies, Entangled Histories, Cham: Springer, 195–207.
-
Curtin, Melissa L. (2007) Language Ideologies on Display: Local, Regional, & (Trans)national Identities in Taipei’s Linguistic Landscape, PhD thesis, University of New Mexico.
-
Curtin, Melissa L. (2009) ‘Language on display: Indexical signs, identities, and the linguistic landscape of Taipei’, in Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (eds), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York and London: Routledge, 221–237.
-
Du Plessis, Theodorus (2010) ‘Bloemfontein/Mangaung, “City on the move”: Language management and transformation of a non-representative linguistic landscape’, in Elana Shahomy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, and Monica Barni (eds), Linguistic Landscape in the City, Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 74–95.
-
Dupré, Jean-François (2017) Culture Politics and Linguistic Recognition in Taiwan: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Party System, London and New York: Routledge.
-
Garvin, Rebecca Todd and Eisenhower, Kristina (2016) ‘A comparative study of linguistic landscapes in middle schools in Korea and Texas: Contrasting signs of learning and identity construction’, in Robert Blackwood, Elizabeth Lanza and Hirut Woldemariam (eds), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, London: Bloomsbury, 215–231.
-
Gorter, Durk; Aiestaran, Jokin; and Cenoz, Jasone (2012) ‘The revitalization of Basque and the linguistic landscape of Donostia-San Sebastian’, in Durk Gorter, Heiko F. Marten, and Luk Van Mensel (eds), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 148–163.
-
Gorter, Durk and Cenoz, Jasone (2020) ‘Theoretical development of linguistic landscape studies’, Linguistic Landscape 6(1): 16–22.
-
Huang, Wenchuan (2011) ‘Street-naming and the subjectivity of Taiwan: A case study of Taipei City’, Asian Studies 15(2): 47–58.
-
Huang, Wenchuan (2014) ‘命名的規範：臺南市街路命名的文化政治’ [To name is to norm: Cultural politics of street naming in Tainan City], Taiwan Historical Research 21(4): 147–186.
-
Jaworski, Adam and Thurlow, Crispin (2010) ‘Introducing semiotic landscapes’, in Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (eds), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, London and New York: Continuum, 1–40.
-
Kallen, Jeffrey L. (2011) ‘Changing landscapes: Language, space and policy in the Dublin linguistic landscape’, in Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow (eds), Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space, London and New York: Continuum, 41–58.
-
Kang, Peter (2016) ‘From Cairo to the nationalistic geography of China: Street-naming in Taipei City immediately after wwii’, Onoma 51: 45–74.
-
Khòan khan-páng (看看板工作小組) (2018) 看看板: 廣告招牌的台語大學問 [Looking at the Board: The Rich Knowledge of Taiwanese on Shop Signs], Taipei: Qianwei.
-
Klöter, Henning (2009) ‘What is being borrowed? Language and script contact in Taiwan’, in Alex de Voogt and Irving Finkel (eds), The Idea of Writing: Play and Complexity, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 93–116.
-
Klöter, Henning (2020) ‘One legacy, two legislations: Language policies on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait’, in Henning Klöter and Mårten Söderblom Saarela (eds), Language Diversity in the Sinophone World: Historical Trajectories, Language Planning, and Multilingual Practices, London and New York: Routledge, 101–121.
-
Langer, Nils and Havinga, Anna D. (2015) ‘Invisible languages in historical sociolinguistics: A conceptual outline, with examples from the German-Danish borderlands’, in Anna Havinga and Nils Langer (eds.), Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Peter Lang, 1–34.
-
Lee, Hao-ming (2018) ‘1950 年代臺灣的漢字簡化問題’ [The simplification issue of Chinese characters in Taiwan during the 1950s], Research in Taiwan Studies 22: 77–108.
-
Leitner, Helga and Kang, Peter (1999) ‘Contested urban landscapes of nationalism: The case of Taipei’, Ecumene 6(2): 214–233.
-
Li, Jen-kuei (ed.) (2001) 漢字拼音討論集 [The Debate on the Transcription of Chinese Characters], Taipei: Academia Sinica, Preparatory Office of the Institute of Linguistics.
-
Liu, Yu-chang; Gijsen, Johan; and Tsai, Chung-ying (2016) ‘Lower domain language shift in Taiwan: The case of Southern Min’, Folia Linguistica 50(2): 677–718.
-
Ng, Yew Peng (2018) What’s in the Name? How the Streets and Villages in Singapore Got Their Names, New Jersey: World Scientific.
-
Palonen, Emilia (2017) ‘Building a new city through a new discourse: Street naming revolutions in Budapest’, in Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, and Maoz Azaryahu (eds), The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, London: Routledge, 98–113.
-
Palonen, Kari (2017) ‘Reading street names politically: A second reading’, in Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, and Maoz Azaryahu (eds), The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, London: Routledge, 25–40.
-
Pavlenko, Aneta (2012) ‘Transgression as the norm: Russian in linguistic landscape of Kyiv, Ukraine’, in Durk Gorter, Heiko F. Marten, and Van Mensel (eds), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 36–56.
-
Pinyin News (2020) ‘Old Taipei street sign’, October 21. Retrieved 22 November 2020from http://pinyin.info/news/.
-
Post Office (2020) ‘郵遞區號’ [Postcodes]. Retrieved 20 November 2020from https://www.post.gov.tw/post/internet/Download/index.jsp?ID=220306.
-
Qi, Wenjin; Zhang, Heng; and Sorokina, Nadezda (2020) ‘Linguistic landscape for Korean learning: A survey of perception, attitude, and practice of Korean beginners at a Korean university’, Journal of Language Teaching and Research 11(6): 956–961.
-
Rose-Redwood, Reuben (2008) ‘From number to name: Symbolic capital, places of memory, and the politics of street renaming in New York City’, Social and Cultural Geography 9(4): 431–452.
-
Rudolph, Michael (2004) ‘The emergence of the concept of “ethnic group” in Taiwan and the role of Taiwan’s Austronesians in the construction of Taiwanese identity’, Historiography East and West 2(1): 86–115.
-
Scollon, Ron and Scollon, Suzie Wong (2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World, London and New York: Routledge.
-
Shohamy, Elena and Gorter, Durk (2009) ‘Introduction’, in Elena Shohamy and Durk Gorter (eds), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, New York and London: Routledge, 1–10.
-
Spolsky, Bernard and Cooper, Robert L. (1991) The Languages of Jerusalem, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Taipei City Government (2011) 有關修正「臺北市道路名牌暨門牌編釘辦法」為「臺北市道路命名及門牌編釘自治條例」[About the amendment of the ‘Regulations on the Compilation and Erection of Street Name Signs and Doorplates in Taipei City’ to ‘Taipei City Road Name and House Numbering Regulations’]. Retrieved 20 October 2020via http://www.dbaweb.tcg.gov.tw.
-
Taipei Laws (1981) 道路交通標誌標線號誌設置規則 [Rules for placing road traffic signs and markings], revision of 22 January 1981. Retrieved 20 October 2020via https://www.laws.taipei.gov.tw.
-
Taipei Laws (1991) 道路交通標誌標線號誌設置規則 [Rules for placing road traffic signs and markings], revision of 15 December 1991. Retrieved 20 October 2020via https://www.laws.taipei.gov.tw.
-
Tang, Shi-yeoung and Chen, Wei-yuan (eds) (2002) 臺北市地名與路街沿革史 [The History of Place Names and Streets in Taipei City], Taipei: Committee of Historical Records of Taipei City.
-
Taylor, Jeremy E. (2006) ‘The production of the Chiang Kai-shek personality cult, 1929–1975’, The China Quarterly 185: 96–110.
-
Tseng, Wei-chen (2007) ‘How maps serve the interests of interlopers’, Taipei Times, 7 July. Retrieved 8 November 2020via http://www.taipeitimes.com.
-
Van Mensel, Luk and Darquennes, Jeroen (2012) ‘All is quiet on the Eastern front? Language contact along the French-German language border in Belgium’, in Durk Gorter, Heiko F. Marten, and Luk Van Mensel (eds), Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 164–182.
-
Waksman, Shoshi and Shohamy, Elana (2010) ‘Decorating the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa for its centennial: Complementary narratives via linguistic landscape’, in Elana Shahomy, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, and Monica Barni (eds), Linguistic Landscape in the City, Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 57–73.
-
Wikipedia (2020) ‘艋舺大道’ [Bangka Boulevard]. Retrieved 22 November 2020from https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/艋舺大道.
-
Wippermann, Dorothea (2017) ‘Transcription systems: Hànyǔ Pīnyīn 漢語拼音’, in Rint Sybesma et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, Vol. 4, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 424–432.
-
Yeoh, Brenda S.A. (2009) ‘Street-naming and nation-building: Toponymic inscriptions of nationhood in Singapore’, in Lawrence D. Berg and Jani Vuolteenaho (eds), Critical Toponymies: The Contested Politics of Place Naming, London and New York: Routledge, 71–84.
-
Yeoh, Brenda (2017) ‘Colonial urban order, cultural politics, and the naming of streets in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Singapore’, in Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman, and Maoz Azaryahu (eds), The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place, London: Routledge, 41–55.
-
Young, Russell (1989) Language Maintenance and Language Shift among the Chinese on Taiwan, Taipei: Crane.
-
Yu, Liang-gui (2019) ‘City image analysis of western Taipei: Historic and modern?’, International Review for Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development 7(4): 18–36.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 679 | 206 | 13 |
| Full Text Views | 44 | 12 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 117 | 26 | 0 |
Language Visibility and Invisible Languages: The Street Name Signs of Taipei City
In: International Journal of Taiwan StudiesSearch for other papers by Henning Klöter in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article examines the street name signs of Taipei City in their ideological, linguistic, and semiotic dimensions. These different levels of analysis correlate with different processes of sign development. Combining critical toponymy and linguistic landscape research, it is claimed that in ideological and linguistic terms the post-war period has been one of the fundamental changes that has been arguably unparalleled elsewhere. By contrast, the ideological about-turn after the 1980s has had relatively little influence on the contents of street name signs. Alluding to Western-style modernity, semiotic features like the colour of the signs and the direction of writing are later innovations. It is also argued that in the broader context of their multilingual environment, there is an enormous discrepancy between visible normativity and audible multilingualism.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 679 | 206 | 13 |
| Full Text Views | 44 | 12 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 117 | 26 | 0 |
