Language Choice and Multilingual Writing of Shop Signs in Semarang Old City: A Linguistic Landscape Study

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-418-1_12How to use a DOI?

Keywords

linguistic landscape; multilingual writing; fragmentary writing; complementary writing

Abstract

This current article presents the linguistic landscape (LL) in Semarang Old City, which was built and inhabited by the Dutch. Studies of the linguistic landscape in Indonesia have generally focused on identifying the language choices used on signs in certain areas, but these studies have not described the multilingual writing preferences of the sign makers. The present study tries to relate the language choice in the signs with a discussion on multilingual writing preferences chosen by sign makers. The data of 91 images were collected from commercial shop names along the streets of Semarang Old City using photography techniques. Qualitative analysis shows that Indonesian appears dominantly in the monolingual pattern, prominent in bilingual, and stable in the multilingual pattern. English ranks second monolingually and has higher visibility than Indonesian in the bilingual pattern. Additionally, English is stable in the multilingual context alongside Indonesian. Meanwhile, Javanese appears less significant in the monolingual pattern, minimal in the bilingual pattern, and absent altogether in the multilingual pattern. An interesting fact is the use of Dutch is very minimal, even though this city is closely related to the history and culture of the Dutch nation. Moreover, this study reveals the vitality of the Indonesian language and the emergence of English as a tourism language in Semarang Old City. Furthermore, the multilingual writing preferences on public signs are mostly written with fragmentary and complementary patterns. A new pattern is found, a combination of fragmentary and complementary. The fragmentary pattern is widely used in the names of medium to low-scale shops, while the complementary pattern is widely used by medium to high-scale shops.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Nurul Maghfiroh
AU  - Suhandano Suhandano
AU  - Aprillia Firmonasari
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/06
TI  - Language Choice and Multilingual Writing of Shop Signs in Semarang Old City: A Linguistic Landscape Study
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Cultural Studies (ICCUS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 145
EP  - 164
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-418-1_12
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-418-1_12
ID  - Maghfiroh2025
ER  -