Informal signs as expressions of multilingualism in Chisinau: how individuals shape the public space of a post-Soviet capital

Abstract

Informal and transient displays of written language such as graffiti, announcements and notes attached to walls and lampposts form an integral part of an urban linguistic landscape. Especially within multilingual contexts, individuals constantly shape the public space by the languages they use and make language choices that do not always reflect official language policies, commonly held perceptions or the demographic makeup within a certain area. The capital of the Republic of Moldova, Chisinau, proves to be an interesting area of research here, as -apart from a Romanian-speaking majority -the city is home to a large share of speakers of Russian, a language long considered to be the lingua franca of the country. The aim of the current study is to analyse signs made by private individuals that are not part of shop fronts or billboards, namely those that are found all over the city and advertise for language courses, work opportunities abroad or express political opinions. The quantitative basis of the study is made up of two corpora with over 750 different items from various parts of Chisinau surveyed in 2009 and 2010 both in the centre of the city as well as in suburban residential areas. For better traceability and to ensure transparency in linguistic landscape analysis, the 2010 corpus is accessible online. The survey shows that Russian is widely used as a local lingua franca, contradicting official policies that declare Romanian Moldovan the sole national language.

What are analog bulletin boards used for today? Analysing media uses, intermediality and technology affordances in Swedish bulletin board messages using a citizen science approach

“…Another limitation concerns methodological representativity (as discussed above). Our results show a very strong domination of Swedish language messages (only 3% were in another language than Swedish, which can be compared to another study in Moldavia by Muth [ 23 ] which showed how public spaces preserved Russian language expressions despite the national policy stating that Romanian Moldovan is the official language). However, this is certainly not true for bulletin boards all across Sweden.…”

Politics of the Russian Language Beyond Russia

“…The Russian language is widely used for interethnic communication and is strongly influenced by the position of Transnistria, where it remains the primary language. Nearly half of Moldova's remaining population also know Russian to some extent and use the language in a much wider range of contexts than officials usually report (Muth 2014). However, the proportion of active Russian speakers, who use the language in everyday life, in Moldova excluding Transnistria is 14% (Aref'ev 2015: 33).…”

Linguistic Landscape and Other Sociolinguistic Methods in the Study of Russian Language Abroad

“…Фотографии затем помещают в корпус (базу данных), где каждый снимок/надпись имеет свой код, включающий место и время, когда была сфотографирована надпись, языки, материал (анализ материала позволяет отличить временные надписи от постоянных) и тип надписи (официальный, коммерческий, неформальный). Для обеспечения открытости и прозрачности (transparency) информации некоторые исследователи открывают доступ к своим корпусам он-лайн (Muth 2014с).…”