Information, Education, and Language Policy in the Linguistic Landscape of an International Airport in New Zealand

Abstract

The study of linguistic landscapes initially centered on public signage in multilingual environments (Landry & Bourhis, 1997;Spolsky & Cooper, 1991). The many studies in this field have examined both signage produced by public authorities ("informative signs," Spolsky, 2009) and privately produced advertising signs. Cenoz and Gorter (2006) connected the linguistic landscape of public spaces to the official language policy of the setting. Alongside these studies there have been many studies on the purposes and information in linguistic landscapes associated with semi-public environments, including the classroom environment. In a recent article, Gorter (2018) offers an overview of schoolscape research and points out that signage can have a pedagogical application and also be relevant for language learning. Aiestaran, Cenoz, and Gorter (2010) found that signs in schools are related to the teaching of subject content and language, but also intercultural awareness, establishing behavioral rules, as well as practical or commercial information.This chapter expands the study of multilingual signs in (semi-)public places by examining signs in an airport. Since the 1970s as airports worldwide have increasingly become private companies, there has been a move toward commercial branding of the airport as a destination (Castro & Lohmann, 2014). Airports are on the one hand semi-public spaces but as they are increasingly administered by private companies the larger airports have a strong branding and commercial focus. The most recent example of this is the opening in April 2019 of Changi Airport's Jewel shopping mall, which is a landside attraction (Jameson, 2019). Spolsky (2009: 34) outlines eight major types of sign distinguished by Spolsky and Cooper (1991): 1. Street signs 2. Advertising signs 3. Warning notices and prohibitions 4. Building names 5. Informative signs (directions, hours of opening) 9781350125360_txt_prf.indd 7/29/2020 8:42:43

Virtual Linguistic Landscape During Post-Covid 19 in Haneda Airport Public Space

“…There are also studies on public transportation such as at stations (Pipattarasakul, 2014;Suthinaraphan, 2016) and in airports such as Kuala Lumpur International Airport (Woo & Nora Riget, 2022), an international airport in New Zealand (Cunningham & King, 2020). There are also studies on the linguistic landscape in Japan that relate to COVID-19 signs in the city (Nakamura, 2022).…”