engleski

Tourism as the main driving force in the linguistic landscape of Zadar, Croatia

In more than two millennia of its urban continuity, the Croatian town of Zadar has been through a great number of changes, especially population-wise. However, as well as most Dalmatian towns built on Roman foundations, it has always been multilingual. Traces of that historical multilingualism can still be seen in the linguistic landscape of contemporary Zadar (Oštarić, 2020), which is also characterized by constant change, greatly influenced by tourism as the main driving force. This contribution presents the findings of two analyses of the ways in which contemporary tourism influences the linguistic landscape of Zadar. The first one represents the traditional LL analysis (Backhaus, 2007) of all the texts present in the public space of Zadar Peninsula, the administrative, religious, tourist, judicial and educational centre of Zadar, where most citizens and numerous tourists commute regularly. The second analysis involves semi- structured interviews with three groups of residents of Zadar who participate in the production and consumption of the texts in the LL. The first group comprises randomly selected passers-by who perceive the texts in the LL and use the information on those texts for various personal needs. The second group consists of entrepreneurs, shop and bar owners and managers, who decide on using specific languages or varieties in written communication and advertising, usually through posters and notifications in their shop windows. The third group consists of decision makers from the local government and tourist board, who devise the official framework of language use in the public space. The analyses of the linguistic landscape and interviews with people involved in the consumption and creation of LL signs will give us a detailed picture of the processes behind the creation of the contemporary linguistic landscape of Zadar and the influence of contemporary tourism on the written language practices in the public space.

tourism, Zadar, linguistic landscape, public space

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