engleski

The linguistic landscape in the Brijuni National Park

Linguistic or Language Landscape (LL), concerned with the written form of language in the public domain, has recently grown across environments and disciplines although LL research is still rare in Croatia (Grbavac 2012, 2013 ; Gradečak-Erdeljić, Zlomislić 2014). Therefore, the current paper can be seen as one of the first Croatian contributions in this light. It is based on a case study conducted at one field site, i.e. the Brijuni National Park (BNP), with the main aim to consider this physical space in terms of sign emplacement and language use practices. The key research questions are as follows: (1) What kind of signs are commonly used for communication within this specific community (with no permanent residents) and for what purposes? ; (2) What languages and, how many, are publicly visible at the site? ; and (3) Are the employees aware of the role that signs and languages may have in addressing the target audience and, if yes, how much?. We took pictures of indoor and outdoor signs/inscriptions to survey the situation, and interviewed a marketing staff member to learn more about their official policy related to the given issues. Applying a mixed-method approach, with a clear reference to insights into the relevant theory (Blommaert 2013), we have recognized the following types: (a) permanent signs, (b) event-related signs, and (c) noise signs. Some of them are obviously intended to perform landmark, recruitment or information functions, while the others are used as public statements or muted signs. They generally combine textual and non-textual (pictorial) messages, and just a few of them are either textual or pictorial. We have also identified Croatian, English, German and Italian as the most publicly visible languages, rarely followed by Latin, Russian and French. We have finally discovered that much attention is not systematically paid to sign emplacement and language use in addressing the target audience, which means that it is needed to raise the linguistic awareness of employment staff members. Therefore, we suggest a co- operation between them and language experts in order to improve communication patterns and comprehension of semiotic and/or linguistic aspects of the physical space.

Brijuni National Park ; linguistic landscape ; signs and inscriptions ; language use ; language awareness

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