A Study of the Linguistic Landscape Reality in Ethnic Tourism Areas: A Case of Lijiang
This 2023 sociolinguistics article (Journal of Dali University) investigates the linguistic landscape of Shuhe old town, Lijiang, examining the coexistence of Chinese, the Naxi Dongba script (东巴文), and English on public signage. Using photographs of 421 signs plus structured interviews with government staff, shopkeepers, tourists, and residents, the authors find signage is predominantly multilingual (56.3%), with public road signs uniformly standardized (Chinese+Dongba+English) by government, while private shop signs are more varied. Chinese dominates in both visibility and salience; Dongba script is highly visible but almost never salient, functioning symbolically rather than informationally, valued by shopkeepers for economic/compliance reasons, by tourists as an exotic aesthetic marker, and by residents as a source of ethnic pride. English shows a similar visibility-without-salience pattern, often rendered inaccurately or substituted with pinyin. The study frames its findings around three tensions: policy versus implementation, informative versus symbolic function, and globalization versus localization, arguing Dongba script's chief value in this landscape is its "non-use" heritage and identity-affirming role rather than practical communication.
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