Reclaiming the local in LPP—Assignment 2

Chinatown—Light way to China without passport

          As a foreigner abroad, it is easily to get homesick. So anything that is related to his or her culture can bring some sweet memories and comforts back. This is what I experienced on my way to The Bureau of Immigration, Philippines last week.

I took this picture when I passed by Binondo, Manila on Jeepney to The Bureau of Immigration. I have been to the area Recto and Chinatown several times and this time I was driven by my desire to see something different in the hustle and bustle of the city after learning some theories relating to linguistic landscapes. It is the sign of a Chinese restaurant which is located in Binondo, the oldest Chinatown in the world (Raitisoja, Geni), attracted my attention. It is well known that in almost every country, one could find Chinatown and it is always famous for its business, wholesale stores and of course the food establishments that specialize in various Chinese cuisines. Here is one of them.

The languages in the sign

From the picture we can see clearly that both the Chinese language and the English language are used in the sign. Red Chinese characters or exactly, Chinese calligraphy are put in the striking position of the sign. To a certain extent, Chinese calligraphy can be said as one kind of semiotics for its way of writing and the impressions it may pose upon foreigners’ mind. And also it makes the feelings of being China obvious. Since the restaurant is located in the Philippines, a country that use the English language frequently, the English version of the restaurant sign is offered, too. There are English translations as “Hong Kong Seafood Restaurant” beneath Chinese characters “香港厨房”(which literally mean Hong Kong cuisine or Hong Kong Kitchen because the Chinese word “厨房” can be translated either into “kitchen” or “cuisine”).

According to Scollon and Scollon (2003 120), the position of the code in the sign suggest the different preferences. The preferred codes will be put at the top, left or center of the sign. So there are two purposes of putting the English sign in the less obvious place and in smaller size. First, it can give the message that the owner of the restaurant wants people feel more unique Chinese features from this sign. Second, to attract more Chinese food lovers by emphasizing Chinese color, anyhow, Chinese food is famous and well-received by a lot of people world wide.

The color of the sign

It is clearly that the restaurant just applies one color—red in its sign. It is well known that Chinese people like the red color very much, apart from the reason that China’s political background as a Communist country, the color red signifies prosperous, happiness and good luck in Chinese culture and Chinese people’s mind. It is interesting to see that wherever Chinese go, they will persistently show their culture-specific features no matter it is accepted by those foreign societies or foreign communities or not. In this way, they keep some of their local colors in this global world.

The environment

Although the sign of the restaurant is simple, the place it is located and the decoration of the environment say some extra things, too. First, there are two red lanterns in front of the sign which attract passerby’s attention easily and help to create more Chinese feeling. Lanterns in China are more than lighting devices and it is not exaggerated to say that red lanterns are regarded as one of the basic symbols of Chinese culture and foreigners see a red lantern and their mind think of China. People can easily find it everywhere in China, from the gigantic lanterns at the Tiananmen Gate and the small lanterns hanging on the front gate of houses and stores. The red color and round shape symbolizes Chinese’s hope and desire for brightness, harmony, happiness and reunion. Second, the combination of the two motorcycles in front of the restaurant and the two red lanterns contain some underlying meanings, too. Chinatown in Binondo is completely unique, it looks so Chinese but there were Jeepney and motorcycles everywhere so I knew that this place was a culture melting pot. There are churches and Chinese temples stay peacefully together, there are people talking both in Chinese and Pilipino, and tradition lives side by side with modernization. 

After several blocks, the Jeepney took me out of this seemingly Chinese world. I am back to the Philippines. I think it is worthwhile to exert more efforts in investigating how language had been used in presenting the ideology and power in the narrative construction of place, say Chinatown. According to Milroy and Gordon (Milroy and Gordon, 2003), place is perhaps one of the earliest variables that has been correlated with language use. The correlation between linguistic features and geographic areas can be the very important subject of modern sociolinguistics study. As Johnstone (2004) explains:

A space becomes a place through humans’ interaction with it, both through physical manipula­tion, via such activities as agriculture, architecture, and landscape, and symbolically, via such activities as remembering, formulating, depicting, and narrating. (p. 68)

     Thus the specific geographic factor can help to explain the possible meanings of the text, too. Just as Hymes (1996) argues, inequality does not derive from the linguistic system itself, but lies in the actual ways resources are combined in producing language.

References:

Hymes, D.H. (1996) ‘Speech and Language: On the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Speakers’, in Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice, pp. 25–62. London: Taylor and Francis.

Johnstone, B. (2004) ‘Place, Globalization, and Linguistic Variation’, in C. Fought (ed.) Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, pp. 65–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

In this article, Barbara Johnstone sates that place in one form or another is one of the most frequently adduced correlates of linguistic variation.  It is important to know that place as location,  place as meaning, local places in the postmodern world and the local meanings of local talk in doing ethnography and discourse analysis. It is useful to combine cross -disciplinary knowledge together when facing the questions about variation and change.

Milroy, L. and Gordon, M. (2003) Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Raitisoja, Geni " Chinatown Manila: Oldest in the world", Tradio86.com, July 8, 2006, accessed March 19, 2011.

Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. (2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge.