A Linguistic Landscape Study on the

Language Display in Cardiff, Wales

•WS 2021/2022
•Linguistic Landscape
•Presenter: Zhexu Fan
•Prof. Dr. Jakob Leimgruber
Study Outline 1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
Language Display Theory
Language Policy in Wales
Research Questions
3. Methodology
Picture samples
Data Collection and Analysis
4. Results and Conclusion
5. Discussion
6. References
1. Introduction
As a more and more bilingualized region, Linguistic Landscape in
Wales has been changing rapidly following the language policies
issued by the Welsh government in recent years. This study
investigates the current Linguistic Landscape and the language
display in the capital city of Wales, Cardiff.
 Language Display

Language display functions as an artifact of crossing linguistic

boundaries without threatening social boundaries or as a
Theoretical reaction to social boundaries which cannot be crossed.
(Eastman & Stein, 1993)
Background
Language display is Agentive, Objectifying, and Cumulative.
(Eastman & Stein, 1993) (Coupland, 2012)
Language Display
Agentive: Road signs and public information notice are established through a
top-down Linguistic Landscape agentive decisions. (Backhaus, 2007)
Objectifying: Private shops, commercial signs, etc., show a metacultural
significance, that is, when a cultural practice has the potential to define the
culture in which it functions. (Coupland & Garrett 2010).
Cumulative: Cumulative acts are liable to be structured as progressive,
cumulative reframing. (Scheff, 2005) (Coupland, 2012)
 The Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 confirmed the official status of the
Welsh language in Wales and created a new legislative framework for the Welsh
language. (
https://gov.wales/welsh-language-strategy-2012-2017-living-language-language-livin
g
)

Language In September 2015, public bodies across Wales were told which services they would
Policy be required to provide in Welsh, giving them six months to prepare for the change. (
https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/n-a-4985/)

New regulations which have come into force in Wales on 31 March 2016, decided
that all new traffic signs must feature the Welsh language first. (
https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/n-a-4985/)

The new regulations also say: “When you erect a new sign or renew a sign (including
temporary signs) which conveys the same information in Welsh and in English, the
Welsh language text must be positioned so that it is likely to be read first.”
Reasearch Questions
How have the language policies in Wales been influencing the overall
Linguistic Landscape, and the language framing in Cardiff, reflected by both
governmental and private business signage?

• The proportion of bilingual signs (government and non-government) in

Cardiff.
• The positioning of languages on the signage.
• The involvement of other foreign languages.
3. Methodology
Sampling Area:
Photos are taken within the scope of 3km near Cardiff city center. Photos
include road signs, regulatory signs, business signs, building signs, etc.
Categorization:
Examples and challenges will be presented.
•Sampling Area
 North of Cardiff City Center

Cardiff City Center

Sample photos – categorized as
Private businesses signs including
both languages
 Oxfam is the largest retailer of second-hand books in
Europe, which also has a large charitable
characteristics.

This Greggs photo is taken at a Greggs at a slightly outskirt area,

they have both languages on the signs. It was also added to the
private business signage, although the same Greggs in the city
center is only monolingual.
Sample photos – categorized as Private businesses signs that
only feature English.
This Greggs is located right in the city center, but did not
include Welsh on their signs.
 The photo below contains two
businesses that have other
languages on their signs. But in the
case of two or more being captured
by one photo, it is only counted as
one.

Sample photo above is

categorized as Private
businesses signs that are in
English and foreign languages
other than Welsh
Photos categorized as government
signs with English as the first
language
In these cases, when English is positioned on the left, from our
reading habits, they are likely to be read first. Therefore, they were
also categorized as government signs with English as the first
language
Photos like these were categorized as government signs with Welsh
being the first language.
This is,
unfortunately, the
only multi-language
government sign
found in the areas
of research.
Data Analysis
3.1: An overall view of the language categories on public signs in Cardiff.
Type Gov English Gov Welsh Gov Multi- Business Bilingual Business English Business Foreign Total
First First languages Only Languages

Amount 14 31 1 25 33 17 121

Percentage 11.57% 26% 0.83% 20.66% 27% 14% 100%

3.2: An overall view of the multilingual signs in Cardiff.

TYPE GOV SIGNS-BOTH LANGUAGES BUSINESS SIGNS-BOTH OTHER FOREIGN TOTAL
LANGUAGES LANGUAGES

AMOUNT 45 25 18 88

PERCENTAGE 51% 28% 20% 100%

Chart 3.3
Chart 3.4
• Chart 3.3 shows that the overall bilingual signs take up 57.9% of the overall sampled areas in Cardiff. There are also 27.3% of signs that are
only in English. 14.9% of the signs are in a combination of other foreign languages, accompanied usually by English texts.
• Chart 3.4 shows that among the 57.9% of bilingual signs, 37.2% (11.6%+25.6%) of signs are governmental signs. And only 20.7% of signs
are non-government bilingual signs. Among the 27.3% of English only signs, all of which were private business signs, non-governmental
signs were provided only in English.
• It is also worth mentioning, that 25.6% of governmental bilingual signs featured Welsh as the first language, and only 11.6% of signs
featured English as the first language.
Chart 3.5 Chart 3.6

Chart 3.5 shows the overall framing preference of all governemnt signs being taken. Among which 67.4% chose to feature
Welsh as the first language, and only 30.4% feature a English first layout. Only one other governmental foreign language
sign was found in Cardiff, which constitutes 2.2% of the overall governmental signage.
Chart 3.6 indicates the overall priority language preference of all private business signs being captured. 44% of all business
signs were in English only, and 33.3% of signs are bilingual, 22.7% of signs consisted of other foreign languages.
 Chart 3.7 shows that the bilingual
signage proportion of government
signs and private party signs.
Government signs show a much
higher rate of 51.1% of bilingual
signage rate out of the total
multilingual signage. However, only a
28.4% of private business signs
provide both languages.

Chart 3.7
 Chart 3.8 shows that when no rules were
made for which languages to show.
Slightly more businesses chose to feature
English as the first language, among the
bilingual business signs being taken. But
overall, the distribution is quite even
between English and Welsh.

Chart 3.8
4. Results and Coming Back to the Research Questions:

Conclusion How have the language policies in Wales been influencing

the overall Linguistic Landscape, and the language framing in
Cardiff, reflected by both governmental and private business
signage?

• The proportion of bilingual signs (government and non-

government) in Cardiff.
• The positioning of languages on the signage.
• The involvement of other foreign languages.
 • Most bilingual signs (57.9%) being captured in the city of Cardiff were established by
the government. Showing a strong agency of the language display, which is through
the Welsh government.
4. Results • More government signs (67.4%) out of the total government signs chose to feature
Welsh as the first language, reflecting the government policy that took into effect in
and March 2016.

Conclusion • Many small businesses also started using bilingual signs, but the percentage is still
much lower comparatively. (20.7%), with a 26.2% of all bilingual business signs
choosing to feature Welsh first, and 33.3% featuring English first.
• No government signage out of the captured photos was in English only, showing a
thorough implementation of the local language policy (2011 & 2016 policy).
• The city center had fewer bilingual business signs compare to the north outskirt area.
Possibly indicating that the Welsh speaking population resident areas are not in the
city center (however, no supporting evidence was found on this), and more businesses
perhaps also decided to use bilingual signs due to the influence of the surrounding
environment, which shows its cumulative effects of public language display.
• Other foreign languages take up a total of 14.9% of all photos taken in Cardiff, most of
them being Chinese signs. In Arabic, Japanese, French and Turkish, one sign each was
found. Some photos also showed more than one foreign language besides English. But
none of these businesses (mostly restaurants), featured Welsh.
The Increase of Welsh
Speaking Population
in Cardiff Under
Local Policies

•Data from
http://www.nationalarchive
s.gov.uk/doc/open-governm
ent-licence

Chart 3.8

Chart 3.8 data was taken separately from the website above, therefore, there were gaps between year 2012-
2016, and year 2019-2022, due to the incompletion of data release. But it shows a gradual, and consistant
growth of the overall Welsh speaking population in Cardiff.
5. Discussion
How will the role of Welsh change in the future in Wales? Will the local
language policies only serve a role of preserving the language, or will it boost
up the overall Welsh speaking population consistently?
 • It is hard to analyze all photos being taken, therefore the individual
framing of the texts cannot be thoroughly analyzed. For instance, in
private business bilingual signage, the positioning of the texts on each
photo was not being analyzed in depth, and its corresponding influence
(of the images, and logos, etc.) on the Welsh culture was also left
undiscussed.
Limitations of • Not all signs in the whole of Cardiff were collected, and other parts of
Wales were overlooked by this study.
my Study • It was hard to trace the exact date when a sign was put up, therefore
hard to trace the influence in the signages by the local language policy.
• It is arguable that the density of Welsh speakers (which, if high, leads
to a thriving Welsh culture) is an equally important statistic. For
example, if 50,000 additional Welsh speakers were to be concentrated
in areas where Welsh is spoken by at least 50% of the population, this
would be much more important to the sustainability of the Welsh
language than the same number dispersed in Cardiff, Newport and
Swansea cities. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Welsh_language)
References:
Backhaus, Peter. 2007. Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo. Linguistic
Landscapes. doi:10.21832/9781853599484.
Brant, Colin. Communication and Culture: The Role of Language Policy on Regional Minority Languages in the
Reduction of Political Conflict. , 77.
Coupland, Nikolas. 2012. Bilingualism on display: The framing of Welsh and English in Welsh public spaces.
Language in Society 41(1). Cambridge University Press, 1–27. doi:10.1017/S0047404511000893.
Coupland, Nikolas & Peter Garrett. 2010. Linguistic landscapes, discursive frames and metacultural performance:
the case of Welsh Patagonia. 2010(205). De Gruyter Mouton, 7–36. doi:10.1515/ijsl.2010.037.
Eastman, Carol M. & Roberta F. Stein. 1993. Language display: Authenticating claims to social identity. Journal of
Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14(3). Routledge, 187–202. doi:10.1080/01434632.1993.9994528.
Migliorato·Business, Lorenzo & Culture·. 2017. Bringing Welsh back on the street. InterCardiff.
https://cardiffjournalism.co.uk/intercardiff/business-culture/promoting-cymraeg-welsh-speakers-language (7
January, 2022).
The Structure of Context: Deciphering Frame Analysis - Thomas J. Scheff, 2005.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0735-2751.2005.00259.x (6 February, 2022).
Other Websites Used in the Study:
https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/n-a-4985/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages
https://gov.wales/welsh-language-strategy-2012-2017-living-language-language-living
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_preservation
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/popula
tionestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2020
THANK YOU