The linguistic landscape of the University of Zambia: a social semiotic perspective
Date
2020
Authors
Simungala, Gabriel Nonde
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The University of Zambia
Abstract
This dissertation presents the linguistic landscape of Zambia’s flagship university, the
University of Zambia. In keeping with both the custom and recent trends in linguistic
landscape theorizations, the study conceived as “The Linguistic Landscape of the
University of Zambia: A Social Semiotic Perspective” conflates, as a sub-discipline of
sociolinguistics, both language and semiotic materialities that enact and transact meaning.
Drawing on Geosemiotics, as well as Multimodality together with its extended notions of
semiotic remediation and Resemiotisation for theory and Ethnography for methodology,
the study was specially privileged to uncover the sociolinguistic situation and the material
culture in the multilingual and multimodal landscapes of the University of Zambia.
Through a critical engagement with the 416 digital images of signage in place, an inquiry
into the sociolinguistic situation unearthed an instance of the global in the local as the
dominance of English over Japanese, Chinese and the apparent absence of indigenous
languages on monolingual signs was noted. Owing to the symbolic and indexical
presence of Chinese and Japanese, a place of linguistic contestations and legitimization of
languages, control and superiority is foregrounded. Indigenous languages are spotted only
on bilingual signs (with English) resemiotizing and recontextualizing ideological leanings
of humanism and Pan-Africanism. English, Ila, Tonga, Bemba, Lozi, Nyanja and
Mambwe constitute the repertoires of social actors carving out a complex multilingual
context as languages are often co-deployed through translanguaging, mixing, semiotic
coinages and truncated forms thereby informing normative societal practices of the late
modern age.
With regard to material culture, the fluidity of both space and meaning seen through
juxtaposed semi-permanent and transitional spaces entails the transient nature of
messages, meaning and discourses in place. Consequently, this reinforces the notion of
linguistic landscape as cities of perpetual (re-)production, (co-)construction and
consumption evidenced by discourses and semiotic materialities which are repurposed,
remediated and crafted anew, thereby breeding highly complex meaning making systems.
At the same time, these spaces are commercially, religiously and politically themed,
reclaimed and contested material environs where even the consumption of artifactual
materiality contests and upholds mobile identities amidst semiotic aggregation as
meanings are drawn from the intermingling of social actors, language and space.
Key words: Linguistic landscape, multilingualism, repertoires, material culture, mobility
Description
Thesis
Keywords
Linguistic landscape--Zambia , Linguistic--Sociolinguistics