The linguistic landscape of the University of Zambia: a social semiotic perspective

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