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Translanguaging in the linguistic landscape: creative scripts in Yi ethnicity students’ handwritten signs

  • Peng Nie ORCID logo and Xiaofang Yao ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: December 5, 2024
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Abstract

This paper focuses on the creative scripts in handwritten signs as part of the ‘linguistic landscape’ created by high school students of Yi ethnicity in Liangshan, China. It investigates the translanguaging practices of ethnic minority students and language teachers’ attitudes towards these sociolinguistic realities. It was found that Yi students adopted a wide range of translanguaging strategies such as trans-scripting, trans-modal writing, and trans-literation, but their translingual practices were mediated by the social orders inscribed in different spaces of the classroom. The more loosely managed the space, the more diverse students’ translanguaging practices would be. Language teachers tended to subscribe to the official ideology that primed standardised Chinese as the language for national unity and English as the global language. They generally held conservative attitudes towards the translanguaging practices exhibited by ethnic minority students. Examining the school’s linguistic landscape as publicly displayed language items from the theoretical lens of translanguaging, this study contributes important insights into the trans-lingual and trans-modal practices of Yi ethnic minority students in the Chinese context.


Corresponding author: Xiaofang Yao, School of Chinese, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, E-mail:

Funding source: National Language Commission Fund of China

Award Identifier / Grant number: YB145-103

Award Identifier / Grant number: 23CYY032

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by the China National Language Commission under Grant NO. YB145-103; National Social Science Fund under Grant NO. 23CYY032.

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Received: 2023-11-28
Accepted: 2024-11-05
Published Online: 2024-12-05
Published in Print: 2025-07-28

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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