Language contact, agency and power in the linguistic landscape of two regionalcapitals of Ethiopia
-
Hirut Woldemariam
and
Elizabet Lanza
Abstract
The issue of language contact in the linguistic landscape has been rarely addressed, especially in regards to issues of agency and power in this domain of multilingual practices. The linguistic landscape provides an arena for investigating agency as related to literacy, language rights and identity. In this article, we explore the linguistic landscape of two different regions in Ethiopia to provide an analysis of language contact that takes place between regional languages, which only recently have made the transition to literacy in the country as the result of a new language policy, and Amharic, the federal working language, which has a long and established history of literacy. The study is based on data collected through field work and participant observation from two federal regions in the country – Tigray and Oromia – two regions that have fought for the recognition of language rights, for Tigrinya and Oromo, the former a Semitic language like Amharic and the latter a Cushitic language. Results indicate ways in which speakers of the regional languages draw on their multilingual resources to create a new arena for language use and thereby assert their agency in developing new literacy practices.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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- Signs in context: multilingual and multimodal texts in semiotic space
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- Informal signs as expressions of multilingualism in Chisinau: how individuals shape the public space of a post-Soviet capital
- 630 kilometres by bicycle: observations of English in urban and rural Finland
- Language contact, agency and power in the linguistic landscape of two regionalcapitals of Ethiopia
- Tallinn: monolingual from above and multilingual from below
- Bilingual winks and bilingual wordplay in Montreal's linguistic landscape
- Mapping cosmopolitanisms in Taipei: toward a theorisation of cosmopolitanism in linguistic landscape research
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Signs in context: multilingual and multimodal texts in semiotic space
- The presence of minority languages in linguistic landscapes in Amsterdam and Friesland (the Netherlands)
- Informal signs as expressions of multilingualism in Chisinau: how individuals shape the public space of a post-Soviet capital
- 630 kilometres by bicycle: observations of English in urban and rural Finland
- Language contact, agency and power in the linguistic landscape of two regionalcapitals of Ethiopia
- Tallinn: monolingual from above and multilingual from below
- Bilingual winks and bilingual wordplay in Montreal's linguistic landscape
- Mapping cosmopolitanisms in Taipei: toward a theorisation of cosmopolitanism in linguistic landscape research
- Semiotic landscapes and mobile narrations of place: performing the local
- Sexed signs – queering the scenery
