The linguistic landscape of tourist attractions in Singapore

Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic landscape of Singapore’s tourist attractions by observing the languages present on signs at eight different tourist attractions. By taking photographs of signs at the tourist attractions, this study aimed to investigate the languages present and whether the languages on signs reflect the nationality of tourists visiting them. Top-down and bottom-up signs were compared in terms of both languages present as well as code preference. This paper also explored the commodification of language in Singapore’s tourist attractions. Results showed that the languages on signs at a few tourist attractions did reflect the nationality of tourists who visited them, but also that exclusion of the languages did not mean that the number of tourists visiting from certain countries was low. A few differences between top-down and bottom-up signs were observed, including differences in code preference of signs in Chinatown and also the low percentage of Malay and Tamil on bottom-up signs in Chinatown compared to top-down ones. Chinese and Tamil can be seen to have been commodified in Chinatown and Little India respectively, in order to give tourists a more authentic experience of the two attractions.