Linguistic Landscape and Reflection of Chinese Cultural Elements:  A Diachronic Study

Soon Chiow Thai, Nur Shafiekah Sapan, Siti Aishah Ramli

University of Malaysia Sabah

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the Chinese cultural elements reflected on the linguistic landscape in a multi-lingual community in a Federal Territory in Malaysia.   The main aim of this paper is to examine the notions of linguistic landscape, language practice and Chinese cultural elements.  This qualitative research applied linguistic landscape of Ben-Rafael (2009) to unveil the Chinese cultural elements reflected through naming the companies.  Two sets of corpora data which were collected in the years of 2011 and 2017 with 212 and 233 brand names respectively.  Comparison of Chinese lexis used on the brand names of companies showed the dialect related element is not reflected in the corpus data of 2017 and the additional Chinese cultural elements of concept of direction, numbers and concept of beauty are reflected.  The Chinese cultural elements which showed in both data (2011 and 2017) are i) good wishes, ii) name of places, iii) surnames and names, iv) advocating Confucianism and v) dragon, phoenix and tiger.

KEYWORDS

 Chinese lexis, linguistic landscape, Chinese cultural elements, brand  names