Translanguaging in multimodal Macao posters: Flexible versus separate multilingualism

Theoretical framework: separate and flexible multilingualism

Recently, fluid linguistic practices have received much scholarly attention (e.g. Ag & Jørgensen, 2012; García & Li, 2014; Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010). On some occasions, it might be difficult to classify a linguistic item into a certain language. That is, this item may carry syntactic, grammatical, or lexical features of more than one language. The essential links between language, culture, history, politics and identities, etc. are thus challenged. Studies of such fluid linguistic practices have conventionally come under the rubric of code-switching; that is, two or more languages are juxtaposed in one conversation or discourse and hence language boundaries are crossed. The vast literature of code-switching has indicated that switching to another language signals various kinds of social and pragmatic meanings. Most studies, however, have focused on spoken data and there is not much literature on code-switching in written texts, which can be very different from spoken code-switching (Sebba, 2012). Different concepts and theories are needed to explain data in genres making use of different media or channels. In connection with this, code-switching in written or printed genres (e.g. novels, notices, posters, etc.) is not only interesting but also theoretically significant, since it challenges the orthodox ways of studying code-switching that are biased towards spoken code-switching. The switching of languages in multimodal texts can no longer be analyzed by sentence or turn, but by other units more pertinent to visual space. For instance, Sebba (2012, p. 104) analyzes an advertisement which has no punctuation at all and thus code-switching therein cannot be easily classified in conventional terms such as inter-sentential or intra-sentential code-switching.

This paper analyzes a dataset of posters advertising concerts, exhibitions, performances and shows, etc. in Macao. In some multilingual posters, different languages (such as Chinese, mostly in Traditional Characters, English, and sometimes Portuguese) can be identified quite clearly and kept separate; in particular, the Chinese ideographic scripts are quite distinctive from the Roman alphabets in which English and Portuguese are encoded. However, there are also a recognizable number of posters in which many linguistic elements cannot be clearly pinned down as belonging to a particular language (e.g. the language-neutral units discussed below), and accordingly the term code-switching, which treats “the distinctiveness of codes as a given” (Bailey, 2007, p. 258), does not seem entirely appropriate.

How can we capture such variation in multilingual practice? It is not covered by terms which denote various degrees of individual bilingualism, such as “minimal bilingualism,” i.e. a bilingual can only use a few words and phrases in a second language (Li, 2000, p. 6) or maximal bilingualism (i.e. a bilingual has more or less native proficiency in both languages). Neither do the traditional descriptions of societal bilingualism, in particular “diglossia” and its various extensions (Ferguson, 1959; Fishman, 1967; Platt, 1977), explain these practices. In fact, in differentiating and contrasting languages neatly (into “high” or “low” variety) for their status and functions in society, the diglossia models are by their very nature unequipped to describe the use of two or more languages in the same discourse.

This paper proposes that the pair of separate vs flexible multilingualism is a good candidate for covering a continuum of multilingual practice in which languages may be clearly demarcated and separated on one hand or closely interlocked on the other. Both concepts originate from Blackledge and Creese’s (2010) typology of separate bilingualism, which “is linked to a view of culture as a large national and geographic entity” and flexible bilingualism, which “is linked to a view of culture as local identity performance and practice” (Blackledge & Creese, 2010, p. 108). The terms were originally developed to describe bilingual policy and practice in language classrooms. For instance, teachers in British complementary schools usually insist on and comply with the rules that languages should be kept separate and that only the community language (such as Chinese in a school where it is taught to British children whose parents or grandparents are migrants from China) can be used in classroom (Blackledge & Creese, 2010, p. 112). These policies usually reflect separate bilingualism but the actual practice in classrooms is characterized by flexible bilingualism such as mixing Chinese and English elements. A policy of separate bilingualism links the teaching of a language (e.g. Mandarin or Cantonese) with national identity and native cultural heritage (e.g. Chinese), whereas in practice teachers and students use “all signs to perform varied identities and subjectivities” (Blackledge & Creese, 2010, p. 113), with “all signs” meaning a mixture of languages. There may be separate bilingualism in a language classroom as well. The practice of obeying a separate bilingualism policy also occurs in schools where separate bilingualism is preferred or assumed. To illustrate, an instructor may speak Chinese solely in presentation but switch between English and Chinese in student discussion. Sticking to heritage languages such as Chinese in a classroom while using other languages after class in complementary schools can be characterized as separate bilingualism, while the practice of using whatever languages are available to fulfill educational purposes can be described as flexible bilingualism. In other contexts of everyday life, we can anticipate variations or patterns which are similar to the separate/flexible distinction in classroom practice. For instance, we may see inter-sentential code-switching or situational code-switching as similar to separate bilingualism while frequent and extensive code-switching within a sentence or within the same communicative situation is flexible bilingualism. As we shall see, these variations can be attested in written discourse as well.

In this paper, separate bilingualism and flexible bilingualism are extended more broadly to describe language practice and ideology in multilingual societies. More specifically, as an ideology, separate multilingualism is often favored and propagated by official institutions; as language practice, people produce multilingual discourse in which the languages are kept apart as discrete systems. Separate bilingualism is influential in “powerful and pervasive political and academic discourses” (Blackledge & Creese, 2010, p. 109). For instance, in Macao, where Chinese and Portuguese are both official languages, a government notice shows the same piece of information in Chinese and Portuguese in two separate columns as if it targets two different groups of monolingual Chinese and Portuguese readers. The separate multilingual policy is usually affected by monolingualism ideology in which it is believed that one language should be used in one situation or discourse (cf. monolingual norm for texts in Sebba, 2012, p. 100). On the contrary, under the ideology of flexible multilingualism, multilingual speakers are less concerned with or constrained by separating languages and keeping them pure, but feel free to meet real communicative needs through flexible language use and even mixing the languages in their linguistic repertoires. As a result, there is no clear dividing line between languages. This paper focuses on the practice of separate and flexible multilingualism, though it is presumed that such practices are underlain by corresponding ideologies whose origin and formation in detail fall outside the scope of this paper (but see some suggestion below). In our visual data, language distance is a critical point in differentiating flexible multilingualism from separate multilingualism. Language distance can be determined by observing whether the language boundaries are blurred. In instances of flexible multilingualism, the languages are often mixed within a single visual unit (Sebba, 2012), whereas in fixed multilingualism, the languages are, generally speaking, separated clearly by space, color, column, etc. This paper applies these concepts to printed public discourse represented by a collection of posters. “[W]hen a piece of writing enters the public domain – via media, advertisements and so forth – one can expect heavy normative pressures to comply with rules of purity” (Blommaert, 2013, p. 447). This claim is re-examined and challenged in this paper.

Posters are put up in a public sphere, and, similar to public signs, one type of linguistic landscape. Only by means of studying the extensive data of the linguistic landscape can we reveal the overall picture of multilingualism in Macao. It may well be difficult to collect enough spoken data from multilinguals from all walks of life to comprehensively illustrate the multilingualism in a place. Typical linguistic landscape items such as road signs and shop names might reflect the compliance with stricter regulations imposed by the government. Posters, however, are a special kind of linguistic landscape because they allow for some degree of flexibility and because they are physically movable and posted in different places. In terms of visual format, posters are more complicated and content-rich than road signs and they display a richer use of multimodal elements. Road signs mostly reflect separate multilingualism (i.e. the name of a road in one language followed by the name in another), but posters can reflect both separate and flexible multilingualism. Posters have more space to allow for the complexity of the separate/flexible distinction.

Sociolinguistic situation of Macao

The context, Macao, is less researched than other cities such as Hong Kong in the bi/multilingualism literature, but it is definitely not less interesting as a predominantly Chinese (Cantonese speaking) community, a former Portuguese colony, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) at the periphery of the People’s Republic of China, and, more recently, an internationalized tourism city with foreign invested hotels-cum-casinos and a large imported workforce. The languages involved in Macao posters are correspondingly complex, including Traditional Chinese (TC) characters (in a literary style), Simplified Chinese (SC) characters, Cantonese in a conversational style, English, Portuguese, etc.

This paper explores the potential of separate vs flexible multilingualism as a descriptive framework for explaining multilingual practices in various kinds of discourse. Separate multilingualism and flexible multilingualism have coexisted in Macao, especially in terms of school policy. In history, “[t]he colonial government provided non-tertiary education mainly for the Portuguese residents and the children of government officials” (Young, 2009, p. 415) while most Chinese children went to schools set up by churches or other associations. Portuguese and Chinese people were separated to a great extent. Portugal governed Macao for almost 500 years but the majority of Macao people still use their own language – Chinese (which includes Cantonese in speaking and TC in writing) – till today. Though Portuguese and Chinese sometimes coexist in the same discourse, primarily in government documents, there has been considerable distance between the two languages. Their coexistence can be characterized as double monolingualism rather than bilingualism with a lot of language alternation. The norm of double monolingualism is that “‘bilinguals’ must at all times use one and only one language, and (preferably) use it as if they were monolingual in that language” (Ag & Jørgensen, 2012, p. 526). The deep rooted monolingual ideology underlies both Portuguese and Chinese culture. Given these historical reasons, we posit that separate multilingualism is, to some degree, affected by the colonial history of Macao. Moreover, it seems that the government has always been inclined to treat the population as separate ethnic groups. For instance, the schools in Macao are classified into Chinese, English and Portuguese schools on the government website (Direcção dos Serviços de Educação e Juventude [DSEJ], 2015).

On the other hand, the Macao government has never forcefully implemented any regulation concerning language use. According to the Fundamental Law of Non-tertiary Education System (9/2006), public schools must use one of the official languages (Portuguese or Chinese) as medium of instruction (MOI), while private schools may choose either the official languages or other languages. It states that public schools should provide students with the opportunity to learn the other official language (which is not the MOI), and private schools should provide students with the opportunity to learn at least one official language (DSEJ, 2007). Concerning language use outside the domain of education, Macao’s Basic Law states that “[i]n addition to the Chinese language, Portuguese may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Macao Special Administrative Region” (National People’s Congress, 1993). Based on this article, government advertising usually presents Chinese and Portuguese as the default or routine language choice, but it also allows for the use of whatever language is available depending on the target readers. Non-governmental organizations such as commercial corporations can use any language on the basis of their audience design. This condition facilitates flexible multilingualism under the influence of globalization.

Multimodality

Three types of unit are identified in multilingual written texts, namely: “(a) grammatical units (e.g. sentences, morphemes), (b) genre-specific units relevant to textual structure and cohesion (e.g. paragraphs, headings) and (c) visual/spatial units (e.g. column, box, frame)” (Sebba, 2012, p. 106). A unit can be monolingual or bi/multilingual. Different units are likely to be separated by visual space. In the present study, the column is treated as the smallest unit in a poster. The columns are separated “by areas of blank (text-free) space or by lines, bands or similar visual devices” (Sebba, 2012, p. 106). Take Figure 1 as an example. Hello and Goodbye belong to one unit, while Tao Zhe “David Tao” and 2013 World Tour belong to two separate units because they occupy two lines in different fonts and colors. In the Chinese context, we would like to add that a column is not smaller than a Chinese character. Moreover, Sebba (2012, pp. 107–108) discusses “the type of language mixing, or the absence of language mixing, within a unit.” Accordingly, we observe whether there are two or more languages within a unit in a poster. When columns in a poster are always monolingual, a poster is identified as showing separate multilingualism. When some of these units are bi/multilingual and (or) transmodal, a poster is treated as showing flexible multilingualism, which is often reflected in intra-unit translanguaging and language-neutral units, etc.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Visual units.

Language-neutral units “belong equally to both (or all) the languages involved in the text” (Sebba, 2012, p. 108). For example, Sebba (2012) suggests that the word neutral which appears on the package of a household hygiene product is a language-neutral element across French, English and German, with the same spelling and meaning. An artificial way to create something quite similar to language-neutral elements is transliteration. Angermeyer (2012) claims that bilingual writers can employ the conventional links between language and script to mark their bilingual identities in codemixed writing, such as transliteration or script alternation (Angermeyer, 2012, p. 269). Transliteration (e.g. 時線shi xian in Figure 4, which is a transliteration of ‘timeline’ in Chinese characters but nonetheless an odd and most probably coined Chinese word, see below) creates an element which is reminiscent of both the source language and the target language (i.e. the transliterated word is represented in the script of the target language but its meaning and origin are both from the source language).

By extending Gumperz’s (1982) theory of code-switching as a contextualization cue, Sebba (2012) claims that visual effects, such as typography, can also be used as a contextualization cue which signals meaning. For instance, in a multilingual text, words in a larger font might reveal the salience of the used language. Lim (2004, p. 226) suggests that “the grammar of visual images is also abstraction which is instantiated through choices from networks of systems (such as Form, Perspective, Layout and Strokes).” Form includes color, shape, line, and strokes. Salience can be achieved through contrast of color, shape, size, and so forth (Lim, 2004, p. 232). Kress and Van Leeuwen (2002) claim that color is a semiotic modality in its own right. The multimodal elements that we consider in this paper are color, size, form, layout, font, etc., and they are used to determine whether two linguistic items belong to the same unit. The interaction between language and visual images is reflected in homospatiality, which refers to the integration of two different semiotic systems with one superimposed onto the other (Lim, 2004, p. 240). The example provided by Lim (2004) is smoke which loosely has the shape of the word hot.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is “basically the property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts, which may be explicitly demarcated or merged in, and which the text may assimilate, contradict, ironically echo, and so forth” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 84). The crux of the concept is that a text is related to other nearby texts or historically associated texts; the interpretation of one text relies on the knowledge of other related texts. In the present study, posters may include immediate information as well as messages that evoke historical use.

Data collection

The posters of the present research are either images downloaded online or photos taken by the first author when she came across them on streets or in other public places in Macao. The time of the activities these posters advertise spans from 2000 to 2014. The data were quantified and typical examples were analyzed qualitatively. We calculated the number of posters that reflect separate multilingualism (in which different codes or languages are clearly demarcated) and those that reflect flexible multilingualism (in which many kinds of translanguaging are attested). Qualitatively, we analyze whether a certain poster manifests separate or flexible multilingualism.

Separate multilingualism

A lot of the posters reveal clear boundaries between different languages. There are blank spaces or line separators between languages. The information in these posters can be highly repeated and they are often parallel texts. The mixing of languages in the smallest unit, however, is carefully avoided in these posters. Table 1 shows that approximately 73% of the posters reflect separate multilingualism.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Separate vs flexible multilingualism.

	Separate multilingualism	Flexible multilingualism
Number of posters (total: 300)	218	82
Percentage (total: 100%)	73%	27%

The art event in Figure 2 aims at “Introducing Polish Poetry in Macao,” as the slogan shows. All the information is conveyed evenly in TC, Portuguese and English. The event was organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao Government. Figure 2 is an atypical government poster because of the flexible format of language emplacement (left-to-right direction is combined with top-to-bottom direction; the English theme possibilities is rotated) and symbolic, synthesized images. The background color of the whole picture imitates the Polish national flag, which consists of two horizontal stripes of equal width and length, the upper one white and the lower one red. The man on the bicycle has two Portuguese tarts for eyes, representing Macao’s Portuguese inheritance. The bicycle is pulling a rickshaw, representing Macao’s Chinese heritage. The cat is taken from Wislawa Szymborska’s most famous collage and poem, named “Cat in an empty apartment.” The two parrots at the left bottom (circled in black) also come from a collage by Szymborska. The road sign is in a typical Macao style, with the name of the road in Chinese and Portuguese successively. Things that are apparently irrelevant and unrelated, such as the cat, a bowtie and a woman’s legs, are put together to indicate that Szymborska is good at making collages of images and writing poems according to the collages. The message of all the visual images in Figure 2 is: Macao (a place with Portuguese and Chinese cultures) is now exhibiting Szymborska, a famous Polish poet who represents Polish literature and culture.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Separate multilingualism.

The hybridity or mixture of various images index two or even three distinctive cultures. Compared to such hybridity of images, the codes or languages in this poster are very much separate and not unexpected, which paradoxically does not match the images. Possibilities, as the theme of the event, not only echoes but more exclusively points to the curious and somewhat unexpected encounter of Polish poetry and Macao, with Macao itself also being a curious mixture of Chinese (the rickshaw), Portuguese (the tarts) and possibly local (the road sign is symbolic of local Macao) cultures. Again, it is paradoxical that the codes or languages do not mix in this poster, as it is possible to mix them. One likely explanation is that the government has strongly subscribed to separate multilingualism as ideology and the poster was designed accordingly. The Chinese characters are in the biggest font in the right. Portuguese occupies the upper left part while English occupies the lower left position. It is thus reasonable to infer that Macao government regards Chinese as the most important language, followed by Portuguese and then English.

Some of the posters in this study reveal closer distance between languages; still, the message in one language is separated visually from that in another language. They can be very flexible with regard to visual images; however, they are relatively fixed with regard to the languages. There is careful use of units in these multilingual texts. Circles, font, background colors, etc. are used to emphasize or signify the language choices. The visual aspects of the posters enrich the way in which linguistic meaning is created and conveyed. For example, we find in one of our posters that every smallest unit is monolingual because fonts, color and visual circles are used to separate TC and written Cantonese. However, a larger unit that contains a smaller one involves more than one language or variety. Hence, the larger unit is a mixed one.

Figures 1 and 2, representative of many other posters, are multimodal and multilingual, but there is little visible connection between different languages. They reflect separate multilingualism with repeated information and no translanguaging within a column. Even though more posters display separate multilingualism in Macao, this paper devotes more space to analyzing instances of flexible multilingualism in the following sections, because flexible language use was ignored to a large degree in previous studies of linguistic landscape or multilingual written/printed discourse.

Flexible multilingualism: translanguaging

This section describes translanguaging in various forms, such as transmodal translanguaging, transliteration with special visual effects, a similar visual form shared between a character and an alphabet, language-neutral elements, integration of Arabic numbers and English words, intra-unit translanguaging, homospatiality, etc.

Transmodal translanguaging

Visual elements can facilitate translanguaging practice. Figures 3 and 4 manifest transmodal translanguaging. “Duo” in Figure 3 can be regarded as both an English word and the Chinese Pinyin duo “many.” The evidence supporting the word’s Chinese connection is the explanation in the slogan, which is presented as Example (1) below.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Translanguaging with the help of visual images.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Transliteration and homospatiality.

(1) 一个表演者可以用不同的情感、表演方式去演绎同一首歌

Yi ge biaoyanzhe keyi yong butongde qinggan, biaoyan fangshi qu yanyi tong yi shou ge

one MEASURE performer can use different emotion, performing method to perform same one MEASURE song.

“A performer can use different performing methods to sing the same song with different emotions.”

The contrast between the word different and the phrase the same in Example (1) echoes the expression many. Moreover, the background presents three images of Eason Chan with different facial expressions and gestures. It is then reasonable for a Putonghua speaker to interpret Duo as the Romanization of the Chinese word 多 duo “many,” though duo is an English word of Latin and Italian origins. The Putonghua interpretation gives the poster a translanguaging sense, supported by the background visual images.

Language-neutral units

Translanguaging can be accomplished by using language-neutral units which belong to more than one language. The spelling Macau in Figure 9 belongs equally to both Portuguese and English. The place name Macao is “nowadays spelt as ‘Macau’ in Portuguese” (Wu & Jin, 2014, p. 8) though Macau also appears frequently in English contexts. Macau in this figure is conveniently deployed as a language-neutral element between Portuguese and English, especially in view of the fact that the writing systems in both languages are similar (i.e. Roman alphabets). The proper name Macau is used as a connector between languages partly because proper names usually have referents but do not have explicit sense in the semantic triangle – sign, sense and referent.

Similar to proper names, numbers can also be used as language-neutral units. In Figure 5, the Roman number Ⅱ connects the Chinese and English titles. Ⅱ can be viewed as a language-neutral element, which is a very useful and convenient device to link up two blocks in two extremely different languages. Given the drastic differences between the Chinese characters and the English alphabets, it would be more difficult to use a common Chinese or English word as a language-neutral element besides numbers or proper names. The same technique is found in the use of 3 in Figure 6, in which the Arabic number 3 is shared by the Chinese and English slogans. More creative manipulation of Arabic numbers is presented in Figure 10.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Roman letter as a language neutral unit

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 6.

Arabic number as a language-neutral unit

Creativity and criticality

As mentioned previously, creativity and criticality are the two components of diversified manifestations of translanguaging. Creative language practice is not just language play, which is play with languages for an amusing purpose. “We play with language when we manipulate it as a source of enjoyment, either for ourselves or for the benefit of others” (Crystal, 1998, p. 1). The play in our data is not just confined to languages, but appears in other multimodal elements such as images, color, font size, etc., and is influenced by other extra-linguistic factors such as language policy, information type, the theme of the event, the target audience, regulations of public advertising, requirements of organizers and sponsors, etc. Moreover, creative language practice is not primarily done for fun. The poster designers usually spend a lot of time in the designing process and this process may be painful since they have to think about how to design a good and effective poster. The entertainment posters in our data often aim at publicizing an activity and attracting as many people as possible, rather than providing pure enjoyment for poster readers. A designer might be upset to know that a passer-by sees his/her poster and then says “the language use is funny but I am not going to attend the event.”

“Creativity is commonly regarded as a process which can result in the solution or identification of problems, normally as a result of a process of divergent and innovative thinking” (Carter, 2004, p. 48). It is also “a resource for ideological resistance” (Carter, 2011, p. 338). The abnormal practice in a poster (e.g. 3OMETHiNG in Figure 10) does not indicate that the designer is not proficient in the English language. The creative language use challenges the existent and artificial links between languages and norms; it also criticizes widely held presuppositions that an item always belongs to a certain language or mode and languages are discrete systems. As Backhaus (2006) suggests, the official and nonofficial multilingual signs “work in the same direction: towards an increase in linguistic diversity and a challenge to the existing monolingual language regime” (Backhaus, 2006, p. 64). Flexible and separate multilingualism offers a new way to account for linguistic diversity; flexible multilingualism challenges monolingualism or double monolingualism. Creativity in our posters is not just multilingual or multimodal play owing to its critical nature. Translanguagers criticize monolingualism ideology opaquely by using creative expressions. Criticality has not been discussed fully so far in the analysis above because it is a more ideological aspect which underlies the creative language practice. In this paper, however, we focus on practice rather than ideology, since the latter requires more sociolinguistic evidence and our current data seem to illustrate practice better.

Globalization and multilingualism

It is noticed that the flexible multilingual practices in the posters may not be unique to Macao. The translanguaging between English and Chinese in Macao sometimes resembles bilingual practices in Hong Kong. Many performers of entertainment events in Macao are Hong Kong singers or stars (e.g. Eason Chan and Jan Lamb) and the prices in posters could be in Hong Kong dollars as well (e.g. Figure 1). This shows that these posters, with slight modifications, were most probably also circulated in Hong Kong and perhaps other Chinese communities (e.g. Taiwan, Singapore, immigrant Chinese communities in Canada, etc.) where these concerts were held. For instance, the use of duo in Figure 3 can be found in posters for Eason Chan’s concerts all over the world. In fact, translanguaging is mostly found in posters advertising these “global” events (except Figure 1, which advertises a global concert tour but with no translanguaging, and Figure 9 which advertises a local event, i.e. the firework competition, but it is clear that the event is catering for worldwide tourists, thus having a sense of being global too). In this sense, translanguaging is a reflection of globalization. Hence, we posit that flexible multilingualism is representative of globalization in the Macao context. On the other hand, separate multilingualism, as exemplified in Figure 2, tends to represent localization in Macao, echoing much public discourse about Macao as a place where Chinese (represented by the Chinese languages), Portuguese (represented by the Portuguese language) and other foreigners (represented by English) co-inhabit harmoniously.

This interpretation is, however, contradictory to Stroud and Mpendukana (2009). Looking at signs in various districts of the South African township Khayelitsha, they conclude that globalization is often reflected in sites of luxury through the prominence of Standard English while signs in sites of necessity found in the local economy show non-standard language forms that mix peripheral English with local languages. Signs in sites of necessity share some similarity with flexible multilingualism due to the “‘ludic’ or creative space” (Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009, p. 379). However, flexible language practice in these signs and in our posters appears to emerge from two very different contexts. In our posters, linguistic hybridity is creative language use by designers who presumably choose to translanguage, while linguistic hybridity in sites of necessity occurs because the Standard English forms are not often accessible to local people and the non-standard English is “a descaling of the discourse” (Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009, p. 376).

In addition to various historical and social contexts, the different conclusions of the relations between globalization/localization and multilingualism also result from different methodologies and natures of the discourse being examined: Stroud and Mpendukana (2009) describe globalization in the linguistic landscape on the basis of different sites; our research adopts a different perspective by deconstructing globalization from posters across different physical spaces. Crucially, posters are much more movable (compared to road or shop signs) and so travel across different sites and scales. Therefore, Stroud and Mpendukana’s (2009) theory on the basis of the separation of sites is inapplicable to our data. Entertainment posters are design-intense compared with handwritten advertisements. The posters might often exist in sites of luxury or sites of implosion, but they share some resemblance with signs in sites of necessity as well by being relatively task-oriented and economical. The analysis of posters therefore enriches the study of relations between multilingualism and globalization.

The separate/flexible vs parallel/complementary distinction

The distinction between separate and flexible multilingualism is not captured by parallel and complementary multilingual texts. The parallel and complementary distinction mainly concerns the content of information, whereas the flexible and separate distinction concerns the way information is presented. The languages in parallel texts might have greater distance than those in separate multilingual texts because parallel texts can describe the relations of languages between two frames, while separate multilingualism solely describes the presence of languages inside one single frame. Complementary texts “may consist exclusively of monolingual units but could contain any combination of monolingual, mixed and neutral units” (Sebba, 2012, p. 109), whereas flexible multilingualism could only refer to the latter situation when there is mixing of languages within a unit.

Likewise, Reh (2004) classifies four types of written multilingualism: duplicating, fragmentary, overlapping, and complementary multilingual writing. These terms describe whether information is repeated in two or more languages and to what degree repetition exists. Duplicating means the information is totally equivalent; fragmentary means that part of the information is translated into a secondary or additional language; overlapping means that some information is repeated while the other information is exclusively in one language; complementary texts include no repeated information at all. By comparing these items with separate/flexible distinction, it could be the case that duplicating multilingual writing comprises the majority of separate multilingualism; fragmentary, overlapping and complementary multilingual writing can manifest either separate or flexible multilingualism depending on whether two languages are in close proximity. Theoretically speaking, all the four types of multilingual writing can be instances of separate multilingualism. In our framework, a column is the basic unit of analysis. In general, flexible multilingualism mainly manifests itself in intra-unit/column translanguaging (Examples 2 and 3), language-neutral units (Figures 5, 6 and 9), cross-linguistic combinations (Figures 7 and 8) or transmodal translanguaging (Figures 3, 4, and 12). Flexible multilingualism concerns one piece of information in one textual form (e.g. one sentence) whereas the four terms by Reh (2004) concern the relations between two versions of the same piece of information, each in one language.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Two languages sharing a similar visual form.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 8.

Combining Chinese and English names.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 9.

Language-neutral units – Macau.

Separate and flexible multilingualism may have some general implications in the study of multilingual phenomena. A monolingual society shares some similarity with separate multilingualism. A society dominated by separate multilingualism is more localized, while a society dominated by flexible multilingualism is more globalized. For instance, most posters that reveal flexible multilingualism in our collection of data (e.g. Figures 4, 7, 10, 11 and 12) happen to use the expression 澳門站 or澳门站aomen zhan ‘Macao Station’ to indicate locality, which implies that the corresponding events might be worldwide transnational events and Macao is merely one venue among many.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 10.

Translanguaging with the help of an Arabic number.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 11.

Intra-unit translanguaging and ambiguous languages.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 12.

Syntactic punning and homospatiality.