The Linguistic Landscapes of Chişinău and Vilnius: Linguistic Landscape and the Representation of Minority Languages in Two Post-Soviet Capitals

Abstract

[from the editors’ introduction] Sebastian Muth's chapter examines how two post-Soviet societies deal with multilingualism: the capitals of Moldova and Lithuania, Chisinau and Vilnius, are chosen for comparison. The chapter focuses on the representation of Russian and Polish in relation to Lithuanian and of Russian and Gagauz in relation to Moldovan. The study is based on a corpus of signs from four districts of each city, chosen on the basis of their location and demographic data. Muth's results indicate noteworthy differences between Vilnius where Russian and other minority languages such as Polish are almost not represented, and Chisinau where the linguistic landscape resembles the ethnolinguistic diversity of the city’s inhabitants and includes Russian.