Virtual Linguistic Landscape: A Case Study of Chinese Border Universities’ Websites in Yunnan

Abstract

Linguistic landscape (LL) refers to the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region. However, with the development of digital communications, the scope of LL has ranged from physical geography of the cityscape to virtual space. Yunnan as a bridgehead connecting China with South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, has an important strategic position. In order to explore the multilingualism in virtual space in China’s Frontier, Yunnan, the author chooses several border universities’ websites in Yunnan, comparing with universities’ websites in Eastern China. This study examines the virtual linguistic landscape of border universities’ websites. Findings reveal how do Chinese border universities construct their websites to present the “border university image”. The study reveals that border universities construct their websites by adopting South Asian and Southeast Asian languages to empower and present themselves. Multilingualism in websites also demonstrates the decolonizing practice of border universities. The study can shed some light on providing implications for language planning and research on virtual linguistic landscape in Chinese education.