Linguistic landscape and space: A multimodal analysis of linguistic landscape in robot open space

Abstract

The paper examines the linguistic landscape in an indoor public place, Robot Open Space in Zhongguancun Dream Laboratory, which is a building housing a handful of innovative entrepreneurial enterprises. The subject of analysis in this present paper is the impact of different spaces on the features of linguistic landscape. Each of the three major sub-spaces in the company Robot Open Space has different functions and the linguistic landscape with its different features varies accordingly. This present study has the following contributions. First, the shift of analytical attention from the outdoor linguistic landscape to the indoor linguistic landscape provides a new angle for LL analysis and further expands the scenery of linguistic landscape. Then, the newly establish analytical framework, the “multimodal model for linguistic landscape analysis” enrich the current theoretical models that is quite rare. Last, the qualitative analysis of the linguistic landscapes in different spaces shed light on the correlation between space and linguistic landscape, indicating that space is an integral factor to be considered when it comes to LL analysis.