ABSTRACT

The field of linguistic landscape has rarely engaged with the growing number of metrolingual practices brought about by online digital spaces. This paper examines the online linguistic landscape of social media platforms, which presents a spatial repertoire of innovative semiotic affordances. Adopting an online ethnographic approach consisting of screenshots of WeChat Moment posts and semi-structured interviews and drawing on the researcher’s ethnographic knowledge of the participants, the study examines how participants in this online space draw upon a complex array of semiotic resources from spatial repertoires to constantly negotiate their self-presentation and manage the effects of context collapse. The analysis shows that metrolingual practices have contributed to self-policing of content, manipulation of accessibility, and compensation for literacy in the online linguistic landscape. By tuning the analytical focus from offline to online spaces, the study expands the scope of linguistic landscape research and invites further examination of the relationship between language and space.

摘要

语言景观领域很少涉及在线数字空间带来的日益增多的都市语言实践。本文研究了社交媒体平台的在线语言景观，它呈现了创新符号可供性的空间库。该研究采用了由微信朋友圈帖子截图和半结构化访谈组成的在线民族志方法，并利用研究人员对参与者的民族志知识，研究了这个在线空间中的参与者如何利用从空间曲目到不断变化的一系列复杂的符号资源。协商他们的自我呈现并管理上下文崩溃的影响。分析表明，都市语言实践有助于内容的自我监管、可访问性的操纵、以及在线语言环境中读写能力的补偿。通过将分析重点从线下空间转向线上空间，该研究扩大了语言景观研究的范围，并邀请人们进一步审视语言与空间之间的关系。