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Linguistic Landscape: Online-First Articles

Modeling Linguistic Landscapes

A comparison of St Martin’s two capitals Philipsburg and Marigot

ORCID logo | TU Dortmund University
| TU Dortmund University
| TU Dortmund University
Much work in Linguistic Landscapes approaches multilingual landscapes in qualitative terms; inferential statistical approaches are still underrepresented. The present paper adds to filling this methodological gap by investigating the Linguistic Landscapes of St Martin, a highly multilingual, eastern Caribbean island, divided into a formerly Dutch-colonized and French-colonized part. It does so by employing an inferential statistical method to study the nature of linguistic diversity on signs. Based on 372 and 373 signs respectively for each of the commercial districts of Philipsburg and Marigot, we quantitatively analyze the occurrences of languages on the different signs and statistically model the data by means of Multi-Label Classification (MLC; e.g. Rivolli & de Carvalho, 2018). The results show that both shopping districts are characterized by multilingual patterns of Linguistic Landscapes but with differences in their exact linguistic setups, most importantly the interplay and relationships between different languages, motivated by differences in their sociolinguistic setup.
Keywords: St Martin, multilingualism, Linguistic Landscapes, Multi-Label Classification, quantitative approach
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The framework of the Linguistic Landscape
    • 2.1Language distribution on signs
    • 2.2Quantitative approaches to LL
    • 2.3Research on Linguistic Landscapes in multilingual island communities
    • 2.4The case of St Martin
  • 3.Investigating Linguistic Landscapes of St Martin: Data and method
    • 3.1Location
    • 3.2Method of data collection, coding, and analysis
    • 3.3Statistical analysis
    • 3.4Classification models
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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