A Semiotic Study On Linguistic Landscape Of Gansu Tourist City

In the past decades, “linguistic landscape”(henceforth LL) has been the hot issue in the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, and is attracting an increasing concern of the semiologists and the psychologists. The researchers abroad and at home, especially the former of the both, have spent much time and energy making studies on this newly appeared issue while there are a small number of studies on this issue at home, and most of those studies took some prosperous cites as the research setting. This study chose Dunhuang, a tourism city with international features in Gansu Province, as the research setting, attempting to make an analysis on the constructional characteristics of LL of this city.The study chose Dunhuang, Gansu as the research setting and collected the samples by means of taking digital pictures in several famous tourist attractions in this city, including Mingsha Mountain, Yueyaquan Spring, Ancient City of Dunhuang, West Thousand-Buddha Cave, Yangguan Pass, Yumeng Pass, Great Wall of Han Dynasty and Yadan Landforms as well as the prosperous Dunhuang-style city and Shazhou night market in the downtown area. Based on the theory of place semiotics, the study analyzed the form characteristics of LL of this city by the quantitative approach to show the kinds of language use and the distributions. Then based on the relevant theory of socio semiotics, the content characteristics of LL of this city were analyzed by the qualitative approach, displaying the application features of different language codes. As a result of combining these two approaches and taking form and content as the perspectives, the LL of this city can be wholly and comprehensively presented.After our analyses, the findings are summarized as follows:From the perspective of form, the characteristics of LL of this city are: first of all, there are totally seven kinds of language codes appearing in the LL of Dunhuang, which are Chinese character, Pinyin, English, Japanese, Korean, French and Arabic, respectively. With regards to percentage of them, the first four account more than the others. Generally speaking, there appears a phenomenon of multilingual use in the LL of Dunhuang. Secondly, in terms of the code preference, including the appearance of order, language size, the amount of information on the bilingual and multilingual signs, Chinese characters and English are more visually prominent than other language codes, between which, the former is more salient. Within foreign languages, English is more frequently used than Japanese and Korean. Thirdly, in terms of inscription, the material quality of the signs is wood and stone in most cases in tourist attractions. The information on them is shown by a little bit single but very catchy colors, the font of language codes are generally consistent. Finally, in terms of emplacement, there appear more direction signs in the scenic spots, the place of which is extremely clear and definite as for the visitors, not causing the misunderstandings of them.From the perspective of content, the characteristics of LL of this city are: in the first place, in terms of the language features, Chinese and English hold two distinct features, the first one of which is that Chinese texts are keen on short sentences with complex contents in language expression while English texts prefer to long sentences with simple contents in language expression. The second one is that Chinese texts are keen on graceful and parallel expression while English texts are quite gentle, moderate and free expression. However, they both still have some common points. They both are involved in a large amount of information, not causing tourists to have a feeling of confusion; they tend not to use subjective evaluation or exaggeration, instead, the expression is objective, giving tourists practical information on the tourist attractions to gain their trust. In the second place, in terms of linguistic features, they hold some common grounds at four levels. Firstly, at the lexical level, they both show four characteristics, which are the frequent use of adjective words, the rare employment of appellation deixis, the large appearance of pronouns relating to the tourist attractions and an intelligent use of reference and proper substitution. Secondly, at the syntactic level, they have the feature of the rare employment of quotation. Thirdly, at the rhetorical device level, they have the feature of the frequent appearance of simile. Finally, at the textual level, they have two common features, first of which is that the texts began with the historical stories about the scenic spots, the other of which is that the texts have some other potential functions including publicizing and educating functions apart from the basically informational function.Generally speaking, the LL of Dunhaung holds the characteristics of linguistic diversity, using different languages to serve the visitors from different countries and districts, but in the pattern of sign designing, the information is presented in catchy but relevantly single and simple colors. Meanwhile, in the text of scenic spots introduction, it only gives the basic information relevant to the tourists attractions, presenting the drawback of lack of necessary communication with the tourists, neglecting the status of them, as a result, not making the distance between the city and them closer. Therefore, in order to construct LL of this city perfectly, the following patterns need to be improved: when designing different kinds of signs, more colors can be used to present different visual effect; more appellation deixis can be added to highlight the status of tourists in the text, presenting the interactive communication with the tourists; more quotations can be employed to show the intertextuality more comprehensively, getting closer to tourists in the pattern of time and space. Through the construction of these trade resources, LL of Dunhuang can be shown more comprehensively, achieving the aim of attracting the tourists and serving them better.