Shop Signs Research In Guangzhou In The Perspective Of Linguistic Landscape

In the 1980 s, as an emerging discipline in the field of linguistics, linguistic landscape had been known globally, and it had been studied from different scientific perspectives by many international scholars. Lately, the exploration of linguistic landscape has attracted growing attention in China,but it is still in its initial stage and China academics have hardly seen completely emperical study. In consideration of the situation, based on foundamental linguistic landscape theory and Model SPEAKING raised by Huebner, the research area was choosen in Beijing Road commercial area, which is one of the most blooming district in Guangzhou.The paper was aimed to study the situation of 500 shop signs in the area, micro-camera was used for data collection of quantitative analysis. Many kinds of perspectives were applied to the specific study, for instance, the appearance and geographical position of shop signs, code arrangement and size, code choosing, code font, code naming form, the relation between consumer psychology and commercial shop signs design.The study demonstrated that, firstly, to make great achievements, besides a basic shop sign business men always use many assistant shop signs to advertise what they sell. Secondly, Chinese still plays a leading role among these codes, meanwhile, the linguistic status of Chinese may be possibly replaced by English. Thirdly, the most frequently-used Chinese font on shop signs is wordart. Fourthly, three or four-syllale names of shops are most normal, and shops are always named with a single generic name. Otherwise, shop names are mostly made up of noun form. Metaphor and euphony are commonly used as rhetoric form. Fifthly, consumer psychology is closely related to the design of shop signs. In the end, shop signs consist of informative function and symbolic function.