An Investigation On The Linguistic Landscape Of Tourist Areas In Phuket Island Thailand

Linguistic landscape refers to the landscape with linguistic markers in public places,which can be called linguistic signboards.The study mainly focuses on the use of language in public places.Phuket Island,located in southern Thailand,is the main seaside tourist attraction in Thailand.It has many domestic and foreign tourists every year.Although the local people usually use Mandarin and Thai,international languages is also widely used in tourist attraction.Its language landscape is not only diverse,but also has certain research value.Based on the method of linguistic landscape research,this study investigates the usage of the linguistic landscape in three scenic spots: Kata Beach,Patong Bangla Road and Phuket Ancient Town in Phuket Island.The survey results show that the linguistic landscape of Phuket Island is diverse from different scenic spots.English is the dominant language in Kata Beach and Patong Bangla Road,whereas for Phuket Ancient town is Thai Language.From the point of view of different founders,the language use of both official and unofficial signs are diversified,but there are also differences.As the official language of Thailand,Thai has a strong position in the official signs,reflecting the authority of the government.The non-official signs mainly use English as the dominant language,while some of them also use Chinese and Russian language.The widespread use of international languages is an economic means for entrepreneurs to attract tourists,which reflects their focused customers.Linguistic landscape of Phuket Island tourism scenic area has information function and symbolic function as a whole.Information function mainly displays the function of indication,behavior regulation,interaction and cognitive function.It can plays the information function of economic purpose in commercial signs.Symbolic function reflects Thai as the dominant,followed by English,Chinese and Russian.The three scenic spots can also reflect the atmosphere of different places and the degree of internationalization.In addition,the linguistic landscape of Phuket ancient town highlights the symbols of the traditional culture and historical sense of the scenic spot.The formation of language landscape in Phuket Island tourist attractions is related to three factors: Chinese settlement life,economic interests and tourism development.In addition,there are inequality in the use of signs,confusion in the use of foreign languages,grammatical errors in translation and ambiguity in the language expression of the translated text.Finally,this study puts forward some suggestions to improve the existing problems of language landscape.The relevant government departments need to build the standard regulations of language landscape,strengthen the training of language knowledge,strengthen the supervision of language landscape,and the translators need to assist language translation from the perspective of cultural differences.