Research On Linguistic Landscape From The Perspective Of Three-Dimensional Spaces Theory

The study of linguistic landscape,which originated from Landry and Bourhis(1997),has quietly become a new window of sociolinguistics research in the last decade along with the further exploration of research content,topics,methods.At present,most of the linguistic landscape studies in China focus on coastal cities and inland provincial capitals and other relatively economically developed areas,but no systematic studies have yet explored the ethnically unique cities in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeastern China.In order to complement related research in the field,this paper focuses on two areas of Yanji city,and the data is collected by field photography and the diachronic study is conducted with the help of Street Map and each time point is separated by four years.Based on the three-dimensional spaces theory,the paper explores the linguistic characteristics of the signs in three years,discovers the differences between the two areas through the synchronic study,reviews the course of their development and characteristics through the diachronic study,and finally investigates the residents’ perceptions and attitudes towards the local linguistic landscape and the extent to which policies have contributed to the construction of the linguistic landscape in Yanji City.It was found that according to the findings of the physical dimension,the average percentage of Chinese occurrences was 95.9% in 2014,2018,and 2022,while the percentage of Korean occurrences was about 87.4%,proving the linguistic selection characteristics of Chinese and Korean as the absolutely dominant language codes.The bilingual signs of Chinese and Korean occupy the highest proportion of the types of language patterns,which confirms the serious implementation of national and local related policies,but the proportion is decreasing as the number of multilingual signs containing English increases.From the findings of the resident experience dimension,most respondents have a positive attitude toward the current language landscape of Yanji City,while a small number of them think that the traces of machine translation on the signs are too obvious and mostly phonetic,and the quality needs to be improved.Almost all respondents have a positive attitude toward bilingual signs in Chinese and Korean,which makes sense from both political and economic perspectives.In addition,the majority of respondents were opposed to or neutral about monolingual signage,believing that it would cause problems for certain groups who do not understand the language.Young people generally have a more tolerant and open attitude toward foreign languages on signs.From the political dimension,the two-tier structure of China’s language policy has had a profound impact on the language landscape in Yanji City,in that the national language policy is responsible for planning and guiding the overall direction of the language landscape,while the local community makes further additions and adjustments according to the actual situation.In general,language signs in Yanji City mostly comply with the regulations,while some still require improvements in terms of placement order and translation quality.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the linguistic characteristics of Yanji City signs in three periods,residents’ current perceptions and attitudes,and how policies affect the construction of linguistic landscapes in three dimensions and to conduct an in-depth analysis from both synchronic and diachronic perspective,which fills the domestic research deficiency and offers a new approach to visualize data and conduct diachronic study.