Tiny though it is, The Hague's Chinatown is clearly presented as such, with Chinese lanterns, municipal street signage in Chinese characters, and sayings in Classical Chinese lining the streets. Doing fieldwork in the area, however, has shown that it proves to be less Chinese than its visual representation suggests. Few Chinese still inhabit the…

This paper explores linguistic landscapes and the enactment of public visibility and presence of non-majority linguistic groups in EU member states. Non-majority linguistic groups gain power, visibility and presence through the introduction of bilingual or multilingual signposts on roads, streets, squares, and public buildings in towns and cities…

In this study the print awareness of 25 unschooled adult illiterates in the Netherlands was compared with that of 24 pre-reading children and of 23 low-educated literate adults with approximately four years of primary schooling. The illiterates were interviewed about their experiences with writing and all participants completed six assessments of…

This paper focuses on the linguistic landscape of two streets in two multilingual cities in Friesland (Netherlands) and the Basque Country (Spain) where a minority language is spoken, Basque or Frisian. The paper analyses the use of the minority language (Basque or Frisian), the state language (Spanish or Dutch) and English as an international…