Many pragmaticists claimed that pragmatics developed mainly from 1970s and 1980s, taking the emergence of its series of pragmatic theories (e.g., Cooperative Principle, Conversation Implicature, Relevance Theory, etc.), methodology, and the official issue of "Journal of Pragmatics" (1977) in Amsterdam as its marks. However, few scholars…

Recent linguistic landscape (LL) research has witnessed a change in focus to untypical, peripheral and fluid signs. Compared to typical (or permanent, fixed, etc.) signs which tend to be subject to strong policy intervention, language use on untypical signs is often more autonomous, thus could better reflect the "de facto" language…

Not only does language practice in shop signs generate a sense of place with particular meanings to visitors, it also indicates the kind of economic activity performed in that place. By investigating and comparing the shop name signs in the two largest foreign migrant neighbourhoods in Guangzhou, specifically, Baohan Straight Street (African…

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of signs on word learning by children with developmental language disorder (DLD), in comparison with typically developing (TD) children, and the relation between a possible sign effect and children's linguistic and cognitive abilities. Method: Nine- to 11-year-old children with DLD (n = 40) and TD…

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…

Looking at the frequently used English words on billboard ads in Jakarta main streets, one may have a presumptive thought that English will dominate Indonesian language. The assumption, though, has led to the analysis of the role of both languages on billboard ads and the possibility of English control over Indonesian. The study presented…

For this study, we designed learning activities in which students applied newly acquired knowledge to solve meaningful daily life problems in their local community--a real, familiar, and relevant environment for students. For example, students learned about signs and rules in class and then applied this new knowledge to create their own rules for…

The aim of this research was to test whether there is an inherent difficulty in understanding prohibition signs rather than obligation signs. In the experiment conducted, participants decided whether simple car movements presented on a computer screen were allowed or not according to either obligation or prohibition traffic signs. The information…

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…

Compared comprehension of novel communicative signs to assist 2.5- and 3-year-old humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans find hidden objects during a hiding-finding game. Found that children at both ages performed above chance with all signs. No ape performed above chance for any signs not known before the experiment despite three times as many…

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…

There is a great reliance on symbolic messages in our society, but the success of these messages depends on how they are interpreted. The variability of subjects' interpretations of commonly used visual symbols was investigated by comparing the interpretations of a U.S. audience and a Jamaican audience. Responses of 27 executive master's in…

The drivers in a battalion about to be deployed to Germany were taught the meanings of international road signs using one of the following techniques: Sign Only, in which the road signs were presented via a slide projector and the names of the slides provided orally by the instructor; Sign Elaboration, which was identical to the Sign Only…