Abstract
Linguistic landscape refers to the written language that we encounter in public spaces. It has been noted that the study of linguistic landscape provides a new approach to multilingualism, and in recent years, the multilingual landscape has become a central focus in the field of linguistic landscape research. This paper explores the linguistic landscape of signs at JR Utsunomiya Station and Orion Street. The field survey conducted in these two locations revealed that the “JECK notation” in and around JR Utsunomiya Station is still behind, and minority languages are inadequately represented. Orion Street is already well known as a filming location for movies, but the government’s multilingual support for top-down signs is weak, and bottom-up signs show different results from previous research. From the case of Utsunomiya City, we were able to capture the relationship of language forces behind the linguistic landscape and it has been suggested that there is a possibility of building a symbiotic society to promote linguistic coexistence in local cities.
