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LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF ALMATY AS A MEANS OF FACILITATION

Author: Aigerim Akasheva, Oksana Kartashova

Affiliation: Kazakh British Technical University, email: a.akasheva@kbtu.kz

Introduction

This research paper in its turn is about the relationship of linguistic landscape of Almaty and
status establishment and strength facilitation of Kazakh as an official language of the country and
Russian and English as the languages of interethnic and international communication. This is the
reason for distinguishing between governmental and non-governmental signs apart from
distinguishing between monolingual, bilingual and trilingual signs in this research. Furthermore, the
signs were also analysed from the perspective of the order of appearance of languages on bilingual
and monolingual signs, translation of the content and part of the city the signs are situated. The paper
argues that the percentage of mono-, bi- and trilingual signs, its changeability in different parts of
the city and the level of the textual items represent the tool of communication inside the social group
and with the in-comers and the tool for solidarity or authority establishment from the part of
inhabitants and the state.

Literature Review

Linguistic landscape (LL) is a new field of sociolinguistics and draws academic disciplines, such as
linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology and many others. According to Landry and
Bourhis (1997:23), LL is the "visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs
in a given territory or region". LL includes advertising billboards, shop signs, governmental
buildings and their public signs, graffiti, administrative signs, road signs and street names. The
languages of public signs show their relevance or give evidence of what languages are becoming
locally relevant (Kasanga 2012).

Methodology

For this research 630 photos of signs of nine metro stations were taken. The signs are
government, including warning, description and information signs and non-government, such as

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paper advertisements, billboard advertisements, names of the shops, coffee shops, graffiti, stickers
that is everything that is represented in the form of a text, regardless of its origin, design and purpose,
in other words, everything that constitutes the linguistic landscape of this particular station and the
area nearby.

Results

Review of Almaty Underground stations and nearby areas

After analysing the data, it was found out that in the city of Almaty Kazakh, Russian and
English languages are predominantly used in different types of signs. Kazakh language was found
in the utmost majority of high-level government signs, names of the streets, monument signs and
road signs. Therefore, high-level government signs facilitate the status of Kazakh as the official
language of the country, national identity and integration of the state. Its status is proved not only
by the number of signs in Kazakh, but also by the design of the signs, giving the official language
preceding position and bigger font.

Russian was used in the third of government signs, but very often of a low level, as short
reminders and warning signs, it is also commonly used for interpersonal and domestic
communication, e.g., during the research there were found only one private advertisement in Kazakh
and one which doubled Russian text in Kazakh.

English is frequently used in the road signs to the sights of international importance, such as
airport, international springboard complex, skating arena. It is also widely used in commercial sphere
and the sphere of entertainment in order to present foreign films, banks, chain stores or to be
perceived as a foreign product. Smalley (1994) stated ‘English in the public is directed to foreigners’
and in Almaty it is used to welcome foreign tourists and bring a homelike comfortable setting for
tourists and a foreign setting for the locals. Therefore, signs with foreign languages – English, Italian,
French – facilitate international communication.

The phenomenon of abundance of foreign sign takes place only in the central parts of the
city, at the outermost station areas Russian and Kazakh languages prevail. These districts are not

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attractive for tourists as they tend to be residential areas. Consequently, there is a clear connection
between the language choice and differentiation of the city districts.

Conclusion

This research has presented the spheres of facilitation of Kazakh, Russian and English
languages. They are government, interpersonal and international respectively. Linguistic landscape
of Almaty totally supports the status quo of Kazakh as an official language by government and high-
level signs. The status of Russian as the language of every-day use is justified by pragmatics, as
there is a distinction between the language people know and the language they use to address each
other directly. The status of English is justified by globalization and is facilitated by the desire of
foreign interaction from the part of the locals or, if to talk about trade and commerce, the wish to be
regarded of a higher quality.

There is a great field for further research in the light of future adoption of Latin alphabet.
Linguistic landscape of the city is constantly changing; the borders of the areas tend to alter and
there will be constructed new metro stations spanning new districts and, consequently new areas for
research.

References

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