Multilingualism in cyberspace: conceptualising the virtual linguistic landscape

Abstract The linguistic landscape (LL) is a sociolinguistic concept that captures power relations and identity marking in the linguistic rendering of urban space: the city read as text. As such, LL is embedded in the physical geography of the cityscape. However, with the increasing scope of multilingual capabilities in digital communications, multilingual options and choices are becoming more prevalent in virtual space. These virtual linguistic voices are important forces in global language ecology. In this paper, the concepts of virtual linguistic landscape and linguistic cyberecology are delineated and exemplified in a variety of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications and environments. It is argued that the LL of virtual space, though grounded in the concept of multilingual interactions within a physically defined world, has distinct characteristics to the digital world that continue to evolve conterminous with the complex relationship of the real to the digital. Keywords: linguistic landscapemultilingualismlanguage contact Notes 1. Although, nowadays the terms Internet and Web are often used interchangeably, they are not synonymous in the strictest sense of the words. Alongside e-mail, Usernet news groups and FTP, the Web is just another way, albeit most prevalent, of accessing information over the Internet. In this article we use the term Internet in phrases such as Internet usage/user or Internet worlds, to denote virtual activities not restricted to the WWW, such as SL. Otherwise, the term World Wide Web, or its shorter forms the Web, or WWW is used as the primary information-seeking and manipulation platform which hosts a number of social networking applications discussed, commonly referred to as Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. 2. See as example: http://latinum.mypodcast.com/2007/06/AAdler_XXVIII_Pensum_Duodetricesimum_Part_B_Section_iii-57255.html 3. The WWW Consortium (W3C), founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994, continues to develop Web standards carrying out a mission 'to interact with text and images from an ever-growing pool of information "to ensure long-term growth of the Web'"; URL: http://www.w3org/Consortium 4. A similar advertisement can also be found at airports; http://www.vueling.com 5. http://www.milliondollarshomepage.at 6. http://www.pixels.od.ua 7. http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com 8. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/multicultural/pdf/billboard.pdf 9. http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php 10. Which or who? The literature is mixed on whether 'avatar' takes an animate or inanimate relative pronoun relative. 11. According to Newsweek's statistics from 27 November 2006, out of 1,230.054 players, 62.6% are from the English-speaking countries. Although, players from other countries may in the future increase their share in the SL's pie chart, it is reasonable to claim that majority, or at least 60% of communication in SL, will be conducted in English as a first or second language for another few years. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011414.htm 12. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias 13. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias_by_speakers_per_article 14. The number per article represents the value of articles in relation to the number of language speakers. The following formula is used: Number of language speakers/number of Wiki articles. 15. Retrieved on August 4, 2008 16. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm 17. http://www.bundesregierung.de/Webs/Breg/DE/Homepage/home.html [Retrieved on January 28, 2007]. 18. http://www.government.ru/government [Retrieved on January 11, 2007]. 19. The percentage of the positive/negative growth is calculated using the following formula: [(later date value–earlier date value)/earlier date value]*100 E.g. for English: [(427–377)/377]*100=13.26.