Basel: Monolingual and Heteroglossic

Situated in the officially monolingual German part of Switzerland, the city of Basel is, in reality, very heteroglossic. Almost 30 per cent of its inhabitants are not Swiss citizens, & most of these are not native German speakers. In some of the city's primary schools, more than 60 per cent of the students are non-native German speakers. Does the linguistic landscape (as defined by Landry/Bourhis 1997) reflect these demographic facts? Our analysis is based on comprehensive photo documentation of a representative sample of shopping streets in demographically different parts of the city. We tried to understand the process of linguistic landscaping (that is, landscaping focusing on by whom, for whom & with what?). As one would expect, German is almost exclusively used in official signs (on public roads & government buildings) & also dominates in commercial & private signs, even without regulation by linguistic laws. Sometimes, German is replaced by Swiss German dialect to further shape a local identity. English is very visible in the linguistic landscape, particularly in the city centre. However, except for in brief commercial signs, it is mixed with German. These bilingual signs do not address native English speakers; indeed, any detailed information is written in German. It seems that English words or names are used to give shops & companies products international panache. The other official languages of Switzerland, even French, as the language of neighboring France, appear much less often. On the contrary, languages of immigration, in particular Turkish, are very visible, especially where immigrants live. There, one finds monolingual signs in different languages, mostly with cultural or private content, but again bilingual signs (Turkish-German, Portuguese-German, etc.) dominate. These document the fact that multilingual authors utilize their repertoire to earn maximum economic & symbolic benefit. We conclude that German is the lingua franca among speakers of other languages, & that substantial presence of German in signs produced by immigrants is proof of, but also an instrument for, their integration. On the other hand, the presence of various languages in the semiosphere raises the awareness of the world's linguistic diversity to the local majority & can even produce an incipient plurilingualism. Figures, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document