Inclusion of the minority language on public signs: multilingualism in the deep South of Thailand

Abstract

This study of linguistic landscape (LL) aims to describe the urban multilingual practices through signs seen in the southernmost Thai communities with a specific focus on the inclusion of Patani-Malay, a minority language, yet a mother tongue of the majority of people in the areas on public signs. This study also examines people’s perceptions of languages on signs including Patani-Malay. 1,746 photos of text signs were collected from 18 streets in total: 3 main streets and 3 minor streets of each Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat central city. Data on the people’s perceptions were gained from 240 paper-based questionnaires completed by 4 different groups of participants: 1) Locals (Thai people living in the Deep South areas), 2) Non-locals (Thai people living in the areas other than the Deep South), 3) Malaysian visitors (people from Malaysia) and 4) International visitors (people from the rest of the world). In addition, 12 participants who completed the questionnaires were asked to join semi-structured interview sessions. For sign analysis, coding schemes and multimodality were used as frameworks. Also, the Trend Magnet Model proposed by Lee (2015), geosemiotics concept, and some sociolinguistic aspects were used for data interpretation. The findings showed that a number of languages (Thai, English, Chinese, Bahasa Malay, Arabic, French, Japanese and Patani-Malay) can be detected on the signs. More specifically, Patani-Malay is inclusively and mainly present on many multilingual public signs. According to this study’s discussion, concepts of globalization, regionalization, nationalism and localization should underlie the use of mentioned languages on signs. Importantly, the highest visibility of Patani-Malay on most public signs was a result of the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre’s linguistic policies which promote and encourage the use of Patani-Malay on public signs. The results also revealed that the locals’ opinions on public signs including Patani-Malay were more emotionally and politically positive whereas the opinions from the other three groups were oriented to the communicative function of such inclusion. This study's implications are numerous, for example, signs as a pathway to peace in the Deep South and signs as an effective welcoming platform for foreign tourists in Thailand. Moreover, this study on multilingualism could serve as the foundation for LL studies in Thailand, especially in the southernmost contexts. Significantly, multilingual concepts should also be made to extend the use of Patani-Malay in a wider range of domains for language use.

Keywords: multilingualism, linguistic landscape (LL), public signs, minority language, linguistic policy and intelligibility on signs