(In)visibility of Multilingualism in Amdo Tibet

ended

This project will study how multilingualism and linguistic diversity are materialised in the linguistic landscape of Amdo Tibet. This region is situated in the northeast part of the Tibetan plateau and encompasses the present-day Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Gansu. The area is known for its ethnolinguistic diversity. Amdo Tibet is inhabited by several groups, such as Han Chinese (the major ethnic group in China), Tibetans, Chinese Hui (Chinese-speaking Muslims), the Muslim Turkic-speaking Salar, and Mongolic-speaking Buddhist populations. Language policies, intense urbanisation, migration, and socio-economic opportunities and imperatives have an impact on language practices and language use among ethnic groups. This project looks at these changes from the angle of language use in the linguistic landscape. This research studies ethnolinguistic diversity in space, focusing on public signs. The object of this study is the town of Rongwo, the county seat of the Rebgong (Chinese: Tongren) Tibetan autonomous county in Qinghai province (People's Republic of China), where Tibetan and Chinese are co-official languages. The town constitutes the main administrative and commercial centre of the area and features schools, administrative offices, hospitals, and different kinds of businesses such as restaurants and clothing shops). This project draws on linguistic and visual data available in public signs, ethnographically-informed data, and data on regulations of languages in space. The analysis will be based on a holistic approach that considers the informative and symbolic role of the languages involved, the language policies and ideologies at play, and language norms and language contact. The broader goal of this project is to understand the creation and management of ethnolinguistic diversity and linguistic hierarchies in urban space through languages, scripts, and other visual and semiotic means.