Beyond Words: Navigating Lisbon's Linguistic Landscape in the Era of Mass Tourism and Migration

What the paper says

This article embarks on a detailed exploration of Lisbon's evolving linguistic landscape, focusing on a specific neighborhood shaped by mass tourism and migration. Lisbon, traditionally considered a monolingual society, has experienced significant linguistic diversification due to globalization, making it an ideal context for studying how languages coexist and interact in urban spaces. Drawing from linguistic landscape research and sociolinguistic theories, this study examines how Asian immigrant communities, alongside international tourists, contribute to the city's dynamic linguistic environment. Our data collection, conducted through a combination of conversational interviews and photographic analysis, resulted in a corpus of 143 signs from a neighborhood densely populated by Asian immigrants. We show that the neighborhood's linguistic landscape is not just shaped by practical communication needs but also reflects deeper socio-cultural dynamics, such as identity preservation and economic adaptation to tourism. This research contributes to the growing field of linguistic landscapes by analyzing how immigrant languages, local languages, and global languages coexist and influence each other in Lisbon. It highlights the challenges and opportunities posed by globalization in urban environments and suggests pathways for fostering greater linguistic inclusivity and intercultural dialogue in multicultural cities like Lisbon.