The policies on public signage in minority languages and their reception in four traditionally bilingual European locations

Abstract

In contemporary Europe, support for autochthonous minority languages is expressed by displaying messages in these languages alongside messages in the majority language(s) on public signs, such as road signs, street signs, signs on the buildings of public institutions etc. Such form of support is part of explicit language policies at the national level in a number of countries of Europe as well as at the Council of Europe level. This study deals with the implementation of these policies and their reception by the local populations in Wales, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Croatia. The responses to the presence of minority languages on signs vary and have a number of motivations. The qualitative analysis presented in this study has identified several features as significant for the implementation of bilingual signage and its reception across the research locations: (1) decentralization of public administration, (2) ethnicization of language policies, (3) territoriality of signage, (4) collective historical memory, (5) bilingual sign design and (6) the indexical vs. symbolic functions of bilingual signage.

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