Mapping the linguistic landscape of a commercial neighbourhood in Central Phnom Penh

This article examines the distributional pattern of signs in the linguistic landscape of a neighbourhood in the commercial district of Phonm Penh, Cambodia. Informed by the frameworks of ethnolinguistic vitality and ethnocultural stereotypes, it discusses the developing multilingualism from socio-economic and historical perspectives. An analysis of the language distribution shows that Khmer, the national and official language of Cambodia is, unsurprisingly, numerically the most prominent language in the linguistic landscape, followed by English. The high visibility of English is remarkable given that it is a newcomer in a former Francophone space that subsequently experienced decades of a nationalistic language policy. Sometimes, the policy was marked by a strict prohibition of the teaching and use of foreign languages. The ascendancy of English has resulted in the gradual displacement of French in the past decade, although it is too early to write off the latter. Assistance leverage, globalisation, gentrification, a generational change in attitudes toward languages, the new language policy-in-education and the complex history of modern Cambodia explain the rapid 'multilingualisation' and the rise of English in the graphic environment and in the socio-economic activities. Keywords: linguistic landscapePhnom PenhCambodialanguage commodificationmultilingualismethnolinguistic vitalityglobalisation Acknowledgements Appreciation is expressed to Ms Hem Vanna, Director of the Institute of Foreign Languages at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), for facilitating collaborative research with the Institute; Mr Tith Mab, Head of the Department of English, for a warm welcome and prompt introduction to his colleagues and final-year students, and the following students for their generous assistance and dedication in the data collection and interpretive walkabout in the scorching sun of downtown Phnom Penh: Bot Phearom, Hor Silin, Pech Kusal, Ros Vutha and Theng Tithmaria. Notes 1. A word of caution: the principle of an advertisement speaking to a target audience is not always attested. For example, the pervasiveness of English in advertisements, storefront signs, billboards in the Democratic Republic of Congo contrasts sharply with the infinitesimal use of English in everyday transactions (Kasanga Citation2012). Likewise, Washington DC's newly gentrified Chinatown has several businesses, mainly non-Chinese, with Chinese-language signs for a target customer base who 'neither read nor have ethnic ties to Chinese' (Leeman and Modan Citation2009, 332). 2. 'Gentrification', a term borrowed from urban studies and cultural geography, is a form of urban renewal (also referred to as rejuvenation, renewal, renewing, revitalisation or upgrading) through the restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban space. 3. A trade-off was necessary between, on the one hand, the disadvantages of under- or over-representation of a convenient sample and the lack of generalisability (not serious concerns in the study) and, on the other hand, easy access to respondents without the need for randomisation. 4. 'Sign' is taken in the article only in its semiotic sense, that is anything (textual and visual) that can be interpreted as standing for something other than itself.