Institutional identity in a liminal schoolscape: a chronotope-scalar analysis of multilingual signage at a University in Macao

The university at the focus of this study, located on mainland China and governed by Macao, while remaining internationally-oriented, exemplifies a liminal space shaped by the intersection of geography, governance, and university autonomy. This study examines how institutional identity is dynamically enacted in the university schoolscape by analysing public signage across the campus. Drawing on photographic data, the study analyses how different functional categories of signs mobilise temporal imaginaries and scalar alignments. The findings show that required signs enact a chronotope of liminal governance, in which regulatory authority is fragmented across macro-, meso-, and micro-level actors. Interactive signs invoke a chronotope of situational participation by situating national and cultural narratives into localised engagement without enforcement. Educational signs project internationally oriented futures, positioning students as ‘actors in becoming’. Identity-marking signs attempt to stabilise institutional continuity while simultaneously revealing bottom-up misalignments in spatial and territorial understanding. Across these types, institutional identity emerges not as a coherent narrative but as a patterned configuration of chronotopic alignments and misalignments across scales. The study demonstrates that the liminality in the university schoolscape persists not due to incomplete governance, but to the lag between administrative reconfiguration and everyday understandings of space, highlighting institutional identity as a dynamic, multi-scalar semiotic process.