Multilingual signage, translanguaging space and public interpretation in metropolitan Shanghai

This study examines multilingual signage in metropolitan Shanghai through the lens of translanguaging space. Drawing on 1488 photographs of public signs from ten sites and 32 semi-structured interviews, the article investigates how socially recognised linguistic resources, visual design, spatial placement, and public interpretation jointly shape urban multilingualism. Rather than treating Chinese, English, Korean, and other named languages as bounded analytical units, the study approaches them as socially recognisable resources whose meanings are produced through multimodal and spatial configuration. Findings show that multilingual and multimodal signage is widespread but unevenly distributed across Shanghai’s urban landscape. Transportation hubs favour standardised Chinese, English, and multimodal signage oriented toward mobility and access, whereas tourist, commercial, heritage, university, and international community spaces display more hybrid, stylised, and asymmetrical arrangements. Interviews indicate that readers interpret signs not only in terms of practical comprehension, but also through associations with cosmopolitanism, locality, authenticity, atmosphere, and urban distinction. Taken together, these findings demonstrate a contrast between infrastructural access in transport and public-service spaces and symbolic, place-making functions in commercial, heritage, and lifestyle districts. They further show that translanguaging emerges through the situated coordination of linguistic and semiotic resources rather than through the co-presence of named languages alone.