ENGLISH IN THE CHURCHSCAPE: EXPLORING A RELIGIOUS LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE IN THE PHILIPPINES
Vol.14,No.2(2021)
As one of the official languages of the Philippines, English predominantly figures in the
domains of education, government, and the judiciary. This reality has always put English at the top of the linguistic ladder, relegating local languages to lower ranks. This scenario appears to be evident also in the domain of the church. In this paper, I investigate signs posted within the compound of a major Catholic church located in the Philippines in terms of types and language use. Informed by linguistic landscape concepts pioneered by Landry and Bourhis (1997), Spolsky and Cooper (1991), and Ben-Rafael (2009), I analyzed over a hundred signs in the religious linguistic landscape, which I call ‘churchscape’. Findings show that English dominates in the churchscape as a language of communication and language of tourism while local languages such as Filipino and Pangasinan assume a secondary role in the churchscape. This study affords us an interesting view and alternative understanding of multilingualism as a phenomenon through the churchscape in question.
signs; linguistic landscape; churchscape; English in the church
Jerico Juan Esteron
Department of English and Comparative Literature, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman, Diliman, Quezon City 1101, Philippines
Ph.D. student at the Department of English and
Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman
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