English in the Churchscape

Exploring a Religious Linguistic Landscape in the Philippines

Bibliographic Data

ID19538280
AuthorsJerico Juan Esteron (University of the Philippines Diliman, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume14
Issue2
Pages82-104
Publication date2021-12-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse and Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1802-9930 • E-ISSN: 1805-952X
PublisherMasaryk University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5817/di2021-2-82
OpenAlexW4200234390
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited22

As one of the official languages of the Philippines, English predominantly figures in thedomains 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

Epistemology · Linguistic landscape · Linguistics · Multilingualism · Phenomenon · Sociology · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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