双语公共标识的文本性研究——来自北京图书大厦的报告

Textual Issues in Bilingual Public Signs——A Sociolinguistic Report from the City of Beijing

本项研究是北京地区双语公共标识调查的一个组成部分。这项社会语言学研究,规模浩大,历时两年,数据海量,因而采用"主题驱动"的话语模式,区分为"理论方法研究"、"拼音化问题研究"、"信息性问题研究"、"跨文化问题研究"、"文本性问题研究"5个方面,分别进行报告。本文主要考察在图书大厦这个社会语境中,双语公共标识文本性的问题。本文由6个部分组成。第一部分是研究背景的介绍。第二部分是调查方法的描述与说明。第三部分是社会文本的界定的阐释。第四部分是文本解读的视角、模式、类型的分析与讨论。第五部分凸显图书大厦语境中双语公共标识文本中存在的问题,提供改进与解决的方法,为标准文本(草案)的制定提供第一手的数据资料。第六部分汇报所得结论,阐述双语公共标识研究的意义,强调语言学研究"格物致用"的特色。

The present study reports part of the results obtained from a large-scale investigation of bilingual public signs in the city of Beijing from a sociolinguistic perspective. A topic-driven discussion pattern is adopted to report the results obtained from this twoyear survey. This paper addresses itself with textual problems in bilingual public signs and a book mall in the city was chosen as a language use context to look at this specific text of signage. There are six parts in this paper. We introduce the research design of this survey by specifying its research background in the first part. In the second part, we discuss data collection issues in relation to methodology selection. Based on a socio-cognitive theory in its broad sense, we illustrate in the third part how meaning is produced and interpreted in a social context in general and in a bilingual text of public signs in particular. Following these preliminary discussions, a topic-oriented discourse pattern, namely, treating a bilingual sign as a unique social text, is developed in the fourth part to process the large amount of photo data taken from this survey. To stress the point that problems related to bilingual public signs can be better explored if we treat the text of these signs from a sociolinguistic perspective, a problem-vs. -solution discussion is given in the fifth part to illustrate how the problems observed can be correctly interpreted and better solved. In the closing part, we emphasize the importance of applicability of language studies.