A Monolingual or Multilingual City? Discrepancies Between the Written and Spoken Language Practices in the Public Space of Zadar, Croatia

Zadar is a city in Croatia with more than two millennia of urban continuity. In its history, the city has always been multilingual, having undergone many changes in rulership and numerous changes in population (Brozović, 1976). Today’s urban multilingualism of Zadar is also changing, under the influence of tourism and migrations. This chapter presents an analysis of discrepancies between the written and spoken practices in the public space of Zadar, based on a comparison between the written language practices in the public space and the spoken language practices in the public space, aiming to ascertain whether the same language resources are used equally in both contexts. The written language practices in Zadar have been analysed with the help of the Linguistic Landscape study (Backhaus, 2007; Blommaert, 2013; Blommaert, 2016; Gorter, 2006) of Zadar in which languages used for public communication have been identified. The spoken language practices have been analysed through semi-structured interviews with randomly selected informants who reside in Zadar. The starting hypothesis is that the visual component of language practices, found in the linguistic landscape, will differ from the auditive component of the language practices due to the influence of tourism on the design and production of signs in the linguistic landscape. Furthermore, although the language repertoires of the residents of Zadar include numerous languages and dialects/varieties, it is expected that only a few of them are visible in the public space.