Displaying and Commodifying English on Shop Name Signs

In this chapter, we look into the language choice and uses on private or commercial signs, particularly the vogue of adopting English on shopfront signs, in the metropolitan cities in the Changjiang River Delta region in Eastern China. After a brief illustration of the linguistic landscape in this region, business practitioners were interviewed to find out the sign authors’ motivations to display English on the shop name signs. The findings may help us understand private marketers’ ways to cope with the game of linguistic symbols in the consumer society, and shed light on the commodification of English, as well as the features of vernacular globalization in China. It can also deepen our understanding of the “experiential dimension” of LL (Trumper-Hecht, 2010) and grassroots individuals’ language ideology in the context of modernization and internationalization.