ABSTRACT

Basque is one of the official languages spoken in the Basque Country and although it is usually considered the minoritised language, its situation might be different in rural areas. The presence of Basque and Spanish has been previously reported in urban areas [Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2006). Linguistic landscape and minority languages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790710608668386], but their presence in rural areas remains unknown. To address this gap, the linguistic landscape (LL) of a rural town (Ondarroa, Bizkaia) is examined. For such a purpose, the signs in the main shopping street of Ondarroa (both top-down and bottom-up signs) are included in the analysis. The results show that contrary to the situation of Basque in urban areas (Cenoz & Gorter, 2006), Basque is the language with the largest presence in the LL of the street in Ondarroa. This is an indicative of the reproduction of the linguistic situation of the town, which subverts the current institutional linguistic policies. This particular LL could be considered as highly bilingual due to the presence of bilingual signs in Basque and Spanish; the presence of Spanish monolingual signs is minimal. The analysis of this LL would indicate that Basque sometimes is the majority language, at least in rural Basque areas.

摘要

巴斯克语是巴斯克地区的官方语言之一，虽然通常被认为是少数民族语言，但在农村地区的情况可能有所不同。巴斯克语和西班牙语曾在城市地区出现过报道 [Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2006)。语言景观和少数民族语言。国际多语言杂志，3(1), 67–80。https://doi.org/10.1080/14790710608668386]，但他们在农村地区的存在仍然未知。为了解决这一差距，我们对一个乡村小镇（Ondarroa、Bizkaia）的语言景观（LL）进行了研究。为此，Ondarroa 主要购物街的标志（自上而下和自下而上的标志）都包含在分析中。结果表明，与巴斯克语在城市地区的情况相反（Cenoz & Gorter，2006），巴斯克语是翁达罗阿街道LL中出现最多的语言。这是对小镇语言状况的再现，颠覆了现行制度性的语言政策。由于巴斯克语和西班牙语双语标志的存在，该特殊的法学硕士可以被认为是高度双语的；西班牙语单语标志的存在很少。