The linguistic landscape of Nuuk, Greenland

• Main Authors: Kahn, L, Valijarvi, R
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Greenlandic; Danish; linguistic landscape; signs; Nuuk; Greenland; minority; indigenous; multilingual; urban; greenlandic
• Online Access: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10094235/1/Kahn_linguistic_landscape_nuuk__centrevsperiphery_final.pdf; https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10094235/

The purpose of this article is to present and analyse public and private signs in the Linguistic Landscape of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Nuuk is a trilingual environment including the indigenous language (West Green landic), the former colonial language (Danish), and a global language (English). West Greenlandic is a somewhat unusual case among indigenous languages in colonial and postcolonial settings because it is a statutory national language with a vigorous use. Our analysis examines the use of West Greenlandic, Danish, and English from the theoretical perspective of centre vs. periphery, devoting attention to the primary audiences (local vs. international) and chief functions (informational vs. symbolic) of the signs. As the first investigation into the Greenlandic Linguistic Landscape, our analysis can contribute to research on signs in urban multilingual indigenous language settings.