Authorship and Policy Compliance in the Linguistic Landscape of Perak’s Tourist Spaces

This study aimed to examine the linguistic landscape (LL) of tourist sites in Perak, Malaysia, focusing on language choice, code preference, and policy adherence in public signs. The analysis is based on visual data collected from three prominent tourist sites in Perak, Malaysia-Pulau Pangkor, Lost World of Tambun, and Teluk Batik. Using a mixed-method approach, this study identified the preferred language on the survey sites using observation and photographed data images. Drawing on a dataset of 1039 signs, the study categorizes the signs based on three aspects which are government and private authorship, monolingual and multilingual, and code preference in order to see the adherence with the national language policy. The results showed that most government signs utilised Bahasa Malaysia (BM) as the prominent language, reflecting policy compliance and promoting national identity. On the other hand, private signs exhibit greater linguistic diversity, particularly in multilingual signs. The strong presence of other languages in private signs, particularly English, reflects the non-compliance to the policy, which driven by the need to cater to a broader audience and enhance commercial appeal. The findings underscore the dual role of LL in upholding national and cultural values while meeting the economic demands in multicultural tourism contexts. It also contributes to the growing body of LL research by exploring the dynamic interplay between government and private linguistic practices.

Code Preference, Linguistic Landscape

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