The linguistic landscape of Zadar is dynamic and it changes in accordance with trends and needs of the inhabitants.
The results also show the seasonality of the linguistic landscape of Zadar, in which the out-of-season advertising shows mainly Croatian, while in-season advertising shows the use of Croatian and English, or only English. The research findings obtained by interviewing accord with the findings obtained from the linguistic landscape analysis and point to tourism as the main force that influences almost all aspects of written and spoken language use in Zadar.
English is equally important to passers-by and employers, who consider it a prerequisite for employment, so that their employees may effectively communicate with the clients. English has become a universal foreign language used for communication with all foreign tourists and has slowly pushed out other foreign languages in tourism. Besides Croatian, other languages are used in business and tourism, but English is the most frequent foreign language in the linguistic landscape. Croatian is the most frequent language in the public space and the only one on official signage. The research findings show that the main language of communication in Zadar is Croatian, based on the linguistic landscape and on the interviews. However, most examples of historical linguistic diversity in the public space have been erased in the course of social changes. The linguistic landscape of Zadar still shows traces of historical linguistic diversity, especially on infrastructural objects from the Austro-Hungarian and Italian periods and on the municipal cemetery. Due to that, the town has been accepting population from various parts of Croatia and Europe and traces of languages and dialects of those people are still present in the linguistic ecology of Zadar. Two research methods have been used for the description of the ecology: the first one is the analysis of the linguistic landscape of Zadar, which was used to investigate the use of written language in the public space the second one is a qualitative method and involves semi-structured interviews with passers-by, owners and managers of shops, and with decision makers on the local-government level.Ĭonsidering the fact that Zadar is located at a strategically very interesting part of the Eastern Adriatic coast, historically it has always been interesting to numerous conquerors. The ecology of language diversity involves the description of the interrelationship between languages, speakers and the community in which those speakers use languages. This doctoral dissertation analyses the ecology of linguistic diversity of Zadar. Dal Negro’s research was carried out in two non-urban settings: Formazza (Piedmont), where an Alemannic German variety is spoken, and Vilnöß/Funes (Trentino Alto-Adige), where similarly to Bozen/Bolzano, a Bavarian variety, standard German and Italian are present. Plank’s research was carried out in Bozen/Bolzano (Trentino Alto-Adige) and looked at the presence of the state language, Italian, and of the co-official language, German, on commercial shop signs, bars and restaurants in two areas of the city, the centre and the neighbourhood of Europa-Novacella. As far as Italy is concerned, I am aware of 14 pieces of research published so far that have looked at its linguistic landscape, four of them focusing on the presence of English (Griffin, 2004 carried out in Rome Ross, 1997 carried out in Milan Schlick, 2002 carried out in Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Udin/Udine Schlick, 2003 carried out in eight European cities including Trieste and Pordenone), three on English and/or the languages of recent immigrants (Barni, 2006 Gorter, 2009 Barni and Bagna, 2010), and another seven on the local minority/regional languages (Blackwood and Tufi, this volume Coluzzi, 2009b Dal Negro, 2009 Grazioli, 2006 Plank, 2006 Puzey, 2009 Puzey, this volume). Research on the linguistic landscape (LL) is starting to become conspicuous, particularly with regard to Europe and Asia.
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