Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Linguistic Landscapes: Life 'with Corona'

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We conducted three data collections in two cities, Nagoya and Kyoto. The total number of Covid-19-related signs is over 2,000 so far.The analysis revealed the following points. First, only around 10% of the signs are bi-/multilingual in both cities. This supports earlier works elsewhere. The limited global mobility led the sign producers to oversee the fact that there are still non Japanese-speaking residents in Japan. Second, the multimodal analysis of request signs suggest that,the use of multimodal signs are an indicator of obeyance to government orders, but also of the effort of the shop/restaurant owners to maximise their power of controlling and eliciting customer's behaviour. By placing governments' signs next to their requests, shops are trying to justify their requests and trying to position themselves to a more equal status to their customers.Third, the comparison of two data sets from Kyoto shows that bottom-up signs (produced individually by shop/restaurant owners) have become largely standardised over time. Many of the request signs have been reorganised and sorted out, and some signs have become standardised. The standardised forms not only indicate stronger community and regional efforts rather than individual efforts, but also indicate more authority within the local context.The analysis findings were presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Pragmatics Society of Japan, and accepted for publication.