Orchestrating mobility: a study on the linguistic landscape of the Seac Pai Van Park in Macau through a language-spatial relationships lens

Seac Pai Van Park is a large, multipurpose park in Macau that is rich in linguistic and semiotic meanings. The article delves into the linguistic landscapes of the park through a theoretical lens of language–spatial relationships, exploring the interplay of language, space, culture, politics, and commerce. Additionally, interdisciplinary perspectives such as multimodality and the commodification of language further enrich the analysis. The article uncovers the fluidity and adaptability of language choreographies and the long-term implications of these orchestration patterns for Macau more broadly, highlighting the fact that the identities represented by language are subject to a continuous negotiation with commodification under globalizing forces. The appearance of English, simplified Chinese characters, and other languages (e.g. Korean and Japanese) for tourists underscores the evolving nature of linguistic diversity and its implications for cultural heritage preservation and identity formation in Macau. In these ways, this study goes beyond the static paradigm of researching top-down linguistic landscapes, deepening the understanding of linguistic dynamics, and providing contemporary information about the complexities and opportunities of urban multilingualism to relevant research and policymakers.