A linguistic, visual and cultural reading of the landscape of eight cities in Colombia

This research analyses the visibility in the PCCU (Colombian commercial urban landscape) of the Spanish language, indigenous languages, and foreign languages in the virtual and physical landscape of eight cities in Colombia, a multilingual country. The linguistic and semiotic content of the cities was also examined. The data were derived from 205 photos of commercial advertisements. Analysis reveals a total absence of indigenous languages in the PCCU and the dominance of Spanish, together with a growing presence of English and other foreign languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, Arabic, and German. These languages were used mainly as a commodity and with a symbolic purpose. Regarding the content of the PCCU, the data indicated similar patterns such as incorporation of local and transnational elements (text and images), code mixing, transliterations, humor, and imitation or commercial cloning.