THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF SURABAYA: IN GUBENG AND PASAR TURI

RAILWAY STATIONS

ASPECT OF BILINGUALISM

Adam Ardhana Erra Putra

English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Islamic State University of Sunan Ampel
Surabaya
Adam.ardhana0307@gmail.com

Abstract: In the modern world, many people seek social mobility. The mobility of the non-
permanent population is the movement of the population to another place which is not intended
to settle but is only temporary like holiday. They believe that it will make people happier and
allow them to do the kind of work that is suitable for them, especially for people in the city of
Surabaya. Every holiday season they do activities go out of town with rail transportation. In fact
Surabaya also becomes a transit place for native from various cities outside Surabaya. Surabaya
Gubeng and Pasar Turi station is “A” class station which mean that station is the largest railway
station in Surabaya and East Java and is the main departure and departure station of train from
Surabaya, especially, through the south and east of Java. For trains that pass through the northern
route, such as the train of Jakarta through Semarang, most departures and arrivals are served at
Surabaya Pasar Turi Station. This research presents the ethnography method of Linguistic
Landscape in order to analyze the bilingualism of English language and Indonesia language in
Gubeng and Pasar Turi railway stations. Information sign and food stall sign in different site
were photographed and analyzed according to the percentage of English and Indonesia language.

Keyword: mobility, multilingualism, linguistic landscape, public sign.

1. INTRODUCTION

English has become the lingua franca of the world, today, many people in Indonesia use

English to communicate with other countries. In fact, Tourism in Indonesia is an important

economic sector in Indonesia. In 2009, tourism ranked third in terms of foreign exchange

earnings after oil and gas commodities and palm oil. Based on data of 2016, the number of
foreign tourists coming to Indonesia amounted to 11,525,963 million more or grew by 10.79%

compared to the previous year. (kemenpar.go.id).

From the data illustrated that tourist visits to Indonesia has a significant amount. to

increase the number of tourists, Indonesian people should be able to speak English though not

well developed. Then we may notice Surabaya city should be able to compete in MEA (antara

news). MEA (Masyarakat Ekonomi Asia) is an ASEAN economic integration in the face of free

trade among ASEAN countries (wikipedia), which mean foreign people, will come to trade in

several cities in Indonesia including Surabaya.

As we know with the enactment of the MEA at the end of last year then the competition

among ASEAN countries will be more dynamic and competitive not only in the economic field

but this free market era demands us to be able to compete in various fields. Language is very

instrumental to master communication both in technology based and interact directly. The use of

international languages, especially English, becomes very important to adapt and face the flow of

global developments. Because English has been recognized and internationally agreed as an

official language that is universally used in education, technology, political economy, culture,

etc. In the era of MEA, it should be realized that English is no longer studied as a tool of self-

development, but is positioned as an important tool in economy, politics, and business.

The Mayor of Tri Rismaharini Surabaya officially opened the Language House which

will provide free training for the citizens. This Language House is purposed for all citizens of

Surabaya, especially for taxi drivers, buses, tricycles, public transportation, and tourism

businesses, street hawkers and all citizens free in order to welcome the era of MEA.

“Observatory’s semiotic landscape has gone through many transnational changes, and traces of
the different languages and communities have endured on the landscape. Victorian-styled

buildings and narrow roads index a bygone colonial period. The arrival of European settlers can

be ascertained as the catalyst of turbulence which is still today present on Observatory’s

linguistic landscape (LL)” (A. Peck and F. Banda 2014: 303). As in the quotation in accordance

with the history that occurred in Indonesia especially Surabaya, the former Dutch colonize

Indonesia for 3 centuries and have built their company like a train station to deliver the Dutch

and their colonies to Java, especially in Surabaya which is a strategic place to build government.

We can see the rest of Dutch colony like a building style that is still intact and used like Gubeng

and Pasar Turi station.

Talking about tourism, east java has a lot of tourism place and among them are well

known to other country, Surabaya become the transit place of the tourists like airport Juanda and

they continue their journey by train from Gubeng station if go to east java and Pasar Turi station,

if they want to go to central of java or going to Jakarta. This journal of linguistic landscape plays

a very important role in writing a signpost and a food stall sign in both stations. Almost all places

of the railway station are inscribed with language: location signs, directional signs, building

names, food stall, street names and advertisements. The researcher notice that several places

especially Surabaya Gubeng station and Surabaya Pasar Turi station become aware of linguistic

characteristic in order to make native easy to understand while they are looking for a food or a

jewelry for their family in their country and where will they go while use train as their

transportation

These days, sociolinguists do not just walk around the world carrying field notebooks and

sound recording equipment; they also carry digital photo cameras with which they take snapshots
of what has in the meantime become known as 'linguistic landscapes'. (Blommaert 2012: 5). The

most elementary contribution of visual research to sociolinguistic description of a given

community, area or city has been to ask how different minority languages are displayed and

interpreted in the LL. Linguistic landscape is the "visibility and salience of languages on public

and commercial signs in a given territory or region" (Landry and Bourhis 1997:23). Linguistic

landscape has been described as being "somewhere at the junction of sociolinguistics, sociology,

social psychology, geography, and media studies". In Surabaya, where speakers of many

different languages live and work, thus contributing to the economy and culture of the area, it is

important to look at the linguistic landscape and examine if it is representative of the population,

and what messages are being conveyed to non-English speaking populations. Investigation of the

linguistic landscape of Surabaya gives insight into how non-English languages are valued or

diminished in Surabaya, and how language can represent the ethnic groups in the area.

The researcher discusses the relationship between linguistic landscape and bilingualism

in ethnography method. The data of this research are taken from public places like railway

station. It uses Sociolinguistic theory about bilingualism to suppose the explanation. This

research is expected to identify the categories of bilingualism found in Surabaya Gubeng, and

Surabaya Pasar Turi train station.

This article was developed from the results of quantitative descriptive research on

linguistic landscape at Gubeng and Pasar Turi station. Instruments used in this research are,

digital camera, and observation.

The specific research questions of this descriptive study are the following:

1. What languages are displayed in the linguistic landscape of two different train stations?
 2. What is the purpose of sign written in English?

3. Are there differences in the languages used when top-down and bottom up signs are

compared?

4. What are the characteristics of bilingual sign?

In this report the focus is on the use of displayed languages in the linguistic landscape in the city

of Surabaya. Both of the station use Indonesia and English (see picture 1), the sign use noun and

verb word in order to make the passengers especially the native tourist easy to understand.

Every signage have their own role, for example:

2.1 Information-provision: signs conveying information about services and facilities,

such as maps, directories, instructional signs or interpretive signage used in museums,

galleries, zoos, parks and gardens, exhibitions, tourist and cultural attractions that

enhance the customer's experience

2.2 Persuasion: promotional signage designed to persuade users of the relative merits of a

company, product or brand. This role applies to bottom up signs

2.3 Safety and Regulatory: signs giving warning or safety instructions, such as warning

signs, traffic signs, exit signs, signs indicating what to do in an emergency or natural

disaster or signs conveying rules and regulations.

2.4 Identification: signs indicating services and facilities, such as room names and

numbers, restroom signs, or floor designations (Calori C 2007: 8)

The two types of signs are two different ways of marking the territory, two inscriptions into

the urban space. Usually the official signs are under strict regulation by the government, whereas

there is more freedom within legal boundaries for private signs. The distinction is important
because it relates both to who has power or legitimacy over the use of public space and to formal

language policy (Durk Gorter. 2007: 4-6). However, more informal uses of bilingual signs are

often found on businesses in areas where there is a high degree of bilingualism, such as in areas

where large concentrations of immigrants settle or public place near tourism spot.

The methodological approach selected for this study required taking digital pictures of all

texts to be seen on the railway station. This resulted in a total of 12 pictures of top down of both

railway stations. For bottom up there are 15 Sign were taken. In many cases more than one

picture was taken of the same text or sign or combination of signs. In the end a total of

27.separate signs were distinguished for the descriptive analysis. After successfully collecting

data from both locations, the researchers concluded that signs such as commercial food stores

and information boards contain English and Indonesian languages with different amounts in each

place. A total of 10 food stall use English in both train station, on each train station were

conducted to explore how the languages and signage were interpreted and understood.

Permanent public signs (specifically shop windows) on the busiest train station in Surabaya were

captured during this time.

The methodological problem of the unit of analysis is not always easy to resolve. It has

been defined differently in some of the earlier studies mentioned before where the unit of

analysis could be a whole shop. This deficient of consistency across studies can make the

comparison between studies difficult and is a factor that must be kept in mind in the presentation

and discussion of the results. For the purposes of this study, the unit of analysis is the separate

unit of a sign. This means that a shop window that has a sign with the store name as well as

advertising would have more than one sign with each separately distinguishable sign comprising
one unit. The advantage of this is that the signs are clearly countable because they are in a

frame‘.

The results include: the number of languages on the signs, the different languages

encountered, the frequency of each language on the sign, top-down versus bottom up signs, the

composition of bilingual signs, and the size of the languages on bilingual and multilingual signs.

These results will be discussed in the following section.

The writer has no particular access to the chief of Daop (daerah operasi) 8 Surabaya, the

restaurant staff and their decision – making processes, and so the analysis is restricted to the sign

themselves and lack of information about why using particular language on each sign.

2. Sociolinguistic Studies

Language is use by a speaker in a community. According to Fishman (1972), the language

use involves “Who speaks, What Language, To Whom, When and where”. Term of

sociolinguistics is a derivational word, the words that form Sociolinguistics are sociology and

linguistics. Sociology is a study about society and linguistics is a study about language.

According to Hudson (1996) Sociolinguistics is branch of linguistics form that study about

relationship between language and social. It is a study of a language from the perspectives of

society. Sociolinguistics is also called the sociology of language. The following definitions on

the subject used sociolinguistics are: Wardaugh, (2010) said that sociolinguistics is concerned

with investigating the relationships between language and society with the goal being a better

understanding of the structure of language and of how languages function in communication.

The equivalent goal in the sociology of language is trying to discover how social structure can be

better understood through the study of language. Spolsky, (1998) said that sociolinguistics is the
field that studies the relation between language and society, between the uses of language and the

social structures in which the users of language live. It is a field of study that assumes that

human society is made up of many related patterns and behaviors, some of which are linguistics.

Chambers (2009) said that Sociolinguistics is sometimes accused of giving more space to their

methods than to their results.

3. Linguistic Landscape Studies

This journal the researcher use a well known and comprehensive definition of linguistic

landscape as defined by Landry and Bourhis (1997, 25) to encompass:

The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial
shop signs, and public signs of government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape
of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration.

On the LL the researcher find that language ideology is depicted by “…the visibility and salience

of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region” (Landry and Bourhis

1997, 23). In this consider in specific way, focus is placed on languages that feature prominently,

occasionally and those that are completely absent from the LL. In this way, linguistic

appropriation of space is extremely important in its capacity to highlight issues surrounding

cultural and symbolic value. The researcher notice what language(s) have been used, may also

become aware of the linguistic characteristics or the researcher may wonder who put the sign

there or why – as in this case of the mailbox (see picture 1) – both Indonesia and English were

used, but with different size fonts. This report is about an inquiry into the diversity of languages

one comes upon in the area of Gubeng and Pasar Turi railway station.
Figure 1. Information billboard

Note: Picture taken by Adam Ardhana (2017).

One distinction that has received much attention in writings about the linguistic landscape is the

distinction between official signs and non-official signs. These are also referred to as,

respectively, top- down and bottom-up signs (Backhaus 2007, pp. 27, 31, 32, 57) or as municipal

and commercial discourses (Scollon and Scollon 2003, pp. 175-89)

When analyzing the largely “English” signs on the LL in the outdoors of railway station,

questions into the symbolic value of these sign and texts as well as the appropriation of space are

investigated. The importance of text on the urban landscape can be cushioned by larger

sociopolitical and economical factors. Leeman and Modan (2010, 182) elucidate this point when

they declare “[B]ecause words on the street are part and parcel of the texture of urban

landscapes, a full understanding of any urban linguistic landscape must be undergirded by in-

depth knowledge of the ways in which cities themselves are shaped.”

We conceptualize space as not only referring to objects and boundaries but also to

language and interactional practices evident in a community (Scollon and Scollon 2003). Thus,

the visibility of language, artifacts, cultural symbols, types of social interaction as well as the
sociocultural composition of electoral districts in a particular region. However, Leeman and

Modan (2010) sagely caution that it should not be assumed (as often happens in LL research)

that the audience is made up of people who can read and interpret the language and signage

“correctly” or as intended by the sign maker. This statement is appropriate when there is a tourist

transit in both station and help them to get the information accurately. Nearly all stations have a

tourist office. Especially in Gubeng station, tourist be able to find tourist information center at

Pemuda street if they want to travel around the center of Surabaya while they transit. There is

plenty of literature to help you discover places of interest in the town or the region. Employees

often speak English and can help you to get the information. Historically the train companies

were big trading companies that built very large commercial areas alongside the train lines.

Therefore the stations are often in large shopping centers.

Several languages can be found on buildings in city streets. The visible coexistence of

different languages (and sometimes different scripts) can be explained by the different functions

each may have. The dominant state language is the language for communicating official

messages. Other languages, such as English, may also have a communicative function but with

foreigners, whether visitors or immigrants. Still other languages may have less of an informative

function and more of a symbolic function. Often it is not so much the content of the message, but

the visibility of a specific language or a different script that is of importance because it stands out

as being more conspicuous (Durk Gorter 2007:5).

An analysis of the linguistic landscape should establish more than through position and

visibility on signs, but rather identify “semiotic resources” which speak to issues involving

appropriation, power, preference, inclusion/ exclusion and integration through signage. In this
way a LL analysis is useful in creating a more in-depth understanding of this diverse

neighborhood through visual representation (A. Peck and F. Banda 2014:305).

Earlier studies An early example of the study of the linguistic landscape was reported by

Rosenbaum et al (1977). Their study analyzed the signs of a single street along with transactions,

planted encounters and interviews in Keren Kayemet Street in Jerusalem. Their study of

language signs was limited to analyzing the use of Indonesia and English script on the signs. The

results of the analysis indicate that Indonesia script is more common on bottom up than top-

down signs and show the differences between official language policy supporting the use of

Indonesia -only signs and the most common use of other languages (mainly English) in

commercial signs.

4. Result

This chapter presents the results of the fieldwork. The number of languages on a sign, the

different languages encountered and the relative frequency of each language are presented in

Section 4.1. Section 4.2 deals with the number of official signs (top down) versus those placed

there by private initiative (bottom-up) in the end Section 4.3 looks at the characteristics of

bilingual and multilingual signs. To compare a number of data easily, the data is displayed in the

form of a diagram. Graphical quantification of linguistic configurations is provided below and

offers a mechanistic representation of how many English and Indonesia languages are used in

top- down and bottom-up signs of each station.

 4.1 The languages display

The first question about the linguistic landscape concerns the number of languages used on each

sign in the railway station of Surabaya.

Bottom up
SBI SGU

46%

54%

SGU= Surabaya Gubeng SBI=Surabaya Pasar Turi

In all two railway stations the from both stations the result of the bottom up sign at Gubeng

station has the percentage amount around 54 percent and Pasar Turi station only has a low

percentage of as much as 46 percent . Two languages in one sign is still rather common, while

more than two languages is never existed. Because the Indonesian language became the official

language in addition to other regional languages and more deservedly translated into English.
 4.2 Differences in top-down and bottom-up signs

This section will deal with the differences between the signs placed by the authorities and those

put in the linguistic landscape by private initiative. The results for the number of the top down

sign in both of the train stations are given in diagram 2.

Sales
SGU SBI

47%

53%

SGU= Surabaya Gubeng SBI=Surabaya Pasar Turi

This reflects the role of private initiative in bringing English into the linguistic landscape. The

importance of tourism for the city, however, is made clear by the fact that all of the Indonesia-

English signs around both of station are top-down. As would be expected, languages such as

English are almost entirely dependent on private initiative for inclusion in the linguistic

landscape.
5. Signs, appropriation and ownership

With the diverse ownership of businesses in Railway station, the appropriation of space and the

production of signage is distinctly localized with interesting (and novel) approaches to the

landscape, such as deliberate brand anonymity (discussed later) by Indonesian food business

owners. The signage below was uncovered in a shop owned and run by local business owners.

As seen with the “Soerabaja Cafe” sign below, there are Indonesia and English languages visible

on this sign:

Figure 2.Soerabaja Cafe.

Note: Picture taken by Adam ardhana (2017).

What is interesting about this sign is that the claim to “ownership” of the space is through use of

(globally recognized) Indonesia and localized English text as well as graphic illustrations of

traditional food and beverages. The windows have two large posters of traditional “Chinese”

women with long black hair and fans in their hands. These posters shape the traditional food and

beverages appearance that readers come to associate with Indonesia and more recent with local

stores. The colors on posters are dominated by brown. This is similar to the colors used on the

store sign. This specific color choice is a characteristic in order to attract the visitor while they

are waiting for their train. The use of these traditional colors and artifacts may be considered as a

strategic business tactic used to bolster its global “brand” identity in Observatory. For instance,

there is an unusual combination of “Soerabaja” and “Cafe” in “Soerabaja Cafe”. In general, the

people of Surabaya City mention the origin of the name of Surabaya is from the string of words

Sura and Baya or more popularly known as Sura ing Baya, read Suro ing Boyo. The two-word

blend means "dare to face the challenge". There is also a mention comes from the word Cura

Bhaya or Curabhaya. Writing the name of Surabaya also changed its spelling in accordance with

the age of its use. Before written with the word Surabaya now, has also been written: Surabaia,

Soerabaia, Seoarabaja and Surabaja. Café is a type of restaurant which usually serves coffee and

snacks. The term "café" comes from French, and means "coffee". A café is sometimes called a

coffeehouse or a coffee shop in English, a café in French, Spanish, and Portuguese and a caffè in

Italian. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a

restaurant. The type of English described here may be written off as errors and indicative of what

Blommaert et al. (2005) have called “peripheral normativity”. However, moving beyond the

view of English as simply having “peripheral norms” placed upon it, this study looks at English

as localized by the community in which it is located. In fact, consumers may not even care about
what the signs actually mean. Arguably, a focus solely on supposed language errors in signs on

the LL may detract from a profound analysis.

Figure 3.Solaria resto & lounge.

Note: Picture taken by Adam ardhana (2017).

The inclusion of the name “Solaria” was a strategic move by the owner name Aliuyanto. He is a

Chinese Indonesian who runs his restaurant since 1994. The community of Observatory would

frequent his restaurant more often as they knew him personally (by name). Writing his name in

English, however, is at odds with traditional Chinese signage as Lou (2007) notes that

“…Chinese establishments often display their names more prominently in Chinese than in

English …” (Leeman and Modan 2010, 349). Also, in a globalized world where Asian
Restaurants can be owned by a person of any nationality as long as they have the finances and

resources to run the business.

6. The nature of bilingual sign

In this section a closer look is taken at the composition of the bilingual signs. Those signs are

analyzed according to the distribution and frequency of the languages. An example of the

different distribution between Indonesian and English is given in the following sign in Gubeng

and Pasar Turi Station.

Figure 4. Information Sign in Gubeng Station

Note: picture taken by Adam Ardhana (2017)

Figure 5. Information Sign in Pasar Turi Station

Note: picture taken by Adam Ardhana (2017)

The combination of languages on bilingual signs (percentages)

Billingual Sign Pasar Turi Station Gubeng Station

Indonesia 5 9
English 5 19

From the table above it is compares the combinations of the different languages in the two

railway station. The bilingual signs are unequally distributed over the different railway station. In

the city centre and near the station by far the highest frequency of bilingual Indonesia/English

signs are noticed.

The main differences between the four different neighborhoods, and the following were found.

The area around Gubeng Station has more Bilingual language in the signs than other areas and
has a relative high number of signs with English languages compared to the other two railway

station. There are interesting differences between the railway stations. However, the railway

station of Gubeng is clearly the most linguistically diverse of the two railway stations with

several signs in English and Indonesia each of top down and bottom up sign. Other languages,

including English, are rarely used as top-down languages on their own in monolingual signs in

Pasar Turi Station, from the table above it only takes 20% of English and Indonesia language

than Gubeng Station which is takes . Both the government and the private initiative put up signs

with a combination of Italian and English, most of all in the area around Termini Station and the

streets in the city-centre. It seems that the City of Surabaya does a relatively good job of

including other languages around high tourist areas. It could be recommended to the City

authorities to systematically review its policy and develop further measures to make sure that

language signs are designed and used in a coherent and comprehensive way. The linguistic

landscape is after all contributing to the overall image the tourists have of the city in terms of

hospitality, relevant information and communication.

7. Conclusion

From this study has background of the saliency of an ethnographic approach to LL studies,

which enabled us to chronicle the trajectory of signs across geographical boundaries, space and

time. Thus, LL was linked to social identities, changes in ownership, owner aspirations and

perceived clients, as well as forces of localization and globalization (A. Peck and F. Banda

2014:321). The paper has shown that LL may not only reveal appropriation and ownership of

space, but may also function to conceal ownership, in what we termed brand concealment. The

paper affirms recent work showing that languages spoken “on the field” are not always reflected

on the landscape.
 Whether the authorities want to acknowledge the presence of different groups by placing

(top-down) signs in those respective languages seems a matter of the further development of

language policy. So far the city of Surabaya seems to have been reluctant to do so or not have

been aware of the symbolic importance the placement of a number of strategically placed signs

should be.

For the authorities it could make sense to reflect upon the way signs are designed and how

the languages are placed on bilingual signs. The overall image of a balanced and well thought

out and consistent policy can be given through the signs in the linguistic landscape. It is clear

that the overall impression that the use of such a language on the environment may also be

different when you switch from individual marks to consider the entire visual field. After all the

researcher impressions of an area are not limited to individual signs, but to the wider visual space

because we also observe how they fit into the environment.

This study of two railway stations in the city of Surabaya could be a step towards a more

encompassing study of the linguistic landscape of the city as a whole or perhaps even of other

cities in east java. In the past Schlick (2003) has conducted limited studies of Trieste and

Pordenone and researchers at the Università per Stranieri di Siena are working on a larger project

on mapping linguistic diversity (Esquilino is one of the neighbourhoods), in which the linguistic

landscape takes an important place (Barni 2006). Moreover this study has raised a number of

questions about the spread and diversity of different languages in the capital of Surabaya.
 REFERENCES

Backhaus, P. 2007. Linguistic Landscapes. A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in

Tokyo. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

A Peck, F Banda. 2014. Observatory’s linguistic landscape: semiotic appropriation and the
reinvention of space. Routledge

Blommaert, J., M. Huysmans, N. Muyllaert, and C. Dyers. 2005. “Peripheral Normativity:

Literacy and the Production of Locality in a South African Township School.” LINGUISTICS
AND EDUCATION. 16(4). p.378-403

Landry, R., and R. Y. Bourhis. 1997. “Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An
Empirical Study.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

R. A. Hudson. 1996. Sociolinguistic: Second Edition. Cambridge University Press

R. Wardhaugh. 2010. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics: Sixth Edition.

Spolsky, B. 1998. Sociolinguistics. Oxford introductions to language study. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

J. K. Chamber. 2009. Sociolinguistic Theory, 3rd Edition. Oxford Wiley-Blackwell

Scollon, R., and S. W. Scollon. 2003. Discourses in Place Language in the Material World.
London: Routledge.

Leeman, J., and G. Modan. 2010. “Selling the City: Language, Ethnicity and Commodified
Space.” In Linguistic Landscape in the City, edited by E. Shohamy, E. Ben Rafael, and M. Barni,
182–198. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Cenoz, J. & D. Gorter (2006) Linguistic landscape and minority languages. The International
Journal of Multilingualism, 3, pp 67-80.

Rosenbaum, Yehudit, Nadel, Elizabeth, Cooper, Robert L., and Fishman, Joshua A. (1977)
English on Keren Kayemet Street. In Joshua A. Fishman, Robert L. Cooper and Andrew W.
Conrad (eds.),The Spread of English (pp. 179–196). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.