Road signs have been a continual source of agony for the Inuit people in Canada. For so long, their language has been washed aside, pushed out of the way by English. In recent years, the Inuit people have risen up and fought back against English's oppression; they have begun to utilize their linguistic landscape to promote their own language. The Inuktitut language is discussed in Michelle Daveluy and Jenanne Ferguson's article "Scripted Urbanity in the Canadian North" in reference to the ongoing debate over the exact alphabet to use. The authors describe the road signs as the most concrete examples of this debate.
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| http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IqaluitStop.jpg |
The Inuktitut language has been featured at the top of stop signs, street signs, and in other public domains. Placing Inuktitut above English shows the hierarchy of language as determined by the people who own the language. They have used the linguistic landscape to promote their language, which has never really suffered in numbers even though English is a dominant colonial language. Due to the maintenance practices like this, the Inuit people have kept their language strong.
Daveluy, Michelle and Jenanne Ferguson
2009 Scripted Urbanity in the Canadian North. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19(1):78-100.
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