Linguistic Landscape in Cebu City Higher Education offering Communication programs

This study aimed to investigate the linguistic landscape of Cebu City, Philippines Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) through bulletin board displays of Communication Departments. Descriptive-qualitative method as well as frequency counts were utilized in analyzing the photographed visual languages and survey questionnaires. Evidently, although few instances of bilingual signages occur, English language dominates the 51 displays from 5 participating universities. Likewise, the text content reflects more on invitation, instruction and announcement. Coming from an authoritative figure addressed to the public particularly the students, the text is purely written with very low reader interaction. Despite available online media platforms, informative and creative bulletin board displays were still considered extremely important and useful. The study concluded that HEI’s linguistic landscape represents current news and information in a formal tone and context as it caters to mature audience.

Keywords: bulletin boards, communication, HEIs, linguistic landscape