Penn Station

Linguistic Landscape Main Corridor of Penn Station

Functional Spaces
Ticket, Track and Railroad Information Stands
Food and Shopping
Corridors
Waiting Area

Genre’s Within Functional Space
Storefront Signs
Posters or Advertisements
Directions or Informational Signs
Languages Heard

Storefront Signs
Thirty storefront signs total were found.
Nineteen of these were Monolingual. Three were totally not English and Sixteen were English only.
Eight of these signs were names.
Three were abbreviations.
NONE were multilingual!

Posters and Advertisements
There were Six advertisements found.
ALL were monolinguistic featuring English Only.
Taken From lirrhistory.com

Directions and Information
This genre includes: Restrooms, exits, ticket information, safety information, and directions.
Many of the signs were icons that can be recognized cross-culturally.

English Only
This sign may apply to all passengers, but only the English speaking ones will know that the train schedule has changed.
I hope you don’t get stuck in an elevator!
This sign has directions for help in English only (and the elevator numbers are worn off)

If a person cannot read English, this sign has a map that shows them how to get to the new location of the customer service desk.
English and Icons

Multilingual
These “passenger welfare” posters are written in more then one language. Is it because the MTA cares, or because they want to “cover their bases”?

Languages Heard American English Latin American Spanish Hindu (?) Korean

Penn Station

by linguisticlandscape

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