The Iranian Plaza, a linguistic landscape

 Author: Susan Niazi

When I came to Canada, and saw the Iranian Plaza for the first time, I was surprised. It reminded me of home. I felt nostalgic and more comfortable even though I was lonesome for my homeland.

I would like to illustrate this Plaza and demonstrate how the linguistic landscape reflects on my culture in Toronto. This Plaza is located at Yonge St., close to Steeles Avenue; however an Iranian influence can be seen in the linguistic landscape beginning just south of Finch Ave. , and lines both sides of the street , North to Steeles Ave.

This area is a commercial area which deals mostly with food businesses such as restaurants, take out food, supermarkets, and bakeries; however many types of enterprises such as medical offices, hair salons, book stores, accountants, immigration offices, and travel agencies are some of the other businesses that abound in this locale. Conceivably, an Iranian immigrant could find enough services at this location to never have to integrate into Toronto daily life. Along with the Iranian stores, this neighborhood also contains a mixture of Chinese, and Korean businesses.

 

 Returning to this Plaza, one can see that it is more a collection of homogenous enterprises operated by Iranian/Canadians. All the stores, supermarkets, and official businesses feature signage which contains Persian language and to some extent English in their advertising. How welcome it is for a Persian speaker like me to be able to shop and conduct my affairs in my native tongue.

Although the majority of the clientele are Iranian, you can also encounter many different customers speaking Mandarin, Pashto, Dari, Arabic, as well as English. Commercial multilingualism is evident from the signage and it is used to develop successful business ventures. When visiting this area, a visitor can interact with a diverse cultural group.

In any of these Iranian stores you can find Persian newspapers which allow you to keep up with news from back home and also with Canadian current affairs. The stores also feature bulletin boards where one can find advertisements telling of events such as movies, concerts, meetings, and community affairs in Persian. Clearly the English language is used only to attract non Persian speaking clients.

 

 

When you are in this plaza, shopping for products bearing Persian labels, the linguistic landscape induces feelings of nostalgia for me. I feel a connection to my homeland and my memories of shopping for food back home. Here it is true that, “Language has been a key symbol of national identity and as a badge of loyalty.”

This unique plaza represents a small part of the multilingualism in Canada, what makes it attractive for Iranian customers, is connecting them to their own language and cultural background. The dominant language which is practiced in this plaza is Persian; although the stores apply multilingualism for marketing. English is the Canadian official language but is representative of the minority. The language policy of this linguistic landscape, as seen through these business signs, and advertisements is determined by what is referred to as a bottom – up initiative where English is clearly the second language.