The Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme's multilingual signage attitude survey: Phase II

ABSTRACT

This article contextualises and presents to the academic community the full dataset of the Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme's (ICMRP) multilingual signage survey. The ICMRP is a four-year European Union co-sponsored project in Northeast Thailand. This article focuses on one aspect of the project, four surveys each of 1500 participants regarding attitudes towards multilingual Thai–Isan (Thai Lao)–English signage in municipal areas in Khon Kaen Province, which have already led to the installation of some permanent signs, together with one follow-up survey. The survey data also include information on self-reported ability in Thai Lao and on frequency of usage and domain usage. It is the largest survey of this nature in Thailand and reveals a population which appears to approve of the installation of multilingual signage. However, Thai Lao identity is an especially sensitive issue following the 2014 coup, and the local population, municipalities, and academic institutions have come under heavy scrutiny by the Thai military government, which may have affected survey results.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingualism
• sociolinguistics
• Northeast Thailand
• Thai Lao
• signage
• language revitalisation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge EU Grant EuropeAid/131209/C/ACT/T, which made the ICMRP possible, as well as thank the mayors, municipal staff, and people of BP, CP, KK, and MP Municipalities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

John Draper http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3626-533X

Notes

1. The Thai Lao usually refer to themselves in out-group contexts as the Isan, an ethno-regional term (see Keyes 2014), and consequently this is how they are referred to hereafter except when necessary to be specific. This is because, while the Thai Lao are the majority in the region, there are approximately 20 ethnicities under this ethno-regional umbrella term (see Thailand 2011, 55).

2. Available from the author on request in both the original Thai and in English.

3. Not installed in BP Municipality due to insufficient time. It is unclear whether this had a significant effect on the outcomes.