Life with Corona: Discourse that Emerged in the Linguistic Landscape of Downtown Kyoto, Japan, during the Pandemic

Language, communication, and lifestyle drastically changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as documented in linguistic landscape studies. In this talk, I examine the unique discourse—“life with corona”—that seemed to emerge in signage by studying photographs of about 760 COVID-19–related signs collected in downtown Kyoto that is a popular tourist site. Our analysis reveals that even though Kyoto is considered a multilingual metropolitan environment, most signs related to COVID-19 regulations were monolingual (in Japanese), possibly due to the sudden decrease in foreign tourism. Despite variations, almost all the signs communicated an assumption about life “with corona:” we acknowledge the existence of the coronavirus and seek alternative ways to live with the virus.

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