ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the creative and innovative use of English in the linguistic landscape of Suzhou, a city in East China, to discuss if this language practice is mobilized as an extra resource by the city for self-expression. By examining the particular features of English usage observed in the public space of linguistic landscape there, the chapter is intended to principally discuss how English as the world’s global language (Crystal, 1997, p. 36) can be deconstructed and reconstituted in this context of China. The findings of four major, broadly defined linguistic tactics, i.e., inventive portmanteaus, bilingual paronomasia, transgressive romanization, and exocentric compounds, which need not be considered as always mutually exclusive, highlight the creative, fluid, and transgressive capacity of language practice, offering supporting evidence for Pennycook’s claim (Makoni and Pennycook, 2005; Pennycook, 2010) of the English language as a local language.
