Noaiwia: A linguistic landscape case study of a village in Vanuatu.

This article examines the linguistic landscape of Noaiwia, a rural village on Nguna Island in Vanuatu, revealing an overwhelmingly English-dominant public signage environment despite the island’s rich indigenous language, Nakanamanga, and the national lingua franca, Bislama. Through a systematic survey of 25 signs across key village sites—school, church, water tank, and library—the study finds English prevalent in all public texts, with negligible presence of the local vernacular and absence of Bislama, reflecting the higher status of former colonial languages in public space and education. The presence of Chinese language and symbolism on a rainwater tank highlights China’s growing geopolitical and economic influence in the Pacific region. The findings underscore the symbolic role of linguistic landscapes in expressing language ideologies shaped by colonial history, education policy, and globalisation, and suggest potential shifts with Vanuatu’s emerging bilingual education reforms promoting indigenous languages.