Emergency Linguistic Landscape in Resilient City Building: A Case Study of Nanjing, China

Emergency linguistic landscapes (ELLs)—public signage deployed during crises—serve as vital tools for multilingual communication, public safety, and inclusive emergency governance. This study investigates the linguistic, modal, and functional features of ELLs across four categories of public emergencies in Nanjing, China: natural disasters, industrial accidents, health emergencies, and security incidents. Based on fieldwork and analysis of 1,750 multimodal signs collected from six types of urban spaces, the research reveals that ELLs are predominantly monolingual or bilingual, highly text-centric, and unevenly distributed, with limited accessibility for non-Chinese speakers. These findings highlight the urgent need for more inclusive, multilingual emergency language practices to support resilient urban governance. The study contributes to emerging scholarship on linguistic landscapes, crisis communication, and multilingual language policy in Asia and beyond.