Linguistic landscape as mechanisms of language policy, discourse and beyond: discursive framing, geosemiotics, and urban space at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games

Drawing upon language policy, discursive framing and geosemiotics, this article examines the urban linguistic landscape (LL) at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Through qualitative analysis of top-down Olympic LL items and their associated urban space, it investigates how linguistic and semiotic resources were deployed by governmental and institutional actors to enact their intentions, interests and values with a view to staging the Games as a spectacular urban event. The findings demonstrate how these resources were organised into different frames driven by social and discursive (re)construction, through which Paris was rendered both functionally prepared and symbolically (re)presented as an Olympic metropolis. The spectacle aspect has been a key anchor that connects urban development, city branding, cultural productions and collective experiences towards the legacy-making of the Games. The article further argues that language policy is a constitutive force behind the linguistic choice, ordering and representation embedded in Olympic LL items and discourses in place. The analysis thus provides insights into the roles of different languages and the power relations between them, as well as into their negotiation as the outcome of a multi-scalar configuration of policies, ideologies and practices across the multiple authorities that organise such an international mega-sporting event.