Narrating Chicago Chinatown: Language, Power, and Urban Belonging

This thesis investigates how the bilingual linguistic landscape (LL) of Chicago's Chinatown constructs Chinese American identity and reflects broader structures of marginalization and power. Through qualitative content analysis of 274 signs, the study reveals how language in public space enacts symbolic boundaries, consolidates community identity, and mediates access and visibility. Signage related to public services and cultural heritage fosters intra-community cohesion, while bilingual signs produced by businesses and government entities often reinforce linguistic hierarchies and racialized surveillance. Drawing on David Harvey's dialectical approach to urbanization, the thesis argues that Chinatown is both shaped by and shaping processes of exclusion, resistance, and identity formation. The LL emerges as a site of ideological struggle where space, language, and power intersect.