Linguistic Landscapes, Digital Payment Discourse, and Urban Multilingualism: A Comparative Semiotic Analysis of Cashless Communication in Tokyo and Stockholm

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructures has transformed urban communication, multilingual public signage, and semiotic organization within contemporary cities. This study comparatively investigates how cashless payment systems reshape linguistic landscapes and communicative practices in Tokyo and Stockholm as two technologically advanced but socio-culturally distinct urban environments. Drawing upon linguistic landscape studies, multimodal discourse analysis, and urban sociolinguistics, the article analyzes 14,600 photographed public signs, digital transaction interfaces, multilingual payment notices, and institutional communication materials collected between 2023 and 2025. The findings indicate that Tokyo’s payment discourse environment prioritizes informational density, multilingual accommodation, and institutional politeness, whereas Stockholm’s communicative system emphasizes minimalist design, procedural efficiency, and digital self-service ideology. The comparative evidence demonstrates that cashless communication systems function not merely as economic technologies but as socio-semiotic infrastructures organizing linguistic visibility, urban inclusion, and public interaction. AI-assisted translation, QR-code communication, app-based transaction systems, and platformized consumer interfaces increasingly shape multilingual accessibility and communicative participation in public space. This article argues that digital payment discourse transforms urban multilingualism through the interaction of technological mediation, institutional language policy, and socio-cultural norms governing public interaction. The study contributes to contemporary linguistics scholarship by proposing the concept of transactional multilingualism to explain how digital economic infrastructures restructure communicative inclusion, linguistic authority, and urban semiotic organization.