scholarly journals The linguistic landscape: enhancing multiliteracies through decoding signs in public spaces

Author(s):  
Margarita Vinagre

What is it? The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new field which draws from several disciplines such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural geography. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997), “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (p. 25). More recently, the type of signs that can be found in the public space has broadened to include the language on T-shirts, stamp machines, football banners, postcards, menus, products, tattoos, and graffiti. Despite this wider variety of signs, Landry and Bourhis’s (1997) definition still captures the essence of the LL, which is multimodal (signs combine visual, written, and sometimes audible data) and can also incorporate the use of multiple languages (multilingual).

1970 ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
MAGDALENA STECIĄG ◽  
ANNA KARMOWSKA

The aim of the article is to analyse the linguistic landscape of the Polish-Czech borderland with particular emphasis placed on the number and hierarchy of languages existing in the public space. A static study will be carried out i.e. a study of the language(s) of public road signs, names of streets and squares, public-access buildings, signs on businesses and shops, hoardings etc. The research material comes from two small towns: Duszniki Zdrój in Poland and Hronov in the Czech Republic, both aspiring to become local tourist centres. The global vs. local opposition is of importance to the assumptions made in the study because the language will be regarded as a local practice (Pennycock, 2010). In conclusion, the study will examine the thesis that the local linguistic landscape is a testimony to a transition from a monolingual paradigm towards a “post-monolingual condition” (Yildiz, 2012). It will also be very interesting to find out which configuration of the languages can be considered sustainable in terms of the area’s multilingual nature.


Author(s):  
Samia Tahir ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin

very new and fresh area where scholarly world is focusing its attention on is linguistic landscape. Linguistic landscape is ‘the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, place names, street names, commercial shop signs and public signs on government buildings of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration’ (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p.25). Linguistic landscape can be taken as observing the minute words present in the public space in the bigger picture of the landscape of an urban area. It is becoming an interesting phenomenon to uncover social realities. It can be used to observe and analyze the changing trends and discourses in a given territory. Research on linguistic landscape started in late 1970s and sped its pace from the year 2006 onwards and now has become a proper field of study in applied linguistics, having a total of more than three hundred research papers to date. Linguistic landscape has been used to analyze jargons and register of different types of institutions for example, a hospital, a disco club, a restaurant or a Church etc. It has been used to analyze the semiotics of a particular area. The study of linguistic landscape has shown which languages are popular in one area and which are getting abandoned in another area. It has also focused on the negative attitudes of people related to one language and positive perceptions linked with another language. This conceptual paper will trace its history and reach conclusions on how this thriving field of study can be further extended.


Author(s):  
Felix Banda

Although the volume was published in 2010, it still remains one of the most important contributions to a new field of enquiry in the study of language and signage in public spaces initially conceptualised and institutionalised by Landry and Bourhis (1997) as linguistic landscapes (LL). They defined linguistic landscapes as “[t]he language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combine to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (p. 25). As the title of the volume suggests, the aim was to extend the study to consider other semiotic material in place rather than linguistic ones alone. Jaworski and Thurlow prefer the term semiotic landscapes to LL to account for the fact that descriptions of space are not just about language, image and space, but more so about how interlocutors engage with semiotic material including objects in place.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Macalister

Timor-Leste is a nation where three exogenous languages (Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia, English) and one of many endogenous languages (Tetun) compete to be heard in public spaces. The constitution names both Tetun and Portuguese as co-official languages, and English and Bahasa Indonesia as working languages in the civil service; but official and de facto language policy are not necessarily the same. One mechanism that can mediate between ideology and practice, both as a way of imposing and of resisting official policy, is language in the public space. This paper demonstrates the insights that examining language in the public space can provide on language policy debates. It reports on the investigation of a linguistic landscape in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, and finds considerable difference between official language policy and language practices.


English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Songqing Li

The concept of linguistic landscape (LL) covers all of the linguistic objects that mark the public space, i.e. any written sign one observes from road signs to advertising billboards, to the names of shops, streets or schools (Landry & Bourhis, 1997). Because it both shapes and is shaped by social and cultural associations (Ben-Rafael, 2009; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 6–23), the LL has proved an important area for investigating the dynamics of major aspects of social life (e.g. Backhaus, 2006; Huebner, 2006; Curtin, 2009; Lado, 2011; Papen, 2012). One strand of this research is particularly concerned with the role of LL in relation to ethnolinguistic vitality that ‘makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup relations’ (Giles, Bourhis & Taylor, 1977: 308). The higher the vitality an ethnolinguistic group enjoys, the more it will be able to use language so as to survive and thrive as a collective entity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102
Author(s):  
Adil Moustaoui

Abstract This article examines the use of Moroccan Arabic (MA) in the new Linguistic Landscape (LL) in Morocco, and in particular in the city of Meknés, in a new neighbourhood known as (حمرية) Hamriya or La Ville Nouvelle. In particular, the ways in which current socio-economic transformations produce new spaces of communications are explored, highlighting the extent to which MA is used in urban public spaces as new linguistic practices. In turn, the increasing visibility of MA in the LL and its subsequent nourishing of hybrid practices are discussed. The data points to a re-semiotisation of space in a Moroccan linguistic regime historically characterized by a well-established linguistic hierarchy. Ultimately, the use of MA creates new language practices and policies that resist and transform the sociolinguistic regime which is analysed here by a close examination of linguistic variation in Arabic in the public space.


Author(s):  
Ida Ayu Made Puspani ◽  

The discussion of signpost belongs to the area of linguistic landscape. This area is frequently related to the other fields of study namely Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics or Historical Linguistics. One of its topics is studying the naming of objects in public space (Ben-Rafael, Shohamy, et al. 2006). According to Landry & Bourchis (1997) signpost will shape the language condition in a particular surrounding. This idea is applied in a place called Nusa Penida Island which is located in the Province of Bali. As a tourist destination, more than one languages are involved in the writing of the signpost there. The multiple languages used and the way they are put in order show the perception of the people towards those languages. Will Gorter’s (2012) idea saying that nowadays monolingual signposts are rarely found turn to be true? This research on name place has been done in Nusa Penida. The data was taken from various signposts related to tourist destination found there. The purpose of this article is to present (1) how the people in Nusa Penida, Bali create their signposts to support their increasing tourism, (2) the purposes behind the creation of the signpost. The result of the research presents that most of the signposts in Nusa Penida are presented in more than one language (script) which reflects their desire to serve tourism well or to show hospitality and at the same time to show their loyalty to their identity as Balinese people.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
David Jenkins ◽  
Lipin Ram

Public space is often understood as an important ‘node’ of the public sphere. Typically, theorists of public space argue that it is through the trust, civility and openness to others which citizens cultivate within a democracy’s public spaces, that they learn how to relate to one another as fellow members of a shared polity. However, such theorizing fails to articulate how these democratic comportments learned within public spaces relate to the public sphere’s purported role in holding state power to account. In this paper, we examine the ways in which what we call ‘partisan interventions’ into public space can correct for this gap. Using the example of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), we argue that the ways in which CPIM partisans actively cultivate sites of historical regional importance – such as in the village of Kayyur – should be understood as an aspect of the party’s more general concern to present itself to citizens as an agent both capable and worthy of wielding state power. Drawing on histories of supreme partisan contribution and sacrifice, the party influences the ideational background – in competition with other parties – against which it stakes its claims to democratic legitimacy. In contrast to those theorizations of public space that celebrate its separateness from the institutions of formal democratic politics and the state more broadly, the CPIM’s partisan interventions demonstrate how parties’ locations at the intersections of the state and civil society can connect the public sphere to its task of holding state power to account, thereby bringing the explicitly political questions of democratic legitimacy into the everyday spaces of a political community.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4577
Author(s):  
Carmela Cucuzzella ◽  
Morteza Hazbei ◽  
Sherif Goubran

This paper explores how design in the public realm can integrate city data to help disseminate the information embedded within it and provide urban opportunities for knowledge exchange. The hypothesis is that such art and design practices in public spaces, as places of knowledge exchange, may enable more sustainable communities and cities through the visualization of data. To achieve this, we developed a methodology to compare various design approaches for integrating three main elements in public-space design projects: city data, specific issues of sustainability, and varying methods for activating the data. To test this methodology, we applied it to a pedogeological project where students were required to render city data visible. We analyze the proposals presented by the young designers to understand their approaches to design, data, and education. We study how they “educate” and “dialogue” with the community about sustainable issues. Specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How can we use data in the design of public spaces as a means for sustainability knowledge exchange in the city? (2) How can community-based design contribute to innovative data collection and dissemination for advancing sustainability in the city? (3) What are the overlaps between the projects’ intended impacts and the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Our findings suggest that there is a need for such creative practices, as they make information available to the community, using unconventional methods. Furthermore, more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term outcomes of these works in the public realm.


Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.


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