Expanding the Linguistic Landscape

Linguistic Diversity, Multimodality and the Use of Space as a Semiotic Resource

Martin Pütz, Neele-Frederike Mundt

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788922173
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book provides a forum for theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research on language(s), multimodality and public space, which will advance new ways of understanding the sociocultural, ideological and historical role of communication practices and experienced lives in a globalised world. Linguistic Landscape is viewed as a metaphor and expanded to include a wide variety of discursive modalities: imagery, non-verbal communication, silence, tactile and aural communication, graffiti, smell, etc. The chapters in this book cover a range of geographical locations, and capture the history, motives, uses, causes, ideologies, communication practices and conflicts of diverse forms of languages as they may be observed in public spaces of the physical environment. The book is anchored in a variety of theories, methodologies and frameworks, from economics, politics and sociology to linguistics and applied linguistics, literacy and education, cultural geography and human rights.

Part 1

General Issues, Methodology and Linguistic Landscapes as a Pedagogical Resource

1Linguistic Landscape after a Decade: An Overview of Themes, Debates and Future Directions

Elana Shohamy

This chapter surveys the field of linguistic landscape (LL) from its early focus on multilingualism in public spaces. It begins with an overview of the early years of the past decade (2006–2016) and major research findings, activities and publications (annual conferences, edited books, a peer-reviewed journal and publications). It then surveys research findings and activities that have taken place over the past decade according to five (not exhaustive) themes: LL and representations; LL and multimodality; LL in cities, neighbourhoods and entities; LL and contestations in public spaces; and LL and education. The chapter ends with major conclusions, debates, new upcoming topics and prospects for the future.

1.1 Introduction: Conception of a Field

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of the developments in the field of LL over the past decade (2006–2016). Books and papers about languages displayed in public spaces had already been published prior to the start of this decade (e.g. Spolsky & Cooper, 1991, among others). However, it was the publication of the special issue of the Journal of Multilingualism (2006), later published as an edited book (Gorter, 2006), that marked the initiatives taken by a group of scholars who began researching the topic of LL with the goal of documenting multilingualism in public spaces. While languages are spoken and heard, they are also displayed for functional and/or symbolic purposes. Language in public spaces had mostly been overlooked in mainstream research in applied linguistics; however, language displays in public spaces offer rich and stimulating texts that yield multiple interpretations. Examples of such language displays include texts consisting of single French words displayed in Thai orthography in Bangkok, or signs with words such as ‘danger’ or ‘silence’, written in Swedish when people in the area do not speak or read the language. These displays may deliver messages that those who reside in the areas are not welcome and by extension point to the low status of their languages. Thus, the presence of multilingualism in public spaces and the interaction of people with these languages provide rich sociolinguistic information as well as sources for learning new languages and cultures.

The growing attention afforded to LL as a research discipline originated from the increased focus on the environment and ecology in the past decade as well as advances in technologies for documentation such as mobile phones and digital cameras. Furthermore, the emergence of the internet as a vivid space with its multimodal representations of texts, sounds, colour images, music and moving objects expanded the repertoire of diverse, fluid and dynamic texts.

The concept of LL in the early years of the decade built on the research of Landry and Bourhis (1997), who provided the following definition:

The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combine to form the LL of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration. (Landry & Bourhis, 1997: 25)

Although Landry and Bourhis (1997) provided the fundamental definition of LL, their research mainly utilised attitudinal questionnaires to elicit information on people’s views about LL. In contrast, the data that have been elicited in LL research in the past decade documents actual language displays as captured by cameras, yielding photos and more recently also videos.

The research goals of taking and interpreting LL photos were to describe and identify systematic patterns of the presence and absence of languages in public spaces and to understand the motives, pressures, ideologies, reactions and rationales for those signs. For example, in Gorter’s 2006 publication mentioned above, a chapter by Cenoz and Gorter (2006) documented one street in Friesland and one street in San Sebastián in order to examine multilingual patterns of Frisian and Basque in relation to Dutch and Spanish, respectively. In the same publication, Huebner (2006) presented details of his research on hybrids of Thai and English in public spaces in Bangkok by analysing the construction of new unfamiliar words; and Ben Rafael et al. (2006) discussed their documentation of signs, examining the representations of Hebrew, Arabic and English in Israel in areas where Arabs and Jews reside. In these studies, the results provided information that was not hitherto available about language representations, globalisation, vitality, economics and collective identities. The studies showed that while the LL seems random and arbitrary, it is in fact systematic and can be used to identify patterns of behaviours as these are grounded in several theories.

LL research underwent major developments in the early period of 2006–2016, which further expanded the field, with LL emerging as an interdisciplinary area of study anchored in a number of disciplines. LL was anchored in disciplines such as politics, economics, semiotics, gender, sexuality, education, literature, law, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, language policy, language teaching and learning, art, tourism, ethnic studies, immigration and urbanism. The relationship with these disciplines implied that LL research was contextualised in the perspectives of these disciplines. Regarding research methodologies, varied types of research methods and designs, data collection and data analyses were employed and these were grounded in the very disciplines just mentioned, using qualitative and quantitative case studies, ethnography, mixed methods, historical approaches, descriptions, critical discourse analysis and more.

An important question that emerged from these early studies related to whether language representations in public spaces differ significantly from those spoken and heard by individuals. The theoretical construct that emerged from Ben Rafael et al.’s study (2006) referred to LL as a representation of languages in public spaces and pointed to different patterns of behaviour rather than the language proficiency of people in the very languages they used as LL. Thus, it is often the case that store owners may put up a sign in front of their shop in a language they do not know, in order to attract clients or to demonstrate identity. This finding led Ben Rafael et al. (2006: 10) to refer to LL as ‘symbolic construction of the public space’.

LL research over the past decade has become a very dynamic and productive field of study. This is manifested in the long list of activities that have been carried out in the field: ample publications in academic journals, eight edited books and research presentations at major conferences. In addition, an annual international conference (the last one, LL10, took place in Bern, Switzerland in May 2018 and LL11 is planned for 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand). Lastly, a new peer-reviewed journal entitled Linguistic Landscape was launched in 2015 and is now in its fourth volume (Gender, Sexuality and Linguistic Landscapes).

Over the years, a major development in the definition of LL was its expansion beyond written texts displayed in public spaces. This refers to the incorporation of additional components of text types in public spaces, grounded in theories of multi­modality. These text types include displays of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people. In other words, LL can be defined as any display in public spaces which communicates varied types of messages.

1.2 Main Themes

In this part of the chapter, I will report on selected themes that have emerged over the last decade. The choice of themes represents my own interpretation; other researchers may select different ones. A number of themes have been identified to describe the developments in LL research over the past decade. The themes selected here are not exhaustive but nevertheless provide knowledge about the areas of LL research. The list of themes is not chronological but is instead cumulative and represents the interests of researchers in different disciplines. Further information about the themes can be found in various published books, as papers in the journal Linguistic Landscape and in other sources. The chapters included in the edited books had previously been presented at the annual international LL conferences or at local conferences. These edited books include Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009); Linguistic Landscape in the City (Shohamy et al., 2010); Linguistic Landscapes, Multilingualism and Social Change (Hélot et al., 2012); Minority Languages in the Linguistic Landscape (Gorter et al., 2012) and Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes (Blackwood et al., 2016). Additional books addressing specific LL research are published in Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image and Space (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010); Occupy (Martin Rojo, 2014), Linguistic Landscapes: A Comparative Study of Urban Multilingualism in Tokyo (Backhaus, 2007), Linguistic Landscapes in the Netherlands: A Study of Multilingualism in Amsterdam and Friesland (Edelman, 2010) and The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography (Lou, 2016); these books may categorise LLs differently (see also Shohamy, 2012).

1.2.1 Theme 1: LL and representations

The theme that reflects the early research on LL in the first half of the decade relates to the representations of different languages in public spaces. Such research involved the collection of representative samples of LL items in public spaces, followed by quantitative statistical analyses comparing the frequency of the appearance of the languages according to a number of parameters and mostly pointing to levels of diversity. Most of the data in this category consists of signs on shops, public buildings and public institutions such as religious, governmental, municipal, cultural, educational and medical institutions, and also announcements, street names, business signs, wanted ads and so on. The sampling of the data in many of these studies differentiated between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ signs, which refers to LL items displayed by governmental institutions and corporations (top-down) vs. those initiated by individuals on their shops (bottom-up) (Ben Rafael et al., 2006).

The findings were then interpreted in terms of various theories, depending on the very discipline from which the study originated, such as sociology, language policy, linguistics, tourism and so on. For example, in Ben Rafael et al. (2006), the theoretical interpretations originated from language and social conflicts between Arabs and Jews. The findings were interpreted in terms of theories of globalisation related to market principles and choice of rationale with regard to English, and collective and national identities theories related to Arabic and Hebrew.

Many of the studies in this theme were published in the book Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009)...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Contributors
• Multilingualism, Multimodality and Methodology: Linguistic Landscape Research in the Context of Assemblages, Ideologies and (In)visibility: An Introduction
• Part 1: General Issues, Methodology and Linguistic Landscapes as a Pedagogical Resource
• Part 2: Broadening the Field of Semiotic Landscapes: Semiotic Assemblages, Multimodality and Contemporary Urban Spaces
• Part 3: Expanding Linguistic Landscape Studies: Power Relations, Acts of Resilience and Diachronic Changes
• Index