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Abstract
Central for this paper is the assumption that the Linguistic Landscape is a complex phenomenon that provides an insight not only into practices of symbolic place-making of communities but also into the relation between place, language, and belonging. According to Tietz (2002), a community is based on shared norms and attitudes, a collectively binding horizon of values and understanding which also mark the boundaries of a community. Starting from these considerations, we will explore processes of community ma(r)king in the Ruhr Metropolis, Germany, drawing on data collected in the interdisciplinary research project Metropolenzeichen/Signs of the Metropolis (Ziegler et al., 2018). Our multi-method approach combines data of geocoded digital photographs (N = 25,504) with metalinguistic data collected in on-site interviews (N = 180) and telephone interviews (N = 1,000) to gain a deeper insight into the formation of communities in the Linguistic Landscape of the Ruhr Metropolis.