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- Volume 7, Issue 1, 2021
Linguistic Landscape - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2021
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2021
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Jan Blommaert, linguistic landscapes and complexity
Author(s): Alastair Pennycookpp.: 2–5 (4)More LessAbstractThis tribute to the work of Jan Blommaert discusses his complex relation with the field of linguistic landscape studies. Blommaert was interested in the insights an understanding of the linguistic landscape could bring to better appreciate the ways people lived their diverse lives. This appreciation of the importance of his work focuses on his insistence on ethnographic work in order to understand complexity.
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Multilingualism in Mauritius
Author(s): A Mooznah Auleear Owodally and Swaleha Peeroopp.: 6–36 (31)More LessAbstractWhile the internet facilitates communication and interaction between businesses and customers, social media platforms afford both of them opportunities to co-construct information online. These meeting points between businesses and customers, which are then displayed online, constitute a virtual linguistic servicescape showcasing their language practices. This study focuses on the Facebook pages of three fast-food outlets in multilingual Mauritius – where Kreol and French are commonly spoken, and English and French are widely written – with the aim to investigate the language choices made and displayed in the virtual linguistic servicescape. Using non-participant online observation, data were collected over three months and analysed as ‘text’ (Androutsopoulos, 2014). The data reveal the co-occurrence of local languages in the actors’ language practices, with minimal use of Kreol. These practices reinforce existing local language and literacy ideologies, while also disturbing, if only but slightly, long-entrenched ideologies about written Kreol.
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Homescape
Author(s): Nettie Boivinpp.: 37–59 (23)More LessAbstractThis article presents the redefined concept of the homescape as space where transnational, newly arrived, and settled families can provide agency for their identity framing through multisensory discourse resources. The study investigated the experiential, non-interactional multisensory discourse resources in the homescape. The homescape extends from the Linguistic Landscape and houses temporal and spatial components, which occur over time. The yearlong ethnographic case study of three Nepalese families (two transmigrant Ghurkha families and one immigrant family) included 150 hours of observational data triangulated with qualitative interviews. The study posed two questions: How do transmigrant and transnational families find capacity for agency in the homescape? How do families use experiential multisensory discourse resources embedded in homescape to facilitate identity framing? Findings highlighted that experiential multisensory discourse resources are threads of identity in the home that have yet to be fully recognized as research evidence by ethnographers in the home context.
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Sitting on the fence
Author(s): Colin Symespp.: 60–85 (26)More LessAbstractAnalysis of the Linguistic Landscape of schools has by and large concentrated on that in classrooms rather than that mounted on their boundaries, on their perimeter architecture. In the last decade, this architecture has become a rich site for semiotic expression, where schools project not just their own brand but also that of enterprises that sponsor and support them. Following an extensive analysis of the advertisements, signs, and banners around schools located in the inner-west of Sydney, Australia, this paper argues that their presence is emblematic of the neo-liberalist imperatives that now impel education and that is evident in the need for government schools to bolster their income streams and student enrolments. Hence comes the pressure for schools to advertise their qualities and attraction to their communities using a range of semiotic devices, including electronic message boards.
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Memories and semiotic resources in place-making
Author(s): Nhan Phanpp.: 86–115 (30)More LessAbstractThis paper explores how semiotic resources are used to build individuals’ place-making during a walk around the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam. Using Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad as the perceived, the lived and the conceived, the paper uses a case study of a local participant and myself to consider how our differing perspectives affect place-making. I show how the local resident makes meaning using perceived resources in the here-and-now as backdrops for the lived, presented via his recounting of memories of activity spaces. I then contrast how these memories differ from the researcher’s place-making, where the conceived affects how I perceive the significance of visual resources on signs in the here-and-now. The study shows the value of Lefebvre’s (1991) triad for explaining the conflicting generalisations researchers have made about the nature of what is seen in the linguistic landscape or about the roles played by linguistic landscape in defining place.
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Making scents of the landscape
Author(s): Alastair Pennycook and Emi Otsuji
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Translanguaging and linguistic landscapes
Author(s): Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz
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Skinscapes
Author(s): Amiena Peck and Christopher Stroud
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