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Volume 11, Issue 1, 2025
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‘Dear guest, pay for your language’. How accommodation rating and ownership effect language presence on the Online Linguistic Landscape
Author(s): Antonio Bruyèl-Olmedopp.: 1–31 (31)More LessAbstractThe present paper draws on the concept of Online Linguistic Landscape (Kallen, Ní Dhonnacha & Wade, 2020) to explore code preference on hospitality websites at international tourist destinations. The analysis of a purpose-made database comprising the websites of all 254 accommodation establishments in Palma (Mallorca, Spain) reveals that although major tourist markets condition code presence on websites, the wide array of languages displayed does not correspond to the narrower catalogue of visiting nationalities. Beyond the strictly informative, websites have become effective promotion and sales tools, and marketability derived from vogue associations may mean that a language is listed on a website, even when other, more frequent guest languages are not. The scant online presence of Catalan, the autochthonous language of Mallorca, illustrates how, in mass tourism environments, minority languages are at the crossroads of succumbing to the demands of the market or submitting to processes of commodification of uncertain outcome.
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Garbage day as dispositive and semiotic landscape
Author(s): Alessandro Pellandapp.: 32–46 (15)More LessAbstractFor many, garbage day functions as a mundane performance of civic and even national selfhood; yet garbage days are also practices with complex spatial and semiotic entanglements. To demonstrate this, I present a visual essay which draws on an ethnographically informed study of garbage day in five Swiss cities. At the intersection of semiotic landscape studies and dispositive analysis, these banal practices constitute biopolitical forms of governance and control. In this setting, waste reveals itself as a language-material formation; this interplay of words — both visible and invisible — and things is central to the distinct meanings and practices of wasting. Rather than approaching garbage bags as passive receptacles or neutral technologies, therefore, they are best understood as performative regimes by which waste is displaced, public space is ordered, and particular subjectivities are produced.
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Family language policy and the design of homescape in transnational families
Author(s): Nanfei Wang and Yin Yupp.: 47–75 (29)More LessAbstractBuilding upon previous research on family language policy, this study explores the homescape, pertinent to the Chinese home literacy environment within Chinese transnational families. It categorizes various forms of Chinese literacy homescape and examines parental perspectives and agency in the design, creation, and adaptation of the homescape within their households. The study draws on ethnographic data from four Chinese-speaking families residing in France and Germany. Data includes sound recordings of family interactions, photographs, in-depth interviews and field notes from discussions with family members. Adopting the lens of ethnographic Linguistic Landscape, the study categorizes the Chinese literacy homescape into four sensory modalities: highly visible, semi-visible, soundscape, and digital and interactive. Findings reveal that parents employ highly strategic and agentic approaches when designing the Chinese literacy homescape, demonstrating their keen awareness of the unique characteristics of the Chinese writing system and the specific challenges their children face when learning to read Chinese.
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An ethnographic Linguistic Landscape analysis of a Berlin street market
Author(s): İrem Duman Çakırpp.: 76–102 (27)More LessAbstractThis study investigates the diverse Maybachufer Market in Berlin using an ethnographic Linguistic Landscape (LL) analysis that integrates quantitative and qualitative approaches. The paper focuses on the complex interplay between social dynamics at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels and language use in this multilingual and multiethnic urban space. The market signs mirror social and spatial settings and relevant language attitudes. The linguistic choices are shaped by and oriented towards (1) national language ideologies despite the multilingual and multiethnic environment; (2) dominant market languages; and (3) commercial gain, targeting specific customers and enhancing marketing strategies. By focusing on language attitudes and language use on market signs, this paper provides insights into the semiotic relevance of signs, societal language ideologies, and local communicative practices in multiethnic urban settings, contributing to the broader discourse on societal multilingualism and the benefits of ethnographic LL analyses in capturing the essence of diverse urban spaces.
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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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