Linguistic Landscape: Most Cited Articles http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/22149961?TRACK=RSS Please follow the links to view the content. LL research as expanding language and language policy http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.09sho?TRACK=RSS The paper theorizes languages in public spaces in a broad framework consisting of multiple components beyond written texts in public spaces. These include among others, visuals, sounds, movements, gestures, history, politics, location, people, bodies, all embedded in the dimensions offered by Lefebvre (1991) of spaces as practiced, conceived and lived. Relating to Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a mechanism of Language Policy (LP), the paper frames LL within current theories of LP which focus on ‘engaged language policy’ (Davis, 2014) reflecting and cultivating language practice as used by communities. The paper shows how LL is instrumental in contributing to the broadening of the theory and practice of LP, a discipline that has been mostly overlooked by LP. The studies show how language in public space was used for the revival of Hebrew in Palestine, for documentation of multilingualism in specific areas where different groups reside, for realizing that LP in public spaces is broader than written language showing how multimodalities are essential for making meaning of spaces, for discovering the wealth of LL devices used for contestations in the city, and for examining local policies in neighborhoods. Finally, the engagement of high school students with documentation of LL in their neigborhoods was found to have a real impact on LP awareness and activism. Elana Shohamy Fri Jun 19 14:05:32 UTC 2015Z Translanguaging and linguistic landscapes http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.04gor?TRACK=RSS In this article we discuss the concept of translanguaging in relation to a holistic view of linguistic landscapes that goes beyond the analysis of individual signs. On the one hand, we look at instances of multilingual signage as a combination of linguistic resources. On the other hand, at the neighborhood level the individual signs combine, alternate and mix to shape linguistic landscapes as a whole. We expand our “Focus on Multilingualism” approach from school settings to the multilingual cityscape. One bookshop and its surrounding neighborhoods in Donostia-San Sebastián illustrate how readers navigate between languages and go across linguistic borders. Through translanguaging we foreground the co-occurrence of different linguistic forms, signs and modalities. At the level of neighborhood emerges the space in which translanguaging goes outside the scope of single signs and separate languages. We conclude that translanguaging is an approach to linguistic landscapes that takes the study of multilingualism forward. Durk Gorter and Jasone Cenoz Fri Jun 19 14:05:28 UTC 2015Z Making scents of the landscape http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.3.01pen?TRACK=RSS Moving away from logocentric studies of the linguistic landscape, this paper explores the relations between linguascapes and smellscapes. Often regarded as the least important of our senses, smell is an important means by which we relate to place. Based on an olfactory ethnography of a multicultural suburb in Sydney, we show how the intersection of people, objects, activities and senses make up the spatial repertoire of a place. We thus take a broad view of the semiotic landscape, including more than the visual and the intentional, and suggest that we are interpellated by smells as part of a broader relation to space and place. Understanding the semiotics of the urban smellscape in associational terms, we therefore argue not merely that smell has generally been overlooked in semiotic landscapes, nor that this can be rectified by an expanded inventory of sensory signs, but rather that the interpellative and associational roles of smells invite us towards an alternative semiotics of time and place. Alastair Pennycook and Emi Otsuji Mon Dec 07 12:05:24 UTC 2015Z Skinscapes http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.08pec?TRACK=RSS The paper argues for extending linguistic landscape studies to also encompass the body as a corporeal landscape, or ‘moving discursive locality’. We articulate this point within a narrative of a developing field of landscape studies that is increasingly attentive to the mobility and materiality of spatialized semiotics as performative, that is, as partially determining of how we come to understand ourselves ‘in place’. Taking Cape Town’s tattooing culture as an illustration, we unpack the idea of ‘the human subject as an entrepreneur of the self, as author of his or her being in the world’ (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012: 23), by using a phenomenological methodology to explore the materiality of the body as a mobile and dynamic space of inscribed spatialized identities and historical power relations. Specifically, we focus on: how tattooed bodies sculpt future selves and imagined spaces, the imprint they leave behind in the lives of five participants in the study and ultimately the creation of bodies that matter in time and place. The paper will conclude with a discussion of what studies of corporeal landscapes may contribute to a broader field of linguistic landscape studies. Amiena Peck and Christopher Stroud Fri Jun 19 14:05:27 UTC 2015Z Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.06mal?TRACK=RSS In the context of increasing interest in the linguistic landscape as a site of language and literacy learning, this paper outlines a conceptual framework for joining recent innovations in LL theory and methodology with pedagogical practice in second and foreign language education. After a review of current approaches to teaching the linguistic forms, cultural messages, and political actions realized in the linguistic landscape, a spatialized perspective based upon the principle of thirdness is proposed as a way for learners to explore, contrast, and reflect upon multiple meanings in the LL. Specifically, the paper adapts methodological innovations in Trumper-Hecht (2010) and other recent research by reinterpreting Henri Lefebvre’s triadic paradigm of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces for the language classroom, such that teachers and learners can design nuanced, multilayered investigations of discourses in place. As qualitative methods cast new light on questions of subjectivity, materiality, and change in the linguistic landscape, it is argued, linguistic landscape research offers valuable tools for pedagogical application, even as language learners open up new interpretive spaces for research. David Malinowski Fri Jun 19 14:05:18 UTC 2015Z The critical turn in LL: New methodologies and new items in LL http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.01bar?TRACK=RSS The present paper aims to reflect on the development of research in LL, to analyze its role and aims, and in particular to offer a critical discussion of the methods and tools used to collect and interpret data. Our analysis intends to highlight that LL studies have expanded since the flagship study by Landry and Bourhis (1997). The objects, methods, and tools of analysis in LL have changed in order to satisfy different research goals, to describe specific aspects of LL, and to interpret and understand the public space with different and often interdisciplinary approaches — semiotic, sociological, political, geographical, economic. Starting from our research on immigrant languages in Italy and from the existing literature, our objective here is to describe how both methodologies and objects of analysis have developed over the years. Monica Barni and Carla Bagna Fri Jun 19 14:05:29 UTC 2015Z LL explorations and methodological challenges: Analysing France’s regional languages http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.03bla?TRACK=RSS The methodologies employed over these first years of LL research have evolved rapidly in several different directions, although quantitative and/or qualitative approaches have guided most published scholarship thus far. The quantitative approach has come to be reduced in one particular narrative to the counting of signs, whilst qualitative research is portrayed as permitting analysis of a selection of signs from which wider conclusions can be drawn. Using an on-going project into France’s regional languages in the LL, this article argues that a symbiotic approach is essential for contributing to discussions on language revitalization in the public space. Whilst quantitative data collection contextualizes language use, a subsequent qualitative examination, along several vectors, avoids impressionistic conclusions about the correlation between visibility and vitality. We contend here that this dual approach permits cross-referencing across space and time in ways not possible by adopting one or other methodology on its own. Robert Blackwood Fri Jun 19 14:05:32 UTC 2015Z Linguistic landscapes in an era of multiple globalizations http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.02ben?TRACK=RSS This paper focuses on linguistic landscapes in present-day urban settings. These spaces consist of numberless establishments riddled with versatile texts or ‘LL items’. They are foci of both the development of globalization that conquers the world through commercial globe-encompassing networks, and of massive migrations from underprivileged countries to privileged ones. In each such city, one distinguishes major ‘downtowns’ and secondary ones in neighbourhoods, whose variety reflects a complex composition. LL investigations help understand how far and in what ways dissonant cleavages divide the public space. Chaos is the rule in this urban landscape, but where it illustrates some permanence and recurrence, it becomes familiar and the feeling of disorder may leave room for a notion of gestalt. Turning from here to the empirical investigation of LLs in Brussels, Berlin, and Tel-Aviv, we ask, as far as LLs can say: (1) if globalization causes the weakening of allegiances to all-societal symbols in favour of supra-national ones; (2) if migratory movements toward megapolises express themselves in the creation of segregated LLs or, on the contrary, indicate some ‘melting’ tendencies of the new populations into society’s mainstream; and (3) to what extent these questions elicit the same answers in different places or contribute to different configurations. Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael Fri Jun 19 14:05:19 UTC 2015Z The performativity of the body: Turbulent spaces in Greece http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.3.04kit?TRACK=RSS This article explores the “performativity of the body” (Butler, 2011) using ‘anarchic’ and ‘anti-authoritarian’ protests in Greece as empirical starting points. We analyze the ways in which bodies speak politically by producing spatial turbulence in interaction with other bodies, and the materiality of urban environments. In doing so, we seek to contribute to the expansion of linguistic landscape scholarship into what Peck and Stroud (2015) call corporeal sociolinguistics. Our analysis of platform events (supermarket expropriations, smashing of CCTV-cameras, inscriptions of urban surfaces) and confrontational encounters (bloc formations, “dous”) illustrates spatial and affective tactics through which bodies in movement contest economic and political arrangements by appropriating, re-configuring and re-signifying sections of urban spaces. E. Dimitris Kitis and Tommaso M. Milani Mon Dec 07 12:05:28 UTC 2015Z Why diachronicity matters in the study of linguistic landscapes http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ll.1.1-2.07pav?TRACK=RSS It is commonly argued that the proliferation of urban writing known as linguistic landscapes represents “a thoroughly contemporary global trend” (Coupland, 2010: 78). The purpose of this paper is to show that linguistic landscapes are by no means modern phenomena and to draw on our shared interest in multilingual empires to highlight the importance of diachronic inquiry and productive dialog between sociolinguists of modern and ancient societies. We will argue that while signs do operate in aggregate, the common focus on all signs at a single point in time on one street is problematic because the interpretation of signs is diachronic in nature, intrinsically linked to the preceding signs in the same environment and to related signs elsewhere, and the process of reading “back from signs to practices to people” (Blommaert, 2013: 51) is not as unproblematic as it is sometimes made to look. Aneta Pavlenko and Alex Mullen Fri Jun 19 14:05:23 UTC 2015Z