Linguistic Landscape

Annotated Bibliography on the topic of Linguistic Landscape

For my research, I choose the topic of Linguistic landscape. I have met with this concept during my studies and I found it really interesting so I decided to do some further research in this area. My main interest is the linguistic landscape of certain cities. I have made one on my hometown and Budapest as well, but I wanted some more articles dealing with various cities. I choose three articles for my research that are exploring three different cities. The first one is, written by Seyer, discussing a project set in Mexico. Another article about the linguistic landscape, written by Wolf, is a case study set in Hong Kong and the third article is an empirical study about the linguistic landscape of Strasbourg.

Seyer, P. (2010). Using the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical resource. ELT Journal Volume 64/2, 143-153.

Seyer introduces the term linguistic landscape in his article and then discusses and concludes a small-scale research project in this area. The project was set in a local EFL community analyzing the social meanings of public signs. The setting is Oaxaca, Mexico where English has a status and it is popular for all ages. He gives many examples and uses photographs throughout the paper to make the research more understandable. He studies the meanings of the street signs and identifies six different social meanings represented on them. The aim of this research was to investigate how teachers can use this landscape or similar methods to integrate English from the street to the classrooms. Seyer lists some more activities to connect classroom to the streets. All in all, this paper presents the innovative ways people use the language. For my research it was highly useful because it explained the different meanings associated to the signs.

Wolf, Hans-Georg. (2012). English in the Linguistic Landscape of Hong Kong: A Case Study of Shop Signs and Linguistic Competence. (Unpublished M.A. thesis). University of Potsdam, Potsdam.

This article also clarifies the concept of linguistic landscape. It gives an overview on the theories and models. He mentions some case studies as an illustration. Wolf also gives some instructions how to analyze a linguistic landscape. In the second part of this article he gives background information on the place where he conducted the research, which was Hong Kong. There is a great emphasis on the linguistic situation of the area. The purpose of this research was to discover how a linguistic landscape might serve as a tool to broaden the view of culture and language intertwined. At the end, he presents the findings and the date of the research. By the end of the work, it was proved that English is present in the linguistic landscape of Hong Kong. The article was useful for me as introduced certain tools of making a linguistic landscape.

Shohamy, E., Ben-Rafael, E., Barni, M. (2010). Linguistic Landscape In The City. Multilingual Matters, 275-291.

The article is about an empirical study of the linguistic landscape of Strasbourg. It is closely connected to sociolinguistics, so some issues are discussed from this field as well. The research wants to explore multilingualism in the city by analyzing the relationship between languages on social and symbolic level. This article, similarly to the other two, helped me to discover the area more deeply and to conclude my own linguistic landscape.