Linguistic Landscape Studies

Abstract

Linguistic landscape research is an emerging field of applied linguistics. In recent years increasing numbers of researchers have analyzed the texts on signs in public spaces in different sociolinguistic contexts around the world. These contexts are predominantly urban and multilingual. Current research covers a series of innovative empirical and theoretical studies that deal with important themes such as language policy, the spread of English, minority languages, multimodality, and other issues such as language ecology, tourism, graffiti, or economic analysis. Collecting data about the linguistic landscape has become a significant research tool, as well as an important data source for studies of multilingualism. Overall, the various emerging perspectives in linguistic landscape studies are an additional source of information about multilingual and multimodal processes and can deepen our understanding of multilingualism, urban spaces, and language users. Linguistic landscape studies will certainly get more attention in the coming years as the results of several ongoing projects become available. Many questions are still open and there is a need for further data, refinement of methodologies, foundation of theories, and useful applications.