The critical turn in LL

Abstract

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.

Snapshots of the Balkans through ethnographic investigation of the linguistic landscape

“…More recent work has taken this ethnographic perspective still further (Blommaert & Maly 2014;Stroud & Jegels 2014;Blommaert & De Fina 2015;Kitis & Milani 2015;Blommaert 2016) to such an extent that specialists in the field have started talking of 'second wave LL research'. This point is also made in the recently launched journal Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal (Barni & Bagna 2015;Shohamy & Ben-Rafael 2015). According to Blommaert & Maly, [while] earlier quantitative LL research yielded useful indicative 'catalogues' of areal multilingualism, it failed to explain how the presence of the presence and distribution of languages could be connected with populations and communities and the relationship between them, or with the patterns of social interaction in which people engage in the particular space.…”

Chronotopeography

“…Initial documentation and analysis of LL dynamics involved quantitative-based methods, counting the presence of various semiotic variables on signs to discuss LL components and their relationships (Cenoz and Gorter, 2006;Landry and Bourhis, 1997). While such methods have been critiqued for potential risk of overgeneralization in the assignment of quantifiable categories (Barni and Bagna, 2010;Blommaert and Maly, 2014), current scholarship has encouraged the development of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, both separately and in tandem, to explore the complexities of LL contexts (Amos, 2016;Barni and Bagna, 2015;Blackwood, 2015;Lyons and Rodriguez, 2015).…”

Chinatown by numbers

“…As such, the relationships between languages throughout the space -their comparative distribution, their varied use in multiple contexts, and their concentration in specific places or types of place -are not experimentally quantifiable. On the one hand, there is evidence that empirical surveys illuminate important trends in the LL (Barni & Bagna, 2015;Blackwood & Tufi, 2015); on the other, there is a growing feeling that the quantitative arm of the field is too reliant on generalist categories, which only scratch the surface of the diverse complexities that construct the LL (Blommaert & Maly, 2014: 3;Laihonen, 2015: 195;Weber & Horner, 2012: 179). Amongst the volatile debates surrounding this methodological question, this article aims to demonstrate the value of amalgamating both approaches.…”