Fluxus Editions

Abstract. In the course of the last two decades, the linguistic landscape, that is, the display of written language in public places, has become an object of investigation, which is now recognised as a branch of Sociolinguistics. This is remarkable because since its inception, Sociolinguistics, much like structural linguistics, has always had an oral bias and paid relatively little attention to writing, which was often seen as a mere representation of speech. In fact, written language is a branch of human communication with great social significance. In this lecture, I will show that linguistic landscaping is a political issue with many economic and cultural aspects, which upon inspection reveal much about how a society is constituted. At the same time, the linguistic landscape is a repository of history that is often contested. Using examples from various contexts in Asia and Europe, I will show how and why language displayed in public texts may become and often is subject to legal restrictions designed to proscribe or, in the contrary, promote the visibility of languages in the public domain. Language, in writing as well as in speech, is always embedded in social practice. This is only pointing out the obvious. However, I will try to show that the linguistic landscape also makes for a good starting point with regard to foreign language education.

References References in BIB How to cite How to cite in BIB

Florian Coulmas (2024), “The Linguistic Landscape: What we can learn from it,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 11, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 1–14.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla11-coul,
   AUTHOR = {Florian Coulmas},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{The Linguistic Landscape: What we can learn from it}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {11},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2024},
   PAGES = {1--14},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-coul},
}