Multilingualism In Public Spaces

Advocates of multilingualism are always seeking new ways to articulate the advantages inherent in living out life in more than one language. This volume brings together researchers from across Europe to explore sociolinguistic perspectives on multilingualism, with specific emphasis on identity, diversity, and social cohesion, as they focus explicitly on the potential of this phenomenon to empower individuals, groups, and communities. Positioned around the idea of empowerment, this book explores the potential of multilingualism to overcome divisions and build social cohesion. In particular, chapters discuss how multilingualism can help the individual to become critically conscious and to develop an in-depth understanding of the world, while also benefiting society as whole. Understanding 'public space' in broad terms, including domains such as education, online, and the linguistic landscape, this volume explores how multilingualism can empower people from a range of perspectives, including memorialisation, onomastics, direct action, linguistic rights, migration, and educational play.

Advocates of multilingualism are always seeking new ways to articulate the advantages inherent in living out life in more than one language. This volume brings together researchers from across Europe to explore sociolinguistic perspectives on multilingualism, with specific emphasis on identity, diversity, and social cohesion, as they focus explicitly on the potential of this phenomenon to empower individuals, groups, and communities. Positioned around the idea of empowerment, this book explores the potential of multilingualism to overcome divisions and build social cohesion. In particular, chapters discuss how multilingualism can help the individual to become critically conscious and to develop an in-depth understanding of the world, while also benefiting society as whole. Understanding 'public space' in broad terms, including domains such as education, online, and the linguistic landscape, this volume explores how multilingualism can empower people from a range of perspectives, including memorialisation, onomastics, direct action, linguistic rights, migration, and educational play.

This innovative collection explores critical issues in understanding multilingualism as a defining dimension of identity creation and negotiation in contemporary social life. Reinforcing interdisciplinary conversations on these themes, each chapter is co-authored by two different researchers, often those who have not written together before. The combined effect is a volume showcasing unique and dynamic perspectives on such topics as rethinking of language policy, testing of language rights, language pedagogy, meaning-making, and activism in the linguistic landscape. The book explores multilingualism through the lenses of spaces and policies as embodied in Elizabeth Lanza’s body of work in the field, with a focus on the latest research on linguistic landscapes in diverse settings. Taken together, the book offers a window into better understanding issues around processes of change in and of languages and societies. This ground breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics.

The book contains a collection of studies of the linguistic landscape - the use of written language on signs in the public sphere - in 5 different societies: Israel, Japan, Thailand, the Netherlands (Friesland) and Spain (Basque Country). All contributions focus on multilingualism in the social context of the major cities.

This book provides a forum for theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions to research on language(s), multimodality and public space, which will advance new ways of understanding the sociocultural, ideological and historical role of communication practices and experienced lives in a globalised world. Linguistic Landscape is viewed as a metaphor and expanded to include a wide variety of discursive modalities: imagery, non-verbal communication, silence, tactile and aural communication, graffiti, smell, etc. The chapters in this book cover a range of geographical locations, and capture the history, motives, uses, causes, ideologies, communication practices and conflicts of diverse forms of languages as they may be observed in public spaces of the physical environment. The book is anchored in a variety of theories, methodologies and frameworks, from economics, politics and sociology to linguistics and applied linguistics, literacy and education, cultural geography and human rights.

This book throws light on ideologies, practices and sociocultural developments currently shaping language use in Japan by departing from the more common investigation of language in private contexts and examining aspects of the language found in a range of significant public spaces, from the material (an international airport, the streets of Tokyo, the JSL classroom in Japan and courtrooms) to the electronic (television dramas, local government web pages and cyberspace). Through its study of the language encountered in such settings, the volume provides a deeper understanding of multifaceted aspects of linguistic diversity, both in terms of the use of languages other than Japanese and of issues relating to the Japanese language itself. The variety of theoretical approaches brought to bear by contributing authors ensures a substantial intellectual contribution to the literature on language in contemporary Japan. This book was published as a special issue of Japanese Studies.

This work studies aspects of the symbolic construction of public spaces by means of linguistic resources (i.e. linguistic landscapes or LLs) in a number of world-cities. The sociology of language leads us to this field and to study the intermingling impacts of globalization, the national principle and multiculturalism – each one conveying its own distinct linguistic markers: international codes, national languages and ethnic vernaculars. Eliezer and Miriam Ben-Rafael study the configurations of these influences, which they conceptualize as multiple globalization, in the LLs of downtowns, residential quarters, and marginal neighborhoods of a number of world-cities. They ask how far worldwide codes of communication gain preeminence, national languages are marginalized and ethnic vernaculars impactful. They conclude by suggesting a paradigm of multiple globalizations.