This presentation discusses the idea of linguistic landscape as a pedagogical tool. It describes a research project undertaken in California using public signs to explore the social meanings of the use of English and Spanish in the public sphere. This study analyses a corpus of 173 signs and 215 advertisements, which were collected over a period of 10 years. The Multimodal (Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001) analysis reveals that the language patterns of use fall into three categories: 1) literal translation, 2) (re)interpretation and recreation of the language and culture, and 3) use of both English and Spanish. The author presents a framework that distinguishes between intercultural and intracultural uses of Spanish/English language with respect to the Latino/Anglo community, as well as innovative uses of the language on signs. She argues that the project is useful both for thinking about the ways people use the language in local contexts and as a template for a classroom-based project that teachers can implement to engage students in investigating and talking about social language use. The conclusion presents an approach for using the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical resource in the classroom which casts the students as language investigators and offers ideas for extension activities that connect the language classroom to the streets of the learners’ community.

Authors:
María Cecilia Colombi, University of California, United States

About the Presenter(s)
CECILIA COLOMBI Ph.D is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Davis. Her research includes sociolinguistics with special emphasis on the Spanish of the US., SLA pedagogy, and advanced literacy in heritage speakers.

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