Linguistic Landscapes

This project is funded by the e-learning funding scheme of the University of Kassel - Zentrale Lehrförderung.

A learning environment will be developed in which students learn about linguistic landscapes and multilingualism in public spaces. The study of linguistic landscapes is a relatively new interdisciplinary field of research that deals with the visibility and perception of written representations in a multilingual society. Students will examine the impact of linguistic landscapes regarding language awareness in a linguistically diverse society and conduct a mini field study. During this mini field study, students will collect linguistic data in a natural context and thus explore their immediate surroundings while capturing a variety of interesting signs and texts. The results will be compiled, processed, analyzed, interpreted, and presented. Students will acquire receptive competences in script recognition, so they will be able to identify which script and which language underlying the script is displayed. This promotes their multilingual receptive competence, awareness of linguistic script representations as well as their language awareness.