language learning in the linguistic landscape - nov. 6, 2014

Language Learning in the Linguistic Landscape:

Past Directions and New Beginnings

Yale Center for Language Study Brown BagNovember 6, 2014

David MalinowskiLanguage Technology and Research Specialist

[email protected]

My contexts…

1. Researching questions of technology and place, computer and community at the CLS

2. Language learner

3. Language teacher

A language learning opportunity while walking behind a shopping center in Seoul, Korea

“Namu reul Sarang Hapsida” – on a walking path in Dongdaemun, Seoul, 2004나무, namu = Trees, bushes; 사랑, sarang = love, respect

A language learning opportunity while walking behind a shopping center in Seoul, Korea

“Drug Free Zone”, Berkeley, CA, 2004

A language teaching opportunity while walking near Telegraph Ave., Berkeley

Outline for today

1. Introducing Linguistic Landscape (studies)

2. Some standards and competencies for inside and outside the classroom

3. Examples of linguistic landscape in language teaching

4. LL-inspired activities, resources, and possible areas for collaboration

definitions

“The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government building combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration”

Landry & Bourhis (1997)

Some publicly visible language on one block of Wall St., New Haven (Yale campus area)

• LL as an “independent variable” contributing to a group’s “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Landry & Bourhis, 1997)

• The LL “signals what languages are prominent and valued in public and private spaces and indexes the social positioning of people who identify with particular languages (Dagenais et al., 2009, p. 254)

definitions & consequence

LL contexts, issues, questions: The LL6 workshop, Cape Town (April 9-11, 2014)

Workshop website: http://www.linguisticlandscapes6.co.za/

http://www.linguisticlandscapes6.co.za/

Christopher Stroud and Zannie Bock (University of the Western Cape), “Zombi landscapes: Representations of apartheid in the discourses of young South Africans”

1. Introduction to Linguistic Landscape (studies)

Christopher Stroud and Zannie Bock (University of the Western Cape), “Zombi landscapes: Representations of apartheid in the discourses of young South Africans”


Prior to Japanese internment in World War II, USA

April 23, 2014: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/chinese-only-sign-reignites-language-debate-in-richmond-b-c-1.1788427

January 10, 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/10/nyregion/ethnic-friction-over-signs-that-lack-translations.html

August 14, 2007: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/give-sign-article-1.235771

Some publicly visible language on one block of Wall St., New Haven (Yale campus area)

How does this familiar landscape both include and exclude?

"we argue for an approach to language from the vantage point of the social circulation of languages across spaces and different semiotic artifacts"

“attention needs to be paid to how constructs of space are constrained by material conditions of production, and informed by associated phenomenological sensibilities of mobility and gaze.”

Stroud & Mpendukana (2009)


definitions

“linguistic” landscape?

…we are keen to emphasize the way written discourse interacts with other discursive modalities: visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment. For this reason, ‘linguistic’ is only one, albeit extremely important, element for the construction and interpretation of place”

Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010, p. 2


critiques

linguistic “landscape”?

Landscape, we suggest, doesn’t merely signify or symbolize power relations; it is an instrument of cultural power, perhaps even an agent of power that is (or frequently represents itself as) independent of human intentions.

Mitchell, 1994, p. 1-2


critiques

Is LL a field? And if so, what are its limits?

Whatever we call it, is linguistic landscape a phenomenon calling for a theory, or simply a collection of somewhat disparate methodologies for studying the nature of public written signs?

Spolsky, 2009, p. 25


critiques

Urban sociolinguistics Globalization and transnational

(strong Fr. tradition) flows of people, products, info

Language policy

Urban studies Language planning

Cultural geography

Environmental

Multimodal, spatial, psychology

material “turns” in social

theory & discourse studies Proliferation of image,

geospatial technologies


some origins

What concerns and fascinates LL scholars is not just cataloguing and categorizing instances of multilingualism in public but questions of power and claims to space:

Language takes place.

Some questions to begin with

• Who is speaking to whom in the language all around us, and what exactly are they saying?

• Who has the right to write in public? What, where, when, how?

• What languages are included, absent, excluded from representation in public space?

• What opportunities for language learning are present in the LL, and how can engagement with the LL push/transform teaching?

Outline for today





What kind of world do we teach in?

● Postmodern globalization: “The multilateral flow of people, things, and ideas across borders has made more visible mixed forms of community and language in highly diversified geographical spaces” (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 26)

● Superdiversity as today’s urban condition: An increased level and kind of diversity building upon “increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically diferentiated and legally stratified immigrants” (Vertovec, 2007)

Where do we teach?Who are our learners?

● U.S. cities are home and host to great numbers and diverse varieties of languages.

o Connecticut: > 21% of residents speak Language Other than English at home (2008 ACS)

o New Haven: ~28% of residents (2000 Census)

● Heritage language learners in U.S. classrooms have different linguistic needs and affective orientations to languages; mixed classes present opportunity to address “issues of identity, biculturalism, and bilingualism” (Carreira, 2013)

What standards and competencies do we, can we teach to?

● Connections: “Students reinforce and further their

knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language”

● Comparisons: “Students demonstrate understanding of the

nature of language/the concept of culture through

comparisons of the language and cultures studied and their

own”

● Communities: “Students use the language both within and

beyond the school setting”

Civic awareness, cosmopolitan ethics, and the ethnographic imperative

● Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence 1st “savoir” (savoir être): “attitudes of curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own” (p. 50)

● Ethnographic methods applied to language learning offer students “...new ways of looking at the ordinary and the everyday, drawing out patterns from careful and extended observations of a small group.” (Centre for Languages, Linguistics, and Area

Studies, University of Southampton course documentation)

multimodal literacies

• “different aspects of meaning are carried in different ways by each mode” (Jewitt and Kress, 2003, p. 3)

• New London Group (1996) identifies Linguistic, Audio, Visual, Gestural, Spatial, and Multimodal Design as distinct and interrelated meaning-making processes

● Translingual, transcultural competence (MLA, 2007)emphasizes “the ability to operate between languages”

● Symbolic competence “is the capacity to recognize the historical context of utterances and their intertextualities, to question established categories like German, American, man, woman, White, Black and to place them in their historical and subjective contexts. But it is also the ability to resignify them, to reframe them, re- and transcontextualize them and to play with the tension between text and context” (Kramsch, 2011, p. 359)

In sum: LL as opportunity to cultivate students’

– linguistic

– pragmatic

– intercultural

– multimodal, multiliterate

– critical, reflective

competences and community engagement

“Namu reul Sarang Hapsida” – on a walking path in Dongdaemun, Seoul, 2004

Outline for today





beginning literacy; vocabulary; illustrative grammar

EFL contexts: Sayer (2010) in Oaxaca, Mexico; Rowland (2012) in Chiba, Japan

Prompt: “Why is English so prevalent around you, and why is it there?”

• Students photograph instances of TL in everyday environments

• Print, discuss, and classify photos according to “purpose” of TL

EFL contexts: Sayer (2010) in Oaxaca, Mexico; Rowland (2012) in Chiba, Japan

‘Helping’ questions• What type of sign is it?

• Where is the sign located?

• Who made the sign?

• Who is the intended audience of the sign?

• Why do you think English is used on the sign?

• Why do you think Japanese is not used in place of English on the sign? (see Rowland, 2012, p. 498)

=

L2 context: Dagenais et al. (2009)

• LL as site for critical pedagogies—“literacy activities that encourage children to interrogate texts in terms of issues of power and privilege” (p. 256)

• Elementary school Ss with high % of non-English/French L1s in Montreal, Quebec and Vancouver, British Columbia, led to analyze the “prominence” and “value” of languages in public and private spaces.

Dagenais et al. (2009) activities

• Neighborhood descriptions and exchange of narrative texts with partner schools in other cities/regions

• Drawings of familiar or favorite places and elicitation by T of languages seen, heard in these places

• Students’ examination of corpus of LL photos compiled by teacher/researchers

• Walking, observation, note-taking on “three dimensions of the LL that include the geographical, the sociological, and the linguistic aspects of the geosemiotic system” and chart these using X-Y coordinate system

• Students’ own neighborhood photography, documentation of linguistic diversity

• Hand-drawn mapping activities• Discussion, writing activities on questions of legitimacy and

illegitimacy, power and representation in neighborhood spaces

my classroom experience (I)

Culture in Place: UC Berkeley - Suwon U. Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

Korean-English Linguistic Landscape telecollaboration

An extra-credit, online forum exchange between U.S. university

students of beginning & intermediate Korean and Korean

university students of intermediate English to view and discuss

photos of signs, advertisements, billboards, and other

elements of their respective linguistic landscapes

Culture in Place: Korean-English LL telecollaboration

Goals

• Foster learns’ abilities to read and discuss how linguistic, cultural, and social meanings are constituted in multiple modes through signs

• Develop learners’ fluency across languages as they interact with fluent speakers

• Create a context for motivation as language is linked to real places and activities in the TL

3. Examples of linguistic landscape in teaching contexts

UC Berkeley - Suwon U. Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

CBLL 1.0? Korean-English Linguistic Landscape telecollaboration

Accomplishments

● 200+ paragraph+ posts in English and Korean,

exploring unknown words, place names, legal

codes, other aspects

● Student participation in media creation at cusp

of Web 2.0

● Novel classroom and language center

collaborations


Challenges

● “This site looks too American” - development,

administration in monolingual, U.S.-centric env’t

● Constrained interactive and creative possibilities

for students

● Curricular non-integration → participation non-

sustainable, difficulty scaffolding & supporting

intercultural learning objectives

● “Community” = at a distance? At all?


my classroom experience (II)


EALANG 39: Reading the Multilingual City


EALANG 39 Schedule & Topics

Weeks 1-3: Does visible multilingualism matter in Berkeley, and why? (The politics of cultural representation in the LL)

Weeks 4-6: Where can you find “authentic” Chinese? (Reading identities, histories, and voices in the Berkeley LL)

Weeks 7-9: The role of linguistic landscape in marking and making “ethnic towns” – “Koreatown” in Oakland

Weeks 10-12: Japan everywhere and nowhere in America? (On the mobility of cultural forms in the symbolic marketplace)

Weeks 13-15: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in the ecology of Berkeley’s visible and invisible languages


EALANG 39 3-week cycles

1st week

• Intro new topic, geographic scale/site, and focal language

• LL theoretical & methodological sampler

• Mini-language lesson from EALC faculty

2nd week

• Site visit with directed activity

• Blog response

3rd week

• Group reflections & analysis

• Student presentations & work toward final project

Outline for today





1. Linguistic Landscape workshop, UC Berkeley, May 7-9 2015

2. Linguistic Landscape journal article

Goal 1: Transform research methods into pedagogical resources

• Dell Hymes’ SPEAKING mnemonic adapted to LL studies: S = setting or scene; P = participants; E = ends; A = act sequences; K = key; I = instrumentalities; N = norms; G = genre (Huebner, 2009)

• Mapping language contact and change in multicultural contexts through “synchronous and diachronoussurveying,” geo-referencing, detailed classification and annotation of “linguistic traces” (Barni and Bagna, 2009).

• Accompanied walking tours with study participants in order to access the “cognitive and emotional verbal responses elicited and triggered by close physical proximity and explicit reference to [‘migrant cityscaping’ in] the LL” (Garvin, 2010, p. 254).


Goal 2: Application of 3-layered model for spatially-aware language pedagogy

• ‘Spatial practice’ (that which is created by people and documentable through the camera): Observation, documentation, categorization, analysis

• ‘Conceived space’ (representations held and promoted by policy makers): Secondary research, interpretation, critique, multimedia literacy practices

• ‘Lived space’ (‘experiential’ dimension of LL as is articulated by ‘inhabitants’: Ethnographic fieldwork participant observation, interview, etc), service/engagement

- Adaptation of Trumper-Hecht (2010) & others using Lefebvre (1991) for LL analysis


3. Creation of resources, networks

• Zotero Group bibliography run by Rob Troyer, Western Oregon University: https://www.zotero.org/groups/linguistic_landscape_bibliography

• Diigo (social bookmarking) group* for sharing web content, set up yesterday: https://groups.diigo.com/group/linguisticlandscape (*brand new!)

• Flickr “Linguistic Landscape” group: https://www.flickr.com/groups/linguisticlandscape/

https://www.zotero.org/groups/linguistic_landscape_bibliography

https://groups.diigo.com/group/linguisticlandscape

https://www.flickr.com/groups/linguisticlandscape/


Network for LL as pedagogical resource?

– Collaborative image collection, annotation, discussion

– Lesson plan database

– Joint field trips, projects

– Telecollaborative partnerships w/ other language classes

– Cross-disciplinary partnerships w/ other departments, programs• Visual and performing arts, photography, sculpture (murals etc.)

• City and regional planning, involvement in language policy issues

• Immigrant and refugee support services

• Other areas of engaged scholarship, community-based learning


Activities, lessons, curricular directions…

references• Barni, M., & Bagna, C. (2009). A mapping technique and the linguistic landscape. In Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 126–140). New York:

Routledge.

• Dagenais, D., Moore, D., Sabatier, C., Lamarre, P., & Armand, F. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 253–269). New York: Routledge.

• Garvin, R. T. (2010). Responses to the linguistic landscape in Memphis, Tennessee: An urban space in transition. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni(Eds.), Linguistic landscape in the city (pp. 252–271). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

• Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in second language acquisition. IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46(3), 267–287.

• Huebner, T. (2009). A framework for the linguistic analysis of linguistic landscapes. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 70–87). New York: Routledge.

• Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C. (Eds.). (2010). Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space. London & New York: Continuum.

• Jewitt, C., & Kress, G. R. (2003). Multimodal literacy. New York: P. Lang.

• Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 23–49.

• Malinowski, D. (2009). Authorship in the linguistic landscape: A multimodal-performative view. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 107–125). New York: Routledge.

• Malinowski, D. (2010). Showing seeing in the Korean linguistic cityscape. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni (Eds.), Linguistic landscape in the city (pp. 199–215). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

• Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Landscape and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• MLA (Modern Language Association; Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages). (2007). Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. New York: Modern Language Association. Retrieved from http://www.mla.org/flreport

• New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.

• Rowland, L. (2012). The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1–12.

• Sayer, P. (2009). Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource. ELT Journal.

• Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. New York: Routledge.

• Shohamy, E., & Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations, education. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter(Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (pp. 313–330). New York: Routledge.

• Spolsky, B. (2009). Prolegomena to a sociolinguistic theory of public signage. In E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery(pp. 25–39). New York: Routledge.

• Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S. (2009). Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism, mobility and space in a South African township1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 363–386.

Thank you! 감사합니다

• Nelleke van Deusen-Scholl, Suzanne Young and the Yale Center for Language Study

• Rick Kern, Mark Kaiser, Claire Kramsch (Berkeley Language Center)

• Stephane Charitos, Steve Welsh (Columbia Language Resource Center)

• UC Berkeley EALANG 39A students

language learning in the linguistic landscape - nov. 6, 2014

Education

visible language

language learner

language teacher

language learning opportunity

new haven yale campus

language teaching opportunity

block of wall

language of public road