**Educational Linguistics**

Sébastien Dubreil David Malinowski Hiram H. Maxim *Editors*

# Spatializing Language Studies

Pedagogical Approaches in the Linguistic Landscape

# **Educational Linguistics**

Volume 62

# **Series Editor**

Francis M. Hult, Dept. of Education, Sherman Hall A Wing, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

### **Editorial Board Members**

Marilda C. Cavalcanti, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil Jasone Cenoz, University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain Angela Creese, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK Ingrid Gogolin, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Christine Hélot, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France Hilary Janks, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA Constant Leung, King's College London, London, UK Angel Lin, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

*Educational Linguistics* is dedicated to innovative studies of language use and language learning. The series is based on the idea that there is a need for studies that break barriers. Accordingly, it provides a space for research that crosses traditional disciplinary, theoretical, and/or methodological boundaries in ways that advance knowledge about language (in) education. The series focuses on critical and contextualized work that offers alternatives to current approaches as well as practical, substantive ways forward. Contributions explore the dynamic and multilayered nature of theory-practice relationships, creative applications of linguistic and symbolic resources, individual and societal considerations, and diverse social spaces related to language learning.

The series publishes in-depth studies of educational innovation in contexts throughout the world: issues of linguistic equity and diversity; educational language policy; revalorization of indigenous languages; socially responsible (additional) language teaching; language assessment; frst- and additional language literacy; language teacher education; language development and socialization in nontraditional settings; the integration of language across academic subjects; language and technology; and other relevant topics.

The *Educational Linguistics* series invites authors to contact the general editor with suggestions and/or proposals for new monographs or edited volumes. For more information, please contact the Editor: Marianna Georgouli, Van Godewijckstraat 30, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

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This series is indexed in Scopus and the Norwegian Register for Scientifc Journals, Series and Publishers (NSD).

Sébastien Dubreil • David Malinowski Hiram H. Maxim Editors

# Spatializing Language Studies

Pedagogical Approaches in the Linguistic Landscape

*Editors* Sébastien Dubreil Department of Modern Languages Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Hiram H. Maxim German Studies Department Emory University Atlanta, GA, USA

David Malinowski Department of Linguistics and Language Development San José State University San Jose, CA, USA

ISSN 1572-0292 ISSN 2215-1656 (electronic) Educational Linguistics ISBN 978-3-031-39577-2 ISBN 978-3-031-39578-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39578-9

This work was supported by Various co-funders

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# **Preface**

This volume has emerged after a long period of incubation and is situated at the confuence of a wide range of intentions and activities. First, it was our desire to pursue the conversation on – and exploration of – the potential of using Linguistic Landscape (LL) Studies for the purpose of language and culture learning, a project that has been the better part of a decade in the making. Our common conversations started after initial forays into linguistic landscape-mediated pedagogical interventions we conducted separately in Berkeley, Vienna, and Paris before serendipitously sharing these experiences with each other at the 2015 annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Toronto, which generated an excitement that coalesced at the Linguistic Landscape 7 workshop at UC Berkeley. This led to the organization of a colloquium at the 2016 AAAL Conference in Orlando, which ultimately resulted in the publication of the 2020 volume *Language Teaching in the Linguistic Landscape: Mobilizing Pedagogy in Public Space*, which garnered attention from scholars and practitioners at the same time as it opened up more spaces for ideation, discussion, and pedagogical innovation.

Second, it gave us the opportunity to broaden the scope of the work by including a more diverse range of experts hailing from various locations, disciplines, and pedagogical orientations, and operating in very different contexts. Following our work on the aforementioned volume, we knew where to go to fll some of this space and reached out to the authors assembled in this volume. We cannot overstate our gratitude to these eighteen scholars whose patience was most likely tried as we worked through the editorial process and logistics of this publication. Their commitment to the ethos of the project and support throughout go above and beyond the call of duty. The quality of their work and the rigor and integrity of their approach vis-à-vis their students and the communities they inhabit is commendable.

Third, we wanted to renew our commitment to the initial intention to make this type of work widely available by ensuring that the work presented in this volume be openly accessible, which, while anchoring it in a specifc chronology, also affords the possibility of making its content dynamic over time. Our intentionality to make this an open-access volume was met by a receptive team at Springer and, for that, we are also grateful. Our gratitude frst goes to Francis Hult, who saw the value in expanding the scenery of LL-mediated pedagogies in this way and connected us with the team at Springer who made this possible: Helen van der Stelt, Natalie Rieborn, and Anita van der Linden-Rachmat, whose guidance on all aspects of this publication has been invaluable.

In the past years, we were buoyed by positive energy coming from formal and informal conversations with colleagues at LL Workshops, conferences, and webinars; by a collaborative process that carried its share of trials and tribulations but, more importantly, brought joy, fulfllment, and intellectual growth; and, fnally, by our students' work and sense of wonderment as they engage deeply with the linguistic landscape of their campus, neighborhood, cities, leading them, at times, to question, re-envision, and re-articulate their sense of self, their relationship to language and culture, and their place in the world. Their willingness to do so is admirable and, in and of itself, a reason to offer this volume in hope that other colleagues will implement their own version of the experiences presented here.

Our gratitude extends to many people who have supported this volume. Of note, we would like to thank Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl (Center for Language Study, Yale University) and Stéphane Charitos (Language Resource Center, Columbia University), who have been there in various capacities from the inception of this journey, as interlocutors, as supporters, as organizers of events at both Yale and Columbia, all of which have nurtured this project. Of course, numerous colleagues and entities at our respective institutions need to be credited for their support, be it intellectual, logistic, or fnancial. From Emory University, we would like to thank Susan Tamasi (Emory Linguistics Program), Michael Elliot (former Dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences), Yang Li (Emory Center for Digital Scholarship), and Sarah McKee (Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry). From San José State University, our thanks extend to Shannon Miller (Dean of the SJSU College of Humanities and the Arts), Jason Aleksander (Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Success in the SJSU College of Humanities and the Arts), and Emily Chan (Associate Dean of Research and Scholarship in the SJSU Library). At Carnegie Mellon University, we express our gratitude to Keith Webster (Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries), The Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences under the leadership of Richard Scheines (Bess Family Dean of the College), and Anne Lambright (Head of the CMU Department of Modern Languages). Lastly, our thanks extend to the business managers and administrative staff who keep it all running.

In closing, it is our hope that this volume will indeed further the conversation on teaching language in the linguistic landscape by offering frameworks, trajectories, and strategies to spatialize language learning and enable learners to re-articulate Preface

their understanding of the physical environment in a manner that opens up the multi-faceted meaning-making potential and semiotically rich interpretation of each encounter in/of place.

Pittsburgh, PA, USA Sébastien Dubreil San Jose, CA, USA David Malinowksi Atlanta, GA, USA Hiram Maxim

# **Contents**




# **Contributors**

**Michelle Aguilera** University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

**Mahmoud Azaz** University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

**Olga Bever** University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

**Patricia J. Brooks** College of Staten Island, New York, NY, USA

**Sébastien Dubreil** Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

**Juan Pablo Jiménez-Caicedo** Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

**Reyes Llopis-García** Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

**Jia Lu** Department of Modern Languages, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA

**David Malinowski** Department of Linguistics and Language Development, San José State University, San Jose, CA, USA

**Hiram H. Maxim** German Studies Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

**Patricia Mayes** University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

**Aleidine J. Moeller** Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA

**Margaret O'Donnell Noodin** University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

**Bernard C. Perley** University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

**Elyse Ritchey** National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

**Christian Ruvalcaba** University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

**Irina A. Sekerina** College of Staten Island, New York, NY, USA

**Robert A. Troyer** Western Oregon University, Monmouth, OR, USA

**Margarita Vinagre** Autónoma University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

**Fei Yu** Department of Modern Languages, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA

**Michael Zimmerman Jr** University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

# **Introduction: Spatializing Language Studies in the Linguistic Landscape**

**David Malinowski, Hiram H. Maxim, and Sébastien Dubreil**

**Abstract** As the assemblage of visible, audible, and otherwise textualized languages of public space, the linguistic landscape forms a rich context for understanding how material and environmental affordances affect language learning, and how language teachers can bring their L2 curricula to life. Whether it is within the four walls of a school, in a nearby neighborhood, or in virtual telecollaborative environments, the chapters of this volume illustrate how such diverse confgurations of space lend themselves to language and literacy learning, while also contributing to learners' critical cultural and historical awareness. Before inviting the reader to the volume's nine chapters, this introduction outlines the history and signifcance of "space" in language teaching and learning research, a topic of signifcant interest and innovation in L2 education today. It then offers a framework for the spatialization of language teaching, that is, a pedagogy that is linguistically and culturally complex, geographically situated, historically informed, dialogically realized, and socially engaged. Whether one endeavors to teach in a traditional classroom, or immersed in the sights and sounds of outdoor spaces, or even from one's desktop at home, language teaching with the linguistic landscape is evaluated for its potential to extend the human, symbolic, and critical dimensions of L2 learning.

**Keywords** Space and place in language teaching · Spatial literacies · Spatialization · Language ecologies · Designing learning environments · Community-based language learning · Dislocation and relocation in L2 learning · Transcultural learning

D. Malinowski (\*) Department of Linguistics and Language Development, San José State University, San Jose, CA, USA e-mail: david.malinowski@sjsu.edu

H. H. Maxim German Studies Department, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA e-mail: hmaxim@emory.edu

S. Dubreil

Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA e-mail: sdubreil@andrew.cmu.edu

# **1 Introducing This Volume: Time Again to Think About Space**

The origins of this volume can be traced back to initial conversations at the 7th Linguistic Landscape Workshop (LL7) in Berkeley, California, followed by further discussions at LL8 in Liverpool before plans crystalized in Orlando, Florida at the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 2016. Since that time, work on language and literacy teaching in the linguistic landscape has expanded considerably (Bever & Richardson, 2020; Bradley, et al., 2018; Krompák et al., 2021; Li & Marshall, 2020; Malinowski, 2018; Malinowski et al., 2020; Maxim, 2020; Niedt & Seals, 2020; Roos & Nicholas, 2020; Shang & Xie, 2020; Wiśniewska, 2019; Zheng, et al., 2018). At the same time, the prospect of expanding our teaching and learning into new spaces is now faced with a pandemic-induced world order that is challenging us to rethink how to make pedagogical use of spaces that have become even more dynamic and ephemeral. If our sites of engagement become too remote, locked down, or inaccessible, how are we as educators able to facilitate students' participation in exploring the ways in which language, people, and place co-construct each other? Indeed, the mobility that we foregrounded in our earlier work (Malinowski et al., 2020) is now tested like no one could have imagined just a few years ago. From the more immediate challenges to classroom learning posed by masks, physical distancing, and the continued threat of infection, to larger considerations such as the inaccessibility of—or much restrained access to study abroad and the feasibility of community-based learning projects, language and literacy teaching in the linguistic landscape fnds itself having to reconsider the places where it can operate. For example, does the virtual access that Zoom and other new means of communication have afforded us provide alternative possibilities for understanding material, social, geographic, and historical contexts?

Indeed, it is hard to imagine that the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic will not have long-lasting effects on our movements, communications, and interactions. In that sense, the global pandemic has presented itself as a hinge event, that is to say, as an occurrence that will radically reshape the world we live in. One of the primary ways in which the pandemic has done this is in how it has forced us to re-envision notions of space and place both in the built environment and in the social environment (Lou et al., 2022). Seemingly familiar contexts have taken on new functions and confgurations - the living room becomes a classroom, the meeting backdrop becomes a palm tree-lined tropical beach, the deserted city street becomes a pop-up bike lane. Words such as "confnement," "social distancing," and "quarantine" have all taken on new meanings in this new context and they all point to how we inhabit our social and physical worlds. Previously unseen additional signage has appeared, from one-way aisles at the supermarket to multimodal posters indicating whether and how to wear face coverings, a practice that was sometimes controversial in intercultural settings and has now become controversial in intra-cultural settings (e.g., pro- vs. anti-maskers). This situation has also made us more aware of the environment in which we live, as well as the language and the people in it, if for no other

reason that we spent more time inside since travel was curtailed, and work and schooling often happened from home or in a much smaller geographical perimeter. In this context, we have been called to notice how the use of language and other semiotic resources in the public space shapes the space as much as it is shaped by it.

The extent and import of these changes are captured effectively in Adami et al.'s (2020) analysis of communication and interaction during the pandemic, where they identify a "changing semiotic regime" in which "the dimensions of social interaction have changed their combinatory possibilities, as the times and paces, the spaces and places of our activities and roles have had to change" (p. 5). Specifcally, they point to how the restrictions and dangers of the pandemic have resulted in many of our naturalized and habituated practices' becoming no longer viable, causing us to refect about these past practices while also looking to establish possible new ones. They term this period of refection and creation a "re-disciplining process" that requires people to "reconsider, replan and recreate ways in which they conduct activities, interact with others and manage space" (Adami, 2020). In discussing the pandemic's effect on notions of space, Adami et al. (2020) highlight the blurring of traditional boundaries between public and private, and real and virtual spaces, which have resulted from this process of resituating ourselves in a pandemicinfected world order.

In this way, the altered social, semiotic, and educational landscapes of the Covid era form a lens for this volume that is both inescapable and appropriate. While the nine chapters that comprise the volume refect teaching and research endeavors from years leading up to the pandemic, we cannot but read them now in light of the collective experiences of 2020 and beyond. Chapters that extol the benefts of language learning activities in physical classrooms, on shared school grounds, in neighborhoods and cities that surround students' usual places of learning, and in study abroad settings across national borders and accessible only by plane, train, or boat, must now frst confront the reader's skeptical question that has become all but second nature: "Yes, but can we still do such things *today*?" While the present volume, in origin, spirit, and substance, builds from the same set of pedagogical challenges and conceptual energies as did our earlier volume, *Language teaching in the linguistic landscape: Mobilizing pedagogy in public space* (Malinowski et al., 2020), we acknowledge that it cannot be read without considering the very *loss* of mobility experienced by language students, teachers, and researchers around the world since the onset of the pandemic.

At the same time, we see the recent profound curtailment of mobilities as yet another example of the ever changing conditions under which language teaching and learning have always taken place. Precisely for that reason, we center this volume around the concept of *spatialization*. Spatialization, as we elaborate below (see Sect. 3), highlights the interactions of learners and teachers and their textual, material, and environmental affordances over various scales of time as *generative* of space, as much as they may be constrained by it. Language learners and teachers must both adapt to (in the intransitive sense) their changing circumstances, while symbolically and/or materially adapting (in the transitive) circumstances to suit their needs. In terms of second language development, Lantolf, Poehner and Swain (2018) remind us that "…cognitive processing does not depend on mechanisms inside of learners' heads which are assumed to ensure that acquisition is the same no matter where it occurs (e.g., in everyday or classroom settings), but on the affordances encountered in different environments and on the nature of learners' relations to these" (p. 8). Whether one endeavors to learn or teach language within the confnes of a traditional classroom, or immersed in the sights and sounds of outdoor spaces replete with the L2, or quarantined at home with only online or print materials to support one's practice, learners' encounters with the affordances of their environments may be best seen as "relations" when the human and symbolic dimensions of the encounters are the pedagogical focus (as in Lantolf, Poehner, and Swain's (2018) accounting). These relations may be further seen as "spatializations" when their materiality is also taken into account.

As the assemblage of visible, audible, and otherwise textualized languages of public space, the linguistic landscape forms a rich context for understanding how material and environmental affordances play an active role in language learning and how language teachers can bring their L2 curricula to life (e.g., Bever & Richardson, 2020; Chern & Dooley, 2014; Chesnut et al., 2013; Malinowski, 2016; Maxim, 2020; Rowland, 2013; Sayer, 2010). This volume continues with the outward-oriented sense of purpose we articulated previously to "contribute to productive transformations in pedagogical practice and social action in language and culture classrooms" (Malinowski et al., 2020, p. 10), while returning with a renewed sense of urgency to the spatial practices of language teachers and learners, wherever and however they may fnd themselves in the world.

# **2 A Short History of Space in L2 Teaching and Learning**

As evidenced in Niedt and Seals' (2020) volume, detailing how people's "naturalistic, everyday encounters [...] themselves can be a form of education, often in nontraditional educational settings" (p. 2) and Krompák, Fernández-Mallat, and Meyer's (2021) volume revealing the ideological struggles and learning opportunities in the "educationscapes''of schools and communities, *space* and *place* are at the forefront of current inquiry into the dynamics of second language acquisition and learning (cf. Benson, 2021). However, beyond even the frame of linguistic and semiotic landscapes, the emergence in the past two decades of notions such as human-environmental ecologies of learning (e.g., Kramsch, 2002; van Lier, 2004) and the 'wilding' of language teaching in naturalistic activities (Dubreil & Thorne, 2017) was not without precedent. With the beneft of hindsight, we can see a direct lineage for spatial concerns in second language and literacy research at least as far back as the ascendance of Communicative Language Teaching in the 1970s and 1980s from the Grammar Translation and Audiolingual methods before it. In particular, the emphasis placed on the 'authenticity' of linguistic input for learners to negotiate created a need for authentic texts, real-world tasks, and so-called native speakers of the target language, even as these were often represented in idealized form through the "textual traces''of language textbooks and curricula (cf. Widdowson, 1998; Chapelle, 2020). The foregrounding of sociolinguistic, pragmatic and cultural elements in (communicative) competence, the growing use of corpora in materials development and teaching, and pedagogical approaches incorporating cultural exchange, global simulation, and even study abroad may all be seen as outcomes of the still relatively recent insistence upon 'real world authenticity' in L2 education.

One of the early works to raise awareness about the changing contexts for language use was the New London Group's (1996) heavily cited manifesto, "Pedagogy of Multiliteracies," and its subsequent revisions (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 2015). Pointing to the expansion, if not explosion, of new forms of communication that arose from increasing globalization, mobility, and internet-driven connectedness, the New London Group (1996) called into question the effcacy of traditional approaches to literacy and literacy pedagogy and proposed instead the term "multiliteracies" to capture the dramatic growth of new contexts, new textual genres, and new modalities for communication. Indeed, the notion that literacies are plural and that they simultaneously involve radically different ways of knowing (each mode with its characteristic logics) echoes a key insight of spatial theorists of the time that "space" is not singular but "the sphere of possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality" (Massey, 2005, p. 9). The New London Group's mobilization of visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modes in tandem with the linguistic mode as part of a composite literacies paradigm that would address "the realities of increasing local diversity and local connectedness" (New London Group, 1996, p. 64) has continued to offer important guidance for teachers in expanding language learners' meaning-making options (e.g., Kern, 2000; Paesani et al., 2016; Swaffar & Arens, 2005).

At roughly the same time that the New London Group (1996) was highlighting new modes and contexts for communication, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) was completing its National Standards project (1996) that looked to expand the U.S. language teaching profession's conceptualization of language study to include interaction and even collaboration with communities where the target language was spoken. While the National Standards (1996) did not feature the new genres and modalities emphasized by the New London Group (1996), ACTFL's inclusion of community as a locus of language use refects the growing understanding in the profession of the need to consider a much wider range of contexts for language use. It is important to note here that "community," as a term, can be problematic. While it can seem to refer to a static, welldefned or a priori delimited group of people, including in ACTFL's documentation, this approach would be reductionist. Community may very well designate a social aggregate but it should be envisioned as a dynamic construct, in other words, as the very process of this aggregation and in the actions that individuals take to develop, sustain, and nurture forms of sociality and solidarity that are recognizable and, to a large degree, shared (see, for example, Latour, 2005; Thorne, 2011). It is this view of community as both social process and outcome that we adopt here.

Further developments in theorizing the spatialization of language use followed, marked perhaps most notably by two seminal publications in 2003: Scollon and Scollon's *Discourses in Place* and Block's *The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition.* As refected in the title, Scollon and Scollon (2003) presented a systematic approach for analyzing how language derives meaning from its placement in the material world. Calling this approach "geosemiotics," Scollon and Scollon (2003) highlight the inseparability of social meaning from the material locatedness of language and discourse. For language practitioners, then, geosemiotics represented another reminder that context, that is, the social and material situation in which language is used, is a fundamental component of the meaning-making process. The situatedness of meaning also lies at the heart of Block's (2003) critical re-evaluation of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), in which he interrogates the absence of socially informed approaches to language use in standard input-interaction-output models of SLA. While Block (2003) considers a range of social variables that play a role in mediating language use, central to his analysis is the need to move away from viewing language use as an isolated, individual process and to recognize language use as contextually situated.

More recent developments in language studies that have extended the profession's attention to the centrality of context, environment, and the material world for meaning-making have focused on the ecology and socio-materialism of language use. A fundamental premise of ecological approaches to language learning and use (e.g., van Lier, 2004; Levine, 2020) is the close inter-relationships between language users and the environments around them. Van Lier (2000) himself refers to these environments as affording a "semiotic budget, which provides opportunities for meaningful actions in different situations" (p. 252). In their transdisciplinary framework, the Douglas Fir Group (2016) reaffrms the need to view language use from an ecological perspective that takes into account micro-level social activities, meso-level sociocultural institutions, and macro-level society-wide ideological structures. Sociomaterialism continues this emphasis on the centrality of social and physical environments for understanding human interaction and communication by illuminating the entangled relationships, the semiotic assemblages of humans, artifacts, and environments, and the emergent, process-based nature of the social realm that characterizes human action (Thorne et al., 2021).

Notions of space and the spatialization of human interaction and communication have unsurprisingly also been a major focus of Linguistic Landscape (LL) Studies. From its very early iterations (e.g., Landry & Bourhis, 1997), LL research has looked to analyze and understand language use in public space. Geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) and its emphasis on the inextricable relationship between the emplacement of public texts and their meaning continues to undergird LL methodology. More recent developments have also examined the perspectives of those public texts' authors as well as of the citizens who interact with them as sources of meaning (Garvin, 2010; Huebner & Phoocharoensil, 2017; Lamarre, 2014). This emphasis on understanding the "human-sign interface" shifts the focus to exploring the different and very complex ways in which individuals perceive and engage with public signage in their everyday lives (Zabrodskaja & Milani, 2014, p. 2). Further facilitating the feld's understanding and analysis of space have been applications of Lefebvre's conceptualization of space as consisting of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces (Gorter, 2018; Trumper-Hecht, 2010).

# **3 Spacing, Placing and Dislocating: Three Layers of Spatialized Teaching and Curricular Design**

The chapters of this volume, in concert with the literature reviewed thus far in the introduction, reveal a number of signifcant ways in which *spatialization* is a productive lens through which language teachers can reimagine and reevaluate their courses, curricula, and lesson designs. As we suggested above, "spatialization" refers in a general sense to language educators' actions and initiatives that make reasoned use of the ways in which language, people, and place co-construct each other through discursive practice. The notion of spatialization draws upon Leander and Sheehy's (2004) insight that "space is not static—as in metaphorical images of borders, centers, and margins—it is dynamically relational" (p. 1). In this case, the dynamic relations of interest are those between language learners and other participants in local meaning-making processes, whether they be human or non-human, material or virtual. Spatialization, as in Canagarajah's (2018) model of a spatial (rather than a cognitivist) orientation to competence, prioritizes how languaging activities "are aligned with other semiotic resources, social networks, and material features that account for the success of communicative activities" (p. 38). Language teachers seeking to capitalize on this pedagogical approach focus not on perfunctory communication per se but how to facilitate students' participation in communicative activities as they are situated in (and co-constructive of) material, social, geographic, and historical contexts.

In order to make this general orientation toward spatialization more concretely actionable, we propose the following three-layered framework for teachers and curriculum designers to consider:

• *Spacing* is the confguring of learners, instructors, extra-institutional participants (e.g., community members), physical and virtual environments, technologies, and interactional purposes into various alignments with expected affordances and constraints for language learning and use. At a fundamental level, Spacing suggests a teacher's involvement in understanding and manipulating the respective merits and limitations of "in-class" or "out-of-class," and "virtual," "inperson," or hybrid settings for learning activities. We may also use Spacing as a way to draw together notions such as "community-based language learning," "telecollaboration," and "language learning in the wild," for instance—terms that have distinct histories and practices associated with them, but which are alike in that they serve as overarching categories suggesting generally *where* and *how* learning activities take place, and make assumptions about participant roles and purposes that are distinct from traditional classroom-based language learning. We wish to emphasize, too, that a teacher's endeavors in this regard are not limited to the time before a school term or class session begins; Spacing is an iterative, even constant, aspect of teaching practice, in which regular adjustments and improvements are made to material, technological, and social conditions for learning.


accord; teachers can create conditions for students' dislocation and relocation, both metaphorically and physically, leading them to possibly profound moments of intersubjective and transcultural learning, and supporting them as they negotiate new meanings and identities.

While the naming of these three 'layers' involves a degree of arbitrariness, and the lines between them are not meant to be absolute, we feel that a tripartite framework such as this allows for some critical distinctions to be made. For instance, teachers may have their students participate in an international telecollaboration/virtual exchange, thereby proactively integrating (Spacing) two distinct settings for learning—that is, the physical classroom and an online telecollaboration—but the issue of how to substantively incorporate into the exchange facets of the geographic and historically situated sites where the partner students are located (Placing) is a separate question altogether. Similarly, a teacher leading a study abroad or communitybased language learning program may *place* their students' learning activities by means of student-led interviews, site visits, and/or homestays with local residents, but without a way to capture the historically-laden discursive practices students observe and co-construct with their participants, they might miss the opportunity to facilitate students' encounter with, and analysis of, cross-cultural stereotypes (Dislocating and relocating). With multiple tools in their toolkit for spatializing language pedagogy, then, teachers can not only plan where, how, and with whom learning activities might best take place, but also maintain an openness to allowing people and places to act transformatively upon those teaching and learning processes themselves, with a commitment to refect and grow from the experience (Byrd Clark & Dervin, 2014; Toohey et al., 2020).

# **4 Organization of This Volume and Chapter Summaries**

The three 'layers' of Spacing, Placing, and Dislocating that we have introduced above offer, in turn, one possible way to read, read across, and read between the contributions to this volume. Each chapter offers valuable insights into ways in which the Spacing of language learning activities, the Placing of pedagogical encounters in real-world contexts and communities, and Dislocating as the design of opportunities for defamiliarization and refamiliarization all work together to enrich learning. We have grouped three chapters under each of these three notions, not to imply that they only attend to the one notion but rather to suggest points of departure from which to consider the many pedagogical, conceptual, and methodological innovations that each chapter offers. Further, in an effort to bridge the rich ideas of the chapters with the practical concerns of syllabus design, project development, lesson planning, and other hands-on practices of language teaching, we open each of the three sections with a list of guiding questions that further develop these different facets of spatializing language pedagogy.

### I. *Reimagining learning spaces through the linguistic landscape*

The frst three chapters of the volume challenge us both to think of new language teaching and learning spaces for our students, and to imagine new purposes, confgurations, and techniques for teaching in already-familiar contexts. The opening chapter by Ritchey steps into the latter role, as it proposes a set of pragmaticsfocused classroom activities designed for university-level intermediate learners of French as a foreign language. Asserting that "the discourses that appear in the linguistic landscape open a window onto sociocultural norms and practices" (p. 22), the chapter focuses specifcally on the area of politeness as it is revealed and enacted in the linguistic landscape, drawing from the insight that the LL "freezes an act of (im)politeness for examination and analysis, which gives learners the time and space to explore it" (p. 24). Drawing upon a fve dimensional model of sociopragmatic politeness, Ritchey develops an activity design framework that focuses students' attention on the role of linguistic form in communicating politeness, raises their awareness about differences in the affordances and constraints of speech and writing, and leads students toward politeness strategies that take into account diverse author and audience positionalities. Through its conceptual work, examples, and discussion on applications and future directions, Ritchey amply illustrates how classroom work on pragmatics in the LL helps teachers to overcome some of the typical limitations of classroom instructional materials and pushes L2 students to "reexamine their assumptions about cultural and social difference" (p. 39).

The chapter by Yu, Moeller, and Lu, "Exploring language and culture in the novice Chinese classroom through linguistic landscape," is one of a number of studies in this volume that demonstrate how teachers and students can take advantage of rich learning opportunities in the neighborhoods and towns surrounding their schools. Through a social constructivist lens, the authors propose that culture and cultural learning in the LL are at the heart of a "dynamic and dialectic" (p. 47) learning opportunity: students create "webs of signifcance" (p. 45) around textual artifacts, and both observe and co-construct culture through the documentation of languaging practices in local linguistic landscapes. The chapter follows the students of a short-term immersion Mandarin Chinese program on a feld trip to a local grocery store and shopping plaza in a midwestern U.S. city, where they carried out and documented a series of guided observational and interactional tasks. Through analysis of students' journal refections and multimedia presentations, the authors suggest avenues for language teachers to "create a learning space for our students to move from the noticing of cultural products to the understanding of cultural practices and perspectives" (p. 57).

In the third chapter, Vinagre and Llopis-García explore the potential of using LL studies in the "space" of a telecollaboration (Dooly, 2017; O'Dowd, 2016, 2021) between the Universidad Autonóma de Madrid and Columbia University in New York City. In particular, this project aims to harness the multimodal nature of both the learning environment and the linguistic landscape to develop students' multiliteracies. Anchored in the idea that places can shape the meaning potential of a text, the course seeks to engage meaningfully with the physical environment itself as a generative construct for textual meaning-making. In an asynchronous two and a half month exchange, students worked in pairs to engage with their own and each other's cultures. The course culminated in an activity whereby students took photos of shops, billboards, posters, announcements and walls in their respective cities that showed how English was used in Madrid and how Spanish was used in New York. During the subsequent compare-and-contrast analysis, students critically examined issues of authorship, audience, and geo-semiotics (why the signs were there and their meaning). They concluded, for example, that English signs in Madrid were mostly geared toward a certain commodifcation of the language and targeted a consumer audience, giving the English language a value-added. By contrast, the Spanish signs in New York aimed at better including the Spanish-speaking community more, by providing informational content, while simultaneously positing Spanish as an inferior language to English. In so doing, students noticed the differing and complex faces of globalization through the contingencies and ideologies conveyed through language use.

### II. *Places made and remade through learning in the linguistic landscape*

In Part II of the volume, all three chapters explore how learning activities situated in the linguistic landscape can unveil place-based meaning-making practices and thereby rich learning opportunities for language users. In his examination of the K-12 schoolscapes in one school district in rural Oregon in the western United States, Troyer undertakes a nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) in order to uncover the factors that affect and ultimately control the publicly displayed discourse of those schools. Of particular interest is the degree of agency that teachers and students have in including bi- and multilingual signage within schools, particularly within a school district in which administrators have had a history of excluding languages other than English from the schoolscape. The nexus analysis proves to be a particularly effcacious methodology for investigating more deeply the factors at play in the construction of meaning in public space. In particular, exploring the historical body of the actors involved in schools reveals discourses that continue to have an infuence on school behavior. The project highlights how instructors respond to the unique assemblages of people, histories, and environments in their schools by shaping the schoolscape through their agentive choices to include multilingual signage in their classrooms and hallways. Thus, while the teachers do not necessarily engage their students in explicit learning activities with the schoolscape, they are placing meaningful multi-lingual artifacts in spaces that foster a shared sense of community.

Jiménez-Caicedo integrates the linguistic landscape of Spanish Harlem in New York City into a multiliteracies-oriented advanced Spanish course to develop not only Spanish learners' registerial repertoire but also their understanding of the social and political complexities of immigrant communities. Through ethnographically based research projects that frame the linguistic landscape as a conceived, perceived, and lived space (Malinowski, 2015), learners take on an agentive role in advancing their multiliteracies development by serving as chief investigators of the socio-cultural and political complexity of Spanish Harlem, a community that is in close geographical proximity to their institutional home of Columbia University. As such, they fnd themselves having to consider multiple layers of spatial production and their own refexive awareness of participation in said practice. Central to the refective practice of this ethnographic research project is the recognition of and respect for the local community and the establishment of a balanced symmetrical relationship (Norton, 2000) between student researchers and community members.

Ruvalcaba and Aguilera, in their chapter, explore the linguistic capital of Tucson, Arizona, in an effort to render visible the multilingual makeup of their city and de facto making it easily accessible to new arrived members of the community (e.g., international students, migrants, refugees) by mapping out Tucson's multilingualism and transforming it into an asset for these communities. Driven by social justice pursuits, the authors envision the LCP as a way to spatialize language practices in Tucson by engaging the notion of inhabiting in combining the visible linguistic landscape and the multilingual practices of the people in the geographical space. In so doing, they allow their students to examine how members of marginalized and excluded language communities gain a sense of place by creating their own (linguistic) representation of the space they inhabit and sustaining their own cultural practices. In including an asset-mapping component to their pedagogical repertoire, Ruvacalba and Aguilera also endeavored to spatialize instruction by connecting English learners to the Tucson communities in meaningful and mutually emancipatory ways that highlighted cultural resources that "persist despite being historically ignored, erased, and/or appropriated" (p. 156).

### III. *Dislocating selves and locating worlds in the linguistic landscape*

The following three contributions foreground dialogic encounters with less familiar discursive worlds as a window into LL-based pedagogies. Drawing on practices in literacy studies and community-based learning, the frst contribution, by Bever and Azaz, highlights how language learning in the linguistic landscape can extend beyond formal schooling to include community members who, recognizing the multilingualism in their midst, make use of shop signs to advance their own language learning. Situated in multilingual spaces in Tucson, Arizona in the southwestern United States, their project features the agentive role that community members can play in leveraging both their multilingual surroundings as well as readily available online learning resources to advance their own language acquisition. As such, this project emphasizes the role of the signmaker as both author and learner and thereby highlights the meaning-making that takes place not only in the emplacement of the sign but also in its production. Signifcant for the production process is the signmakers' anticipation of their readership, that is, their customers, and the resulting efforts to establish discursive spaces for dialogue and community-building.

Through the lens of a second-year course at CUNY designed to engage students with topics that affect the city of New York, Sekerina and Brooks, in their chapter, heed the call by the American Psychological Association to internationalize the psychology curriculum and design foundational courses that target fve specifc learning goals: knowledge base, scientifc inquiry and critical thinking, ethical and social responsibility, communication, and professional development. After receiving training in LL Studies methodology, students conducted their own interdisciplinary research project on urban linguistic diversity. The objective was for students to gain some understanding of the procedures associated with collecting, analyzing, and writing about real data in the context of multilingual NYC. Consequently, the spaces associated with this project comprised neighborhoods where Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Russian and Spanish were spoken. In terms of spatialization, students were encouraged to collect data from the physical environment (e.g., bilingual signage) as well as to interact directly with residents of the neighborhoods (e.g., through interviews and surveys). As a result, the project yielded insights into and ushered discussions on immigration patterns within NYC and strategies immigrants utilize to foster and curate a sense of place by preserving their cultural and social identities through language usage. The authors conclude that students were able to incorporate "appropriate levels of complexity (e.g., individual, group, societal/cultural) in interpreting local residents' attitudes about multilingualism within their communities" (p. 214).

The chapter by Zimmerman, Noodin, Mayes, and Perley, "Indigenous conceptual cartographies and landscape pedagogy: Vibrant modalities across semiotic domains," reveals how language teaching and learning can be nothing less than world-creation. Pointing to "relationships between language, landscape, and cosmology" (p. 226), the authors analyze a narrated walking tour at an indigenous community school, part of an Ojibwe language and cultural revitalization campaign on lands co-located with the northern U.S. state of Wisconsin. Through a carefully documented community walk from four different narrative/subject positions, the chapter expands upon the LL walking tour methodology (Garvin, 2010) to analyze the organic, symbiotic relations that characterize "indigenous conceptual cartographies" (p. 244)—that is, native ways of knowing, being, moving, and languaging local landscapes that cannot come to be but within those landscapes themselves. "Vibrancy," then, is an emergent concept from this chapter that points to ways for language learners and teachers in dialogue "to access the vitality of language, landscape, and cosmological relationships in the service of language, cultural, and spiritual learning" (p. 224), and thus signifcantly expanding realms of possibility in L2 teaching and learning.

# **5 Our Hopes for This Volume**

This volume recognizes challenges to our mobility and thus places its emphasis on thinking creatively about the genesis and adaptation of rich environments for learning, regardless of how mobile one has to be to access it. Whether it is within the four walls of a school (Troyer), in virtual telecollaborative spaces (Vinagre & Llopis-García), in a nearby multilingual neighborhood (Jiménez-Caicedo), or in any other location for language learning, this volume looks to highlight possible confgurations of space, the intentional use of space for learning, and the dynamic relations in space that allow for a thorough examination of place-based meaning-making processes that are central to spatialized language and literacy pedagogy. Because of the different spatial confgurations featured in the volume, it is hoped that even though the volume largely fnds its origin and development in the United States, the nine projects can serve as models for interrogations of space that can happen in any location. Moreover, the scope of projects mapped out by this volume's nine chapters suggest many other possible teaching and learning confgurations, as well. To suggest but a few: augmented and virtual reality are recognized areas of experimentation and innovation in L2 instruction (Kessler, 2018; Sydorenko, et al., 2019), and offer the ability to bring language learners into more intimate contact with multilingualism in public places around the world; a growing commitment in the feld to heritage language education (Brinton et al., 2017) and community-based and service language learning (Palpacuer Lee et al., 2018) opens avenues for language teachers and learners to recognize as learning assets the diverse home and community languages in their immediate vicinity—indeed, in their own rooms.

Because of the expanding, dynamic, and (in many cases) ideologically charged character of the teaching and learning environments we collectively inhabit, the editors are especially pleased that this volume is being published in open access format. We hope that this will greatly increase the volume's availability for teachers, researchers, and students in public, private, and non-proft institutional contexts alike. The researchers and practitioners of LL-related work have benefted immensely over the years from the healthy dialogue and interaction, exemplifed perhaps most notably at the annual LL workshops, and it is our desire to offer another venue for such conversations.

# **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Part I Reimagining Learning Spaces Through the Linguistic Landscape**

In what settings do language learning projects in the linguistic landscape actually take place, and how do these settings bear upon the nature and depth of student learning? The chapters in Part I by Ritchey, Yu, Moeller and Lu, and Vinagre and Llopis-García respond to this line of inquiry by offering deep insights into the variables at play in designing and selecting contexts for learning projects; these, we have grouped under the rubric of "spacing" the settings and dynamics of learning. As discussed in the Introduction, Spacing is defned as "the confguring of learners, instructors, extra-institutional participants (e.g., community members), physical and virtual environments, technologies, and interactional purposes into various alignments with expected affordances and constraints for language learning and use" (p. 7). As such, Spacing involves addressing not just physical variables but also social, technological, and temporal contingencies, with each element (and more) deserving of careful consideration and refection.

Here we offer several guiding questions for teachers, possible answers to which may be found in the chapters of this and the following two parts of the volume:


6. What are the opportunities and limitations of telecollaboration (internet-mediated virtual exchange for language and cultural learning) for language learning in the linguistic landscape? How can or should telecollaborative partners in other cities or countries mediate language learners' encounter with faraway places in which target languages are used?

# **Building the Politeness Repertoire Through the Linguistic Landscape**

**Elyse Ritchey**

**Abstract** The treatment of politeness in the language classroom is often restricted to a brief overview of polite forms of address, verb tenses, and lexical items. In this chapter, a novel pedagogical approach is proposed which uses instructional signage found in the linguistic landscape to enrich students' appreciation of the real pragmatic force of politeness practices. Creators of instructional signage, whether offcial or ad-hoc, aim to regulate behavior in public spaces by informing observers of the rules in effect there. A careful reading of such signs reveals the rhetorical strategies employed to achieve the desired objective. Thus, by exploring them, the engaged observer – in this case, the language learner – can broaden their own cultural and linguistic repertoires. In this chapter, the analysis of multimodal instructional signage serves as a tool for improving students' pragmatic competence. The approach was developed and tested in an intermediate French classroom; students were asked not only to examine signs but also to revise the text with different pragmatic goals in mind. These exercises encourage students to develop a more critical eye toward (im)politeness in the target culture and demonstrate that it is not reducible to sets of lexical items, tenses, or gestures, but is continuously constructed by creators and viewers alike.

**Keywords** Politeness · Pragmatics · Instructional signage · Intercultural studies · Sociolinguistic competence

# **1 Introduction**

A student with elementary knowledge of French fnds herself lost on a street in Lyon. She has misplaced her city map and must hail a passerby for help. How should she attract their attention? How should she explain her situation and communicate her goal? How should she best express her gratitude for the stranger's

© The Author(s) 2023

E. Ritchey (\*)

National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland e-mail: Elyse.Ritchey@mu.ie

S. Dubreil et al. (eds.), *Spatializing Language Studies*, Educational Linguistics 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39578-9\_2

help? All of these tasks require the expression of politeness. New speakers may feel unsure about how they are presenting themselves, both in the classroom and in dayto-day interactions. The successful use of polite expressions is not only a linguistic achievement but also a social one. The ability to be polite bolsters students' comfort with the target language and with the norms tied to the target culture.

As language learners acquire politeness formulae like *please* and *thank you,* they also acquire the ability to better structure simple exchanges. However, as students hone and expand their linguistic skills, little attention is given to the further development of politeness. Moreover, even students whose verbal repertoire is advanced may be unaware of politeness as a culturally-embedded practice. In this chapter, I address the oft-neglected cultural aspect of politeness in the lower-division university classroom by using the linguistic landscape. The discourses that appear in the linguistic landscape open a window onto sociocultural norms and practices. In this case, I focus on instructional signage that encourages socially desirable behaviors in public. The stationary sign is far from inert; it prompts students to refect upon linguistic and cultural aspects of politeness, and the importance of politeness in communication.

In this chapter, I offer a set of classroom activities that use French instructional signage as an object of analysis. The activities encourage language learners to see politeness as more than just words, but as a set of strategies that facilitate communication. They should also understand that politeness strategies are governed by context. To accomplish these objectives, the activities focus on questions of (in) directness in language, contrast between spoken and written codes, author and audience factors in the deployment of (im)polite expressions, and the importance of face maintenance in polite exchanges.

# **2 Politeness**

The feld of politeness studies, which maps onto several social science disciplines, is predicated on the idea that politeness carries great cultural and social signifcance. Brown (2017) proposes that "politeness in communication goes right to the heart of social life and interaction; indeed it is probably a precondition for human cooperation in general" (p. 384). During the 1970s and 1980s, three major approaches to the study of politeness were in circulation. The frst considered politeness as a set of social rules or norms "conventionally attached to certain linguistic forms and formulaic expressions" (Brown, 2017, p. 385). Ide's (1989) work on Japanese politeness is a good example of this approach, which "is most appropriate for fxed aspects of language use — the more or less obligatory social marking of relatively unalterable social categories and social actions" (Brown, 2017, p. 385).

The second and third approaches are more concerned with the development of a general theory of linguistic politeness. According to Lakoff (1973), who draws on Gricean principles, politeness serves to "facilitate human interaction by minimizing the potential for confict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange" (quoted in Brown, 2017, p. 285). Leech (1983) builds on this foundation by proposing a Politeness Principle with six Maxims: Tact, Generosity, Approbation, Modesty, Agreement, Sympathy. "Cross-cultural differences, in Leech's theory, derive from the different importance attached to particular maxims" (Brown, 2017, p. 385). After considering an inventory of the criticisms leveled at the Politeness Principle, Leech (2014) proposes an update, positing that "there are two ways of looking at politeness" (p. 88). The frst is the "pragmalinguistic politeness scale," which is independent of situational context. It "registers degrees of politeness in terms of the lexigrammatical form and semantic interpretation of the utterance": on the scale, "Thank you very much" is more polite than 'Thanks," since it contains an intensifer (Leech, 2014, p. 88). The second is the "sociopragmatic politeness scale," which depends on "the norms in a given society, group, or situation" and is "sensitive to context": on this scale, the phrase "Could I possibly interrupt?" would read as polite in formal situations, but may be "interpreted as sarcastic and hence offensive […] if spoken to family members monopolizing the conversation" (Leech, 2014, p. 88).

The third approach, advanced by Brown and Levinson (1978), relies on Goffman's theory of face requirements (1967). The authors Brown and Levinson (1978) summarize the concept as follows: negative face is "the want of every 'competent adult member' that his actions be unimpeded by others" and positive face is "the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others" (p. 67). A face-threatening act (FTA) "run(s) contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or of the speaker" (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 70). They identify several strategies through which people "minimize the threat" of an FTA, given the "mutual vulnerability of face" of the interlocutors (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 73). There are two types of politeness strategies: positive and negative. Positive politeness mitigates a threat to positive face "by indicating that in some respects, S[peaker] wants H[earer]'s wants," such as being liked and being considered a member of the in-group (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 75). Negative politeness mitigates a threat to threaten negative face by "partially satisfying […] basic want[s] to maintain claims of territory and self-determination" (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 75). Negative politeness is thus "characterized by self-effacement, formality, and restraint, with attention to very restricted aspects of H's self-image" (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p. 75).

According to Brown and Levinson, politeness conventions vary by society due to three factors: "the relative power (P) of speaker and addressee in the context, their social distance (D), and the intrinsic ranking (R) of the face-threateningness of an imposition" (Brown, 2017, p. 387). Interlocutors evaluate the three dimensions on a situational basis and modify their speech accordingly. For example, "one tends to be more polite to people one doesn't know," implying that increased social distance corresponds to increased politeness (Brown, 2017, p. 386).

The three approaches outlined above are the basis of politeness theory, with Brown and Levinson's (1978) theory occupying a central, if contested, position. While Brown and Levinson concentrate on politeness as a universal strategy for mitigating face-threatening acts, Watts (2003) argues that politeness theory should not be completely equated with face theory, as this would imply "that all social

interaction is geared towards cooperative behavior" (p. 119). Brown (2017) allows that "[m]any motivations other than politeness guide human behaviour: there are some situations (e.g. task-oriented ones, highly urgent ones, confrontational ones) where politeness may be subsumed to other goals, and there are many reasons for being indirect in speech other than politeness (e.g. humour, irony, rhetorical force)" (p. 390).

The rigidity of Brown and Levinson's variables P, D, and R is criticized by Werkhofer (1992) whose position Watts (2003) summarizes as follows:

[P, D, and R] are taken to be static social entities that determine the degree of politeness offered. In particular, power and social distance become reifed, taking on an existence outside the social sphere of the interactants rather than being themselves constructed and / or reproduced through and in the interaction itself. They are not adequately defned, and Brown and Levinson do not consider the function that polite behaviour itself may have in reconstructing them. (p. 114)

Werkhofer's evocation of hierarchies and politeness as constructed through interaction refutes the instrumentalist outlook of Brown and Levinson. Such a conception also implies that politeness is not only a linguistic repertoire, but also a type of pragmatic competence.

Nijakowska (2013) argues that Brown and Levinson's (B&L) model falls short of its goal of universal description, saying that their interpretation of face theory is biased towards individualistic cultures. She contends that Brown and Levinson:

perceive face as internally generated and highly individualistic, consisting of individual's wants and stressing freedom of imposition […] Thus B&L's claim to universal applicability across cultures fails because in collectivist cultures individuals defne and perceive themselves in relation to the social group; also type, quantity, strength and salience (content) of (positive and negative) face vary across discourses, languages and cultures. (p. 182)

In this chapter I focus on a relatively individualistic Western culture. While Brown and Levinson's conception of face maps onto the French politeness paradigm well, the variation in face maintenance wants is a concern. For instance, French language learners are often taught to frame a request to a stranger with the formula *excusezmoi de vous déranger, mais…* (excuse me for disturbing you, but…), since in conventional French interactions the salience of FTAs related to negative face is high.

Since politeness depends on dynamic interactions, with their attendant potential for negotiation and repair, one might ask how a static sign in a public space can be an object of inquiry into politeness strategies. In a cross-linguistic account, Nishijima (2014) shows evidence of implicit and explicit politeness in signage found in the linguistic landscape. For the purposes of classroom instruction, I argue that signage of the type presented here freezes an act of (im)politeness for examination and analysis, which gives learners the time and space to explore it. Moreover, the activities proposed in this chapter allow the learners to breathe life into such signs through analysis and transformation.

# **3 Second Language Acquisition and Politeness**

The current project responds to a gap in French language materials and classroom practices related to the development of students' politeness repertoire. In a study of learners of English as a second language, Scarcella (1979) "found […] that her subjects appeared to acquire politeness forms before acquiring the rules for their use" (Kasper & Rose, 1999. p. 88). Two different skills appear to be at play in the development of the politeness repertoire. The frst is linguistic mastery of polite structures; the second is sociopragmatic mastery. Kasper and Rose (1999) summarize the three stages of learner development in formulating requests in the target language. These stages were frst described by Ellis (1992) as part of a study of two ESL learners (aged 10 and 11 years). In the frst stage, learners show "requestive intent through highly context-dependent, minimalist realizations, expressing the intended reference and illocution but showing no relational or social goals," e.g. "leave it, give me" (Kasper & Rose, 1999, p. 92). In the second stage, "requests were mainly performed by means of unanalyzed routines *(can I have, have you got)* and illocutionary force was indicated by lexical cues *(please, maybe)*" (Kasper & Rose, 1999, p. 92). Finally, in the third stage "ability questions as requests were now used as fexible sentence frames, shifting in perspective between speaker *(can I take book with me)* and hearer focus *(can you pass me my pencil)*" (Kasper & Rose, 1999, p. 92). According to Ellis, the two learners participating in the study did progress in their usage of polite requests, as both "produced fewer instances of verbless requests [e.g. '*pencil please*'] as time passed" and both "systematically extended the range of request types" (1992, p. 19).

Despite the development of request strategies over Ellis's observation period, the learners' repertoire remained more limited than that of the "adult native speaker," a tendency that Ellis attributes in part to the limited input available in the language classroom. The idea that classroom environment slows the development of the politeness repertoire is an issue that other scholars note as well. Lorscher and Schulze (1988) found that "the aspect of discourse which plays a minor, subordinate part in everyday conversations (i.e. the formal, linguistic realization of utterances) is of eminent importance in the foreign language classroom. However, the interpersonal and often also the semantic aspects of discourse [e.g. politeness] are far less important in the language classroom than in everyday communication" (p. 195).

The limitations of the classroom are related to the materials available for study. Typically, if language textbooks address politeness in a sustained manner (i.e. aside from marking a particular form as "(im)polite"), the focus is on pragmalinguistic inventories. No explicit discussion of sociopragmatic politeness appears in the sections on French and Francophone cultures in the seven contemporary French textbooks that I surveyed.

Popular works on French language and culture aimed at a general audience often address cultural differences between politeness practices more directly. However, this presentation of sociocultural politeness is limited to dispelling misunderstandings of politeness practices in France by others (speakers of American English, in the works I surveyed). In their popular volume on French culture, Nadeau and Barlow (2004) reference Polly Platt's (2004) description of privacy in France:

people walk around inside a series of concentric bubbles that defne what's public, what's private, what's personal, and what's intimate. Each of these bubbles can be penetrated without creating hostility if you know the codes. But if you don't know the codes, there will be trouble, and words won't save you. (p. 34)

Aside from the somewhat dire tone, this statement does contain interesting sociopragmatic information, suggesting that the negative face wants of a French speaker in France might be an important element of communication. More generally, it underlines the importance of shared politeness strategies in facilitating communication. Instructors would do well to take analyses like Platt's into account (even with a grain of salt) in order to expand the purely linguistic presentation of politeness found in most textbooks.

# **4 The Linguistic Landscape and Public Behavior**

Texts permeate our days: menus, computer and phone screens, signage on the outside of buildings, the list goes on. However, Gorter (2006) points out that "[m]ost of the time people do not pay much attention to the 'linguistic landscape' that surrounds them" (p. 1). In order to defne the term "linguistic landscape" in this project*,* I am guided by Scollon and Scollon's contention that our attention is selectively drawn to aspects of this linguistic (or, in their terms, geosemiotic) landscape. In the case of signs that seek to regulate social behavior, the reader's reception of the regulating discourse is governed by a complex set of factors.

Scollon and Scollon (2003) ask us to imagine the following scene on a street corner. A pedestrian is waiting to cross. He or she is surrounded by texts, or discourses:1 

the advertising on shop fronts across the street, the discarded food packages next to the trash can, the sign giving the name of the street, the note saying post no bills on the electrical box running the traffc signals, the poster announcing a coming theatrical performance, the gas, water, cable TV, or other manhole covers, the music playing in a passing automobile, the no-parking signs for cars, or the bus stop sign one is standing next to (p. 200).

These discourses might temporarily draw attention but they remain secondary to the focus of attention: the pedestrian signal. Underlying the signal are two aspects of interest: how it came to be in that place, in that form, and its reception by the reader.2 

<sup>1</sup>Scollon and Scollon (2003) refer to these multimodal entities as "discourses." This designation has the advantage of being expansive and more accurately capturing the richness of the semiotic landscape.

<sup>2</sup> In this chapter, I use the term *reader* to refer to any observer who decodes the sign, regardless of literacy status or the nature of the sign (that is, verbal or non-verbal).

Linguistic landscape scholars often describe discourses as *top-down* or *bottomup*, though this binary perception has been challenged in recent years (e.g., Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010). The former are "offcial signs placed by the government or related institution" while the latter are "nonoffcial signs put there by commercial enterprises or by private organisations or persons" (Gorter, 2006, p. 3). The pedestrian signal is a top-down sign, composed and erected according to pertinent laws and regulations. As a genre, instructional signs may be top-down or bottom-up. Regardless of their type, they index the authority of the sign's composer. This authority is dependent on the space and the relevant activity. Scollon and Scollon (2003) also call our attention to the production of the sign, which involves "a double indexicality in that there is a discourse which produces the sign as well as discourses for interpreting the sign" (p. 202). For example, the sign in Fig. 1 was found in the window of a Médecins du monde (Doctors of the World) offce in Toulouse, France.

The sign is clearly an ad-hoc one composed and printed on a personal computer.3 On one hand, its location in the window of a Médecins du monde offce implies that

**Fig. 1** Soyez sympas! Soyez sympas! Gardez le trottoir propre! Il est destiné au passage des personnes et non à recueillir les déchets. Des poubelles attendent vos papiers, mégots, touillettes, gobelets… *Be kind! Keep the sidewalk clean! It's meant for people to walk on, not to collect litter. Trashcans are available for your papers, cigarette butts, stir sticks, cups…*

<sup>3</sup>The rest of the signs in the Médecins du monde window were similarly produced, with the offce's schedule produced on a word processor and encased in a plastic sleeve. However, the main Médecins du monde insignia on the outside of the building were permanent and appeared professionally designed. The offce is also located across the street from Toulouse's main train station, an area known for loitering.

it is a discourse of said group. On the other hand, the sign's creation is unlikely to have involved the national organization. One imagines its being created and hung by an employee frustrated with the messy sidewalk outside. Through observation, the reader can surmise the likely source of this bottom-up sign and the conditions surrounding its origin.

Of course, the composer of a sign intends for its force upon readers to be suffcient to ensure compliance with the stated law, regulation, or request. However, this force is quite variable. Even the pedestrian signal, ostensibly intended to ensure people's safety, is routinely ignored. When it comes to the force of certain regulations, Scollon and Scollon (2003) noticed cultural differences. The relative hierarchy of (un)acceptable public behaviors varies by society; and is refected in the linguistic landscape. When it comes to readers' reception of instructional signage, both personal and social pressures to conform matter. An individual's behavior in response to the stimulus of instructional signage "provides a double indexicality" (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 203). The frst dimension of the "action indexes the person, that is the habitus. This is a local, a foreigner, a person of good character or not, a law-abiding citizen or a rogue, a friend who considers other members of the with frst or a bad social risk" while the second "indexes the discourses which are in place at that moment and in that place and this indexing can take on various forms from ratifcation to contestation" (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 203).

A pedestrian who waits for the walk signal exhibits "normative behavior [that] indexes and ratifes the regulatory municipal authorities from the town council through law enforcement offcers which have placed that pedestrian signal on that corner and who enforce its directive force" (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 203). One may identify qualities of a "law-abiding citizen" in this behavior. However, a pedestrian crossing against the light complicates the analysis. In Scollon and Scollon's (2003) scenario, the pedestrian who proceeds through the crosswalk when the light is red exhibits a behavior that is conditioned by the habitus and/or by social regulation. In Finland, the majority of pedestrians wait for the signal to authorize crossing, so not waiting would be a salient action. The pedestrian could be from another country and unfamiliar with the normative procedure, or unable to interpret the signal. In that case, we cannot make a comment on the habitus of this person, but instead attribute the failure to "ratify" the signal's discourse to unfamiliarity with social norms. If, however, the person is a native of Helsinki, the observer is licensed to attribute the behavior to contrarian habitus and disrespect for social regulations.

For Scollon and Scollon (2003), it is thus necessary to distinguish between "legal and regulatory" discourses and those emanating from "social practice" (p. 201). The pedestrian who waits patiently for the light to change as dozens of others cross a Hong Kong street, regardless of the red light, complies with the law but violates norms of social practice. In sum, the confuence of individual, social, and legal discourses present at our street corner give an impression of "how people 'here' do things, no matter what the legal structure might say" (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 201).

# **5 Bringing Politeness Theory and the Linguistic Landscape into the Classroom**

Developing pragmatic competence in the second language classroom requires exposure to a wide variety of linguistic interactions. In their wide-ranging paper on applications of linguistic landscape to second-language acquisition, Cenoz and Gorter (2008) point out that "linguistic landscape can increase the availability of input which is appropriate for the acquisition of pragmatic competence" (p. 275). In viewing the linguistic landscape as such a potential input, instructors can also unlock its content related to politeness.

Studying politeness invites students to think about how social actors are regulated and what might constitute a transgression of such regulations. We may imagine a situation in which one pedestrian asks another to wait for the green light before crossing. We might ask several questions in order to understand how the interaction would play out. Are the two people friends? a married couple? Is one of them a police offcer? We might then ask about the tone: were politeness formulae appropriate to the social relationship offered? Was there an implicit threat? Moreover, were extenuating circumstances in play? An obstetrician rushing to the delivery room is more likely to refuse the request than a retiree out for his or her morning constitutional. These dimensions are all integral to understanding the context of social behavior, including the use of politeness strategies. In the activities outlined below, students take an instructional sign as a point of departure. They are asked to analyze it, and imagine its context, and transform it in order to bring the cultural information encoded within to life.

# *5.1 Aims*

The aim of the activities designed by the author for introducing the linguistic landscape and politeness strategies into the French language classroom is threefold.. First, students are prompted to consider how linguistic expression modulates politeness in speech. Second, by exploiting the content of public instructional signage, they consider questions of author and audience and strategies that might underlie (im)politeness in the linguistic landscape. Third, students consider how written and spoken expressions of politeness differ. Throughout, students are instructed to deploy their linguistic repertoire to interpret and/or formulate expressions of politeness. In so doing, students are also encouraged to refect on register: whether the language that they are using is appropriate to the situation. The activities may be presented along with explicit instruction on linguistic structure(s) used to mitigate or intensify requests.

# *5.2 Context of Study*

In a pilot study, I presented the activities outlined in this chapter to students at a large American public university. The students were enrolled in French language courses; the presentations involved two advanced classes (12 and 14 students present) and one advanced intermediate class (11 students present). The courses focused on language instruction, with skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening emphasized. There was also a cultural component to the courses, with students engaging with authentic text, audio, and video resources from a variety of Francophone cultures. The signage that I used in this study was not a typical input in the class, but the students were suffciently accustomed to a variety of media and accepted the premise readily.

The activities were formulated with the students' linguistic competence in mind.

By the third semester, they should have had knowledge of major lexical items associated with politeness. However, they may have lacked a large inventory of idiomatic expressions of politeness at this stage, as well as the pragmatic competence to use them effectively.

Leech (2014) refers to the pragmalinguistic facets of politeness: the "differing morphological, syntactic, and lexical resources of languages" that serve to encode politeness in the language (p. 105). Table 1 lists Leech's general inventory of pragmalinguistic features in the frst column; in the second column appears a list of common expressions used to mitigate requests in French, taken from a second-year textbook (Hester et al., 1988). This is not an exhaustive inventory of the politeness resources available in French, but rather ones pertinent to the communicative goal of the instructional signage in this chapter.

Students in the three classes had already received instruction in all the grammatical structures associated with the French expressions listed, with the exception of intensifers and diminutives. However, the pragmalinguistic function of these expressions tend to be taught as one of several functions. The courses did not include a concerted focus on pragmatics. The proposed lessons sought to remedy this by highlighting pragmatics and politeness as a topic in and of itself, not a corollary of grammatical constructions.

Leech (2014) does not include polite lexical items or phrases like *merci* (thank you) in his inventory. Elsewhere, he points out that many of these expressions have become conventionalized; that is, they lack "propositional content" even as they carry illocutionary force: "*please* as an isolate has a conventional meaning perhaps best expressed performatively: 'S[peaker] (hereby) utters a somewhat polite directive.' […] Even an utterance lacking other directive features can still be interpreted as a request by virtue of the presence of *please*" (Leech, 2014, p. 75). Of course, terms like *merci, de rien* (you're welcome) and *s'il vous plaît* (please) are among the most well-known French politeness formulae in the second-year classroom. They also show the effects of conventionalization in their "weakened pragmatic force" (Leech, 2014, p. 105). I argue that, if learners' use these conventionalized lexical items mainly to imply a request or add to a veneer of courtesy, they are not making progress in understanding politeness as a linguistic practice embedded in its social context.


**Table 1** Linguistic expressions of politeness (pragmalinguistic)

# *5.3 Design of Activities*

In Sect. 2, we reviewed Werkhofer's criticism of Brown and Levinson's (1978) variables P, D, and R as insuffciently dynamic to apply to real communication Since the unit was designed to introduce students explicitly to politeness as a cultural and linguistic phenomenon, I opted instead to operationalize the paradigm of sociopragmatic politeness suggested by Leech (2014). This concept, which complements the pragmalinguistic politeness interface, is the "interface between pragmatics and society" (Leech, 2014, p. ix). The fve clearly defned scales of sociopragmatic politeness are also useful in designing curricula for the classroom. These fve dimensions appear below:


Consideration of each of the fve scales is woven into the activities.

I also engage with what Leech describes as pragmalinguistic politeness (see also Table 1). This "interface between pragmatics and linguistic form" governs the selection of the appropriate linguistic expression of (im)politeness in a given situation (Leech, 2014, p. ix). The capacity for such selection is often underdeveloped in lower-division language students, as it involves a complex negotiation between pragmatic factors (nature of the situation and of the interlocutor) and the linguistic politeness repertoire. For a native speaker or one who is immersed in a target language atmosphere, this process becomes more and more automatic. It is my hope that conscious observation and refection upon both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic variables will help students develop ease and eventually automaticity in their politeness repertoires.

The three aims of the project correspond with the three in-class activity types. In the frst, *refection on politeness*, students explicitly discuss the use of pragmalinguistic politeness strategies on simplifed continua of "more or less polite" and "more or less direct" speech. The second, *analysis*, introduces signage from the Francophone linguistic landscape. Students conduct their own investigations into the surface-level and deeper-level (im)politeness strategies in the image. Finally, the *transformation* exercise allows students to immerse themselves in sociopragmatic context of the sign. In this chapter, the activity involves transformation from written to spoken language. More possibilities for transformation will be discussed in Sect. 7.

### **5.3.1 Activity 1: Refection on Politeness**

To begin the frst activity, the instructor requested, in the target language, that a student close a window (any other simple task would work here). The instructor employed three escalating levels of directness. The series used in the study is the following:


While the above phrases do not include politeness formulae, students are able to perceive the gradient of indirectness to directness in the command. The imperative phrase (3) was perceived as impolite, despite the use of the *vous* form, as no other expression is present to soften the command. In a follow-up discussion, students indicated that they perceived Phrases (1) and (2) as neither polite nor impolite. The interaction between student and instructor was not suffcient to prompt the student to close the window. One can nonetheless imagine a situation with a richer context in which (1) or (2) would prompt the closure of the window.

After refecting on indirect and direct commands, students were prompted to consider ways to rephrase (3). Half of the class was instructed to make it less polite, half to make it more polite.4 Depending on curricular goals, instructors may ask for the use of specifc linguistic structures. Here are three student suggestions from the activity:

### **More polite**


Each response retains the pronoun *vous*, which is associated with increased horizontal as well as vertical distance. Responses (4) and (6) make use of the conditional, acknowledging a hypothetical situation in which the hearer is not able to (4) or unwilling to (6) comply with the request. The formula *s'il vous plaît* also appears in (4) and (6). It is easily deployed to soften a request and, unlike the conditional tense or the so-called tu/vous (t/v) distinction between formal and informal secondperson pronouns, it is easily added. Note the position of *s'il vous plaît* as a tag in (4) and (6), likely due to hesitation over its position.5 

Like (4), response (5) makes use of the verb *pouvoir*, denoting capacity or ability, but the indicative mood reduces its politeness, as does the less-formal *est-ce que* question structure. However, (5) is interesting in its context. Closing a window is low on the cost / beneft scale. Moreover, the socially defned obligation of the student is to comply with the instructor's request, and the instructor occupies a higher position in the social scale of the classroom. Therefore, one may consider that (5) is quite appropriate for the situation, perhaps even more so than (4) and (6). In turn, this assessment brings up the question of asymmetrical distributions of politeness. During all the activities, politeness is described as having two dimensions: *reconnaissance* (recognition) or attending to positive face wants, and *respect* (respect) or attending to negative face wants. Does the obligation of the student to show respect to the instructor outweigh that of the instructor to show recognition to the student?

It is interesting to note that students seemed to amuse themselves more in composing the "less polite" formulations, and the class in reading them. Here are three examples of this genre:

<sup>4</sup>Students may be supplied with handouts or other materials summarizing target structures and vocabulary for this task and the others described below, or asked to brainstorm from memory.

<sup>5</sup> In French, it is more commonly found at the beginning of such a request, but is strange in the middle of the sentence, as the more colloquial English *Could you please close the window?* Pourriez-vous s'il vous plaît fermer la fenêtre?

### **Less polite**


Each of the less polite variations on the command utilizes forms related to the second-person singular pronoun *tu. Tu* collapses the social distance established by *vous*, both vertically and horizontally. Responses (7), (8), and (9) are also quite direct. The imperative mood appears in (7) and (9), while (8) is in the indicative. Students also used various strategies to reinforce the command. Response (8) centers on the verb *devoir*, which conveys obligation. In (9), the use of *maintenant!* conveys urgency. Is this sentiment related to impatience on the part of an imperious speaker? Or is there a stimulus licensing urgency, like an impending thunderstorm? Students begin to conceptualize politeness as more than a list of dos and don'ts, but as embedded in context.

### **5.3.2 Activity 2: Analysis**

Analysis activities bring instructional signage from the linguistic landscape into the classroom. The communicative objective remains constant: to modify the behavior of the hearer, or, in the case of the sign, of the reader. Students were asked to analyze the image using the following heuristic (based in part on Backhaus (2007)):


The images an instructor chooses to display may have more or less visual context, so the frst three responses may be based on extrapolation or hunches. In order to illustrate the classroom analysis, I reproduce here the image that was used in the pilot study, which I will refer to as *montagne propre* (see Fig. 2). It is the only image that was analyzed, and I chose it on the basis of its linguistic simplicity and visual expressiveness. Moreover, it communicates a concept (caring for the environment) that exists in American culture as well. Thus, the burden of understanding an entirely new concept is removed and students could focus on politeness strategies more directly.

The perimeter of Fig. 2 shows a natural setting; the text in the lower right indicates that the sign was produced for the Parc régional du Mercantour, located in **Fig. 2** Montagne propre montagne propre remportez vos ordures! merci! *clean mountain take away your trash! thanks!*

southeastern France. This text, and the logo to the left (Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), allow us to identify the authors as 'regional park authorities,' which is suffcient for the purposes of the activity. The sign appears to be along a fairly accessible path, so we infer that it is addressed to park visitors.

Questions four through six of the heuristic invite students to view the sign as a communicative act, with goals and strategies tied to it. For question four, students deduced that readers are being asked to dispose of their trash responsibly and not litter in the park. In questions fve and six, they analyze those linguistic and nonlinguistic features that comprise the message. Students pointed out the use of the imperative: *remportez vos ordures!* using the *vous* form. They also noticed the softening effect of *merci!* but still found it to be quite direct. In the case of the t/v distinction, students acknowledged the indeterminate status of *vous:* the audience could be one park visitor being addressed formally or a group of park visitors being addressed either formally or informally.

One student noted that *"le titre est un objectif"* (the title is a goal). Indeed, the heading of the sign, *montagne propre*, expresses the end state that is to be achieved if park visitors comply with the request. This suggestion is intensifed by the sign's non-linguistic content. The drawing of marmots angrily throwing litter sends a message that, according to the students, *"montre des conséquences des actions des personnes"* (shows [the] consequences of people's actions) and that *"les ordures sont mal pour l'environnement"* (trash is [bad] for the environment). Students thought that the image would motivate compliance through a sense of *"culpabilité"* (guilt). The directive to dispose of trash properly is thus tied to a social obligation. The anthropomorphic animals suggest that a park visitor in noncompliance has transgressed a boundary. While the verbiage on the sign is neutral, minimizing the FTA of asking people to take care of their trash by using the term *merci!,* the image is more aggressive. In this case, the marmots are not using politeness because the presence of trash licenses their anger and physical aggression.

### **5.3.3 Activity 3: Transformation**

After analyzing *montagne propre*, students moved on to a transformation activity in which they changed the code from written to spoken. They imagined scenarios in which the elements of the sign analyzed (i.e. its composer, its audience, its content, and the request being made) were brought into the real world. To facilitate the exercises, they frst identifed the interlocutors and the key words on the sign. They then wrote brief skits in which those interlocutors made and responded to the request. The class was small, so students worked in two groups: one group was tasked with creating a skit that refected a higher level of politeness than that displayed on the sign, the other group's skit refected a lower level. The vague directive left students to choose freely among politeness strategies.

The "less polite" group imagined a scene in which a littering park visitor is confronted by an angry marmot:


### *Montagne propre* **skit***:* **Less polite**


<sup>6</sup>The force of the term *s'en foutre* is context-dependent.

In addition to excluding politeness formulae like *merci*, they changed the addressee from *vous* to *tu*. The indicative mood is used throughout; one imperative appears (*arrête!*). In the previous exercise, we had noted that the offense caused to the marmots licenses their violence. The students pick up the thread of guilt as the marmot claims the forest as his home.

The marmot certainly does not show any concern over the visitor's face wants. In turn, the visitor refuses to apologize for littering. The visitor's defensive reaction suggests that his behavior stems from habitus, not unfamiliarity with social regulation. Students reinforced this habitus by having him curse. The status of swear words in a second language is interesting; mastering impoliteness formulae can be even more challenging than mastering politeness formulae. Dewaele (2004) found that "[f]requency of language choice for swearing was found to be positively correlated with perceived emotional force of swearwords in that language" (p. 83). For students at this level, the differential emotional force of swearwords in French is not well established, in part because of the very limited opportunities to use them in the classroom!

The "more polite" group imagined an interaction between a dog-walking park visitor and a forest ranger. Unlike the scenario with the marmot, students had no background information about these novel characters. The ranger has noticed that the visitor's dog has relieved itself on the ground, potentially violating the regulation on proper disposal of trash.


### *Montagne propre* **skit***:* **More polite**

The entire exchange is punctuated by pleasantries like *bonjour* and *bonne journée,* showing attendance to a positive face want of the interlocutor, namely, to be acknowledged. Several politeness formulae appear as well. By referring to the *sac* instead of the dog's leavings, the speakers also employ polite euphemism.

Line 3 seems to violate the negative face wants of the visitor (to avoid imposition). The ranger uses the pronoun *vous*, denoting formality but also directness. Use of the conditional, i.e. *vous auriez besoin d'un sac* (might you need a bag) or foregrounding the speaker i.e. *je me demande si vous avez besoin d'un sac* (I'm wondering if you need a bag) would have better mitigated the potential FTA implied in the suggestion that the visitor is violating the regulation. The visitor's response is equally direct. There is an exculpatory gesture (*j'ai oublié*) but no apology. The bookending of the exchange in ll. 3–4, which is not particularly polite, with the pleasantries and politeness formulae in ll. 1–2 and 5–6, echoes Leech's (2014) observation that conventionalized formulae signal communicative intent but lack referential meaning.

# **6 Discussion**

The classroom pilots of the activities illustrate some of the strengths as well as some lacunae in students' politeness repertoires. Overall, they were comfortable and engaged in analyzing the sociopragmatic dynamics of *montagne propre*, but were less able to choose effective pragmalinguistic expressions of (im)politeness for the scenario. Furthermore, the experience demonstrated that certain linguistic expressions are more effective than others in communicating nuance in polite interactions.

An interesting fnding was the relative ineffectiveness of *vous* to signal politeness. In spoken French, it indexes vertical distance in the case of a singular addressee. However, this effect is neutralized in signage when the addressee is unspecifed. There are occasional uses of *tu* in instructional signage. In the case of Fig. 3, its use communicates a lack of regard for the face wants of the reader, as a person who parks in a handicapped space is perceived to be disrespectful, and has thus forfeited the privilege of being addressed with the formal and polite *vous*.

In the transformation activity, students showed awareness of connections between politeness level and register. This is especially notable in the less polite version, where several low-register features appear. However, the dialogues also

**Fig. 3** HandicapSi tu prends mon place prends mon handicap*If you take my space then take my handicap*

show the normative practices of the classroom, as evidenced by the retention of the negative particle *ne* in the less polite version; in this type of exchange it likely would be deleted. This nascent ability to move between registers is important for building sociolinguistic competence and deserves further attention.

The transformation skits, especially the more polite one, show that while these second-year students are aware of the function of politeness formulae, they are less aware of the capacity of syntactic, morphological, and lexical structures to mitigate FTAs. Further emphasis on the principles of *reconnaissance* (attention to positive face wants) and *respect* (attention to negative face wants) would be helpful. Also to be emphasized is the importance of indirectness in French politeness strategies. In the more polite skit, the American students calqued the American politeness style onto the park ranger and the dog walker. As a result, the characters show a lack of concern for negative face wants, which does not mesh with French practices. Unfortunately, the structure of the pilot study did not allow me to follow up on this issue. In future activities, it would be advisable to add time to discuss differences in politeness styles and social expectations between the target culture and the culture(s) of the students.

Signage, with its encoding of social norms and politeness strategies, provides a thought-provoking and versatile object of study. It gives students space to explore the social regulations and how different behaviors are encouraged or discouraged. The politeness strategies in the signage are less dynamic than those deployed in conversation, but this aspect allows classes to discuss contrasts between spoken and written codes as well. Building the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic politeness repertoires requires students to reexamine their assumptions about cultural and social difference.

# **7 Future Directions**

The activities presented above are cohesive and allow students to learn about politeness in a cumulative way. Nevertheless, they are far from the only possibilities when it comes to engaging with instructional signage. For example, students might study a sign featuring a denied inscription; the transformation activity for such a lesson would certainly feature a dynamic skit. They might also transform the sign itself to be more or less polite, thus exploring how politeness is communicated in the written code. They might also explore other types of instructional documents, such as public-service videos encouraging viewers to abide by the same type of regulation featured on the sign: how do spoken and written conventions differ?

Students abroad or in an immersion situation where the target language appears in the linguistic landscape could gather their own data and present it to the class for analysis and transformation. The internet is also a rich source for signage in various languages. Malinowski (2010) cautions that over-reliance on decontextualized virtual forms of viewing the world is "detrimental to authentic and agential engagement with the living city, just as it is inimical to the nuanced study of language" (p. 201). With this in mind, students should be guided to resources and search methods likely to return authentic materials. Better yet, students who have spent time in an area where the target language is spoken might be encouraged to document the linguistic landscape, and report on the context for what they are seeing. If implemented in a language program, such a collection could be developed into a very rich resource.

This chapter looked at two signs discouraging littering. Building activities on a particular theme (no littering, quiet in the library, please give your seat to an elderly passenger, etc.) could be fascinating. They might refect on how the social regulation in question differs in their home culture. Finally, I want to emphasize that, despite the focus on French in this study, the activities described above could be used in a variety of language learning contexts. Through critical comparison of linguistic inventories and social conventions across languages and cultures, both the sociopragmatic and the pragmalinguistic dimensions of politeness are activated.

# **References**


Watts, R. J. (2003). *Politeness*. Cambridge University Press.

Werkhofer, K. (1992). Traditional and modern views: The social constitution and the power of politeness. In R. Watts, S. Ide, & K. Ehlich (Eds.), *Politeness in language: Studies in its history, theory, and practice* (pp. 155–199). Mouton de Gruyter.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Exploring Language and Culture in the Novice Chinese Classroom Through the Linguistic Landscape**

**Fei Yu, Aleidine J. Moeller, and Jia Lu**

**Abstract** In this chapter, we showcase a feld trip project developed and tested in a two-week Chinese immersion summer program to demonstrate how using the theoretical framework of social constructivism in combination with linguistic landscape (LL) offers novice language learners the opportunity to explore the Chinese language and culture in an authentic context. This project was designed to motivate and engage learners actively in acquiring language skills and cultural knowledge and understanding. We examine pedagogical approaches and potential benefts of using technology and LL as pedagogical resources in language education to promote learner engagement in the target language and culture in a community based context.

**Keywords** Teaching Chinese · Novice language learners · Teaching culture · Pedagogical approaches to Chinese language and culture · Social constructivism · Field trip · Technology

# **1 Introduction**

Mandarin Chinese is typically perceived by English-language speakers as one of the most challenging languages to learn largely due to the complexity created by the character writing system and the tones necessary when speaking that differentiate words. Novice learners of Mandarin who are native speakers of Western languages can become discouraged and overwhelmed, in some cases even choosing to discontinue their language study beyond the frst two years, due to a lack of background

F. Yu (\*) · J. Lu

A. J. Moeller Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA e-mail: amoeller2@unl.edu

Department of Modern Languages, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA e-mail: fyu@bentley.edu; jialu@bentley.edu

knowledge provided by their native languages in the form of cognates and alphabetic languages (Robinson, 2010). In order to make the Chinese language and culture more accessible and meaningful to learners, concepts from linguistic landscape (hereafter LL) studies were integrated into the language curriculum to actively engage novice learners in the language and culture learning process through an authentic experience in an Asian market. In this chapter, we showcase a feld trip project developed and tested in our 2017 STARTALK Chinese Summer Academy to demonstrate how using the theoretical framework of social constructivism in combination with LL offers learners the opportunity to explore the Chinese language and culture in an authentic context designed to motivate and engage them actively in acquiring language skills and cultural knowledge and understanding.

# **2 Theoretical Framework: Social Constructivism**

Social constructivism was developed by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who claimed that language and culture are the two venues through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality. For Vygotsky, learning is a social activity in which community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning" (1978, p. 68). He further states,

A special feature of human perception … is the perception of real objects … I do not see the world simply in color and shape but also as a world with sense and meaning. I do not merely see something round and black with two hands; I see a clock … (1978, p. 39)

According to Vygotsky's social constructivism, learning happens through social interaction and language use; knowledge is not a result of observing the world but the result of social processes and interactions. Based on such a perspective, the generation of knowledge and ideas of reality is sparked by social processes (Gergen, 1994).

Social constructivism served as a theoretical model in this study as greater emphasis was placed on learning through social interaction, and value was placed on cultural background. Using such a framework for language learning entails a variety of activities that take place in an authentic community setting. To establish such a community setting, learners are exposed to the target language through the LL. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997), "The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration" (p. 25). Learners not only observe and analyze signs, or learn the target language through the signs in the community, they also interact with "inhabitants" or with each other about the signs using the target language in the community. Learners also gain insights about the targeted community as they critically refect on their experiences. Tying the social constructivism framework to the LL, we further explore language learning with a focus on cultural teaching and learning. Following Geertz's (1973) defnition of culture as a "web of signifcance," or the interaction of meanings attached to patterns and artifacts, we believe that teaching/learning about culture must go beyond learning of artifacts or doctrines with limited value in real life interpersonal interactions. For that reason, the LL, referred to as "research about the presence, representation, meanings and interpretation of languages displayed in public places" (Shohamy & Ben-Rafael, 2015, p. 1) underlying a culture that is mediated by peoples' interactions in that place, offers potential for engaging language learners in a research project that provides a rich cultural learning experience. According to Shohamy and Ben-Rafael (2015),

The main goal of LL studies is to describe and identify systematic patterns of the presence and absence of languages in public spaces and to understand the motives, pressures, ideologies, reactions and decision making of people regarding the creation of LL in its varied forms (p. 1).

# **3 Review of Relevant Research**

# *3.1 Linguistic Landscape and Foreign/Second Language Learning*

In one of the early studies that tied LL to second language acquisition, Cenoz and Gorter (2008) explored the potential for using language on public signs as additional language input outside of the classroom. Viewing the LL as "authentic, contextualized input which is part of the social context" (p. 268), they suggested language on public signs may help second language learners develop pragmatic competence. For example, a bilingual sign "Are you thirsty?" on a vending machine serves as a request to buy a drink. They also pointed out the possible use of the LL in developing learners' multimodal literacy skills (for the LL is oftentimes multimodal), fostering multicompetencies (as learners differentiate among different languages), and raising language awareness (as learners become more attentive to the symbolic and affective dimensions of language).

Following Cenoz and Gorter (2008), scholars further identifed pedagogical benefts of incorporating an LL approach into foreign language education, especially in teaching English as a foreign language due to the ubiquitous presence of English language on public signs. By documenting and analyzing English language use on public signs in Oaxaca, Mexico, Sayer (2010) argued that foreign language teachers can use such LL projects to help students connect classroom learning to the authentic world outside of the classroom as well as cultivate creative and analytical thinking as students examine the sociolinguistic context of language use. Incorporating the investigation of the LL of Taipei into their EFL classroom, Chern and Dooley (2014) suggested using an "English literacy walk" activity as a way to encourage language learning and critical English reading practices among students in the course of their everyday activities. Hewitt-Bradshaw (2014) modeled the use of Critical Discourse Analysis to LL data in the Caribbean Creole context and explored ways of utilizing such analysis to develop students' critical language awareness.

The pedagogical benefts of using LL perspectives in language teaching have also been documented in empirical studies. For example, Rowland (2012) had his EFL students in Japan document and analyze their local LL and concluded that LL projects are particularly valuable in developing students' symbolic competence and critical literacy skills. The application of LL projects in language teaching is not limited to the EFL context. The LL and Second Language Education Colloquium at the 2016 American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference and the recently published volume entitled *Language Teaching in the Linguistic Landscape: Mobilizing Pedagogy in Public Space* (Malinowski et al., 2020), showcased the recent efforts in expanding the scale of applying LL in second language classrooms. Lozano et al. (2020) integrated LL projects in frst-year Spanish-language courses in New York City and described the implementation of learner-centered feldwork in the linguistic landscape. They reported the potential of student-centered and structured LL projects for creating meaningful and authentic language and intercultural learning beyond the traditional classroom setting. Lee and Choi (2020) explored the employment of the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical tool in a Korean as a Foreign Language classroom, through which they examined how LL projects can ensure learners' interactions with local communities and examined how the "inquiry-based, student-led, and community-focused project" (p. 183) impacted the students' understanding of the target language and culture as well as local multilingualism. Richardson (2020) incorporated LL projects in a German language program at a university to assist language learners to recognize human agency within cultural narratives.

# *3.2 Linguistic Landscape and Cultural Learning*

The teaching of culture and importance of intercultural competence has been the focus of much scholarly inquiry both within and outside the classroom (Byram, 1989; Kramsch, 1993; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013; Moeller & Nugent, 2014; Moeller & Osborn, 2014). At the same time, increased studies in LL have powered the interest in bringing cultural learning into the language classroom in order to make cultural learning more accessible and authentic. According to Cenoz and Gorter (2008), the languages evident in the LL index issues of identity and cultural globalization while the use of LL in language learning provides an excellent opportunity for authentic input for building language and cultural awareness.

Echoing that, Dagenais et al. (2009) carried out a school project in which participants took pictures of their LL and related them to multilingualism and multiculturalism. As a result of an EFL LL project carried out in Japan, Rowland (2012) proposed that the LL provides valuable opportunities for language learners to "bear different lenses and perspectives on culturally ingrained beliefs and values" (p. 502). Through an English as a Foreign Language LL project undertaken in Mexico, Sayer (2010) presented a framework that distinguishes between "intercultural and intracultural uses", as well as iconic and innovative uses of language on signs (p. 143). In the application of the LL to Caribbean Creole language environments, Hewitt-Bradshaw (2014) found that teachers obtained opportunities "to foster a culture of inquiry," and students learned "to understand their history and culture" (p. 160).

With increasing attention to the LL world-wide and "the inextricable link between language and culture" (Van Houten & Shelton, 2018, p. 35), integrating LL can provide a rich source of cultural input for language learners (Curtin, 2009). In this chapter, specifcally, we adopt Berger's (1984) defnition of culture as both dynamic and dialectic; culture "is at base an all-embracing socially constructed world of subjectively and inter-subjectively experienced meanings. Culture must be constructed and reconstructed as a continuous process" (Berger in Wuthnow et al., 1984, p. 25). As Fenner (2017) summarized, a member of a particular culture both refects and infuences that culture; only by gaining insight into the other can one gain an outside view of oneself. Therefore, in the foreign language classroom, culture should be viewed as an integral part of language learning rather than an addition to language learning. In Fenner's (2017) words, it is a matter of learning through culture as well as learning about it.

# **4 Research Question**

Despite the burgeoning scholarship on using LL in foreign/second language teaching, the focus has not been extended to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language and/or using LL with beginning learners. Our study attempts to fll this gap by exploring the possibilities of integrating LL perspectives into Mandarin Chinese classrooms with novice learners. Specifcally, we ask the following research question:

In what ways can the feld of LL assist novice Chinese learners to promote language and cultural profciency?

# **5 Method**

# *5.1 Study Design and Research Focus*

The STARTALK Chinese Summer Academy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a 14-day Mandarin Chinese immersion program for high school students with no or very little knowledge of Chinese. Guided by World Readiness Language Standards for Learning Languages developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (2015), our program aimed to ensure a balance of language input and output through the integration of authentic texts, aural and visual media that provide language and cultural input as well as learning tasks that actively engage learners with the language and culture in three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive, presentational). The program has been running successfully since 2012. Typically, on the ffth day of the program, students participate in a feld trip to several local Asian grocery stores and a Vietnamese café as part of their cultural learning experience. Students are provided a small allowance to make purchases at the store and are also encouraged to use as much Chinese as they can with the shop employees and cashier. Equipped with an iPad, students are encouraged to document their shopping experience using their iPad and by creating a digital presentation after the feld trip.

In previous years, the aim of the feld trip activity was focused on cultural learning, but by embedding an LL-based component, students, equipped with an iPad, were able to capture their learning experiences in images containing language, products, and practices they observed in the store which they could later examine, discuss, and explore to arrive at a deeper understanding of the perspectives of the culture. The digital presentations created by students, usually a digital poster using Pic Collage or a short video using Adobe Spark Video or Knowmia, not only provided evidence of target language and culture learning but also documented the linguistic and cultural diversity of the local community. For the purpose of the current study, to further explore the potential of using the LL as a pedagogical resource in foreign language education, modifcations were made to our feld trip activity to ensure "informed, intentional, and direct pedagogical intervention for learning in the LL" (Malinowski, 2015, p. 99).

Echoing other researchers using LL as a pedagogical tool in foreign/second language education, we found ourselves in a similar dilemma when it came to project design (Rowland, 2012; Chesnut et al., 2013; Malinowski, 2016). On the one hand, we wanted to make the project as open-ended and student-led as possible so that students could investigate the LL freely and we could avoid leading students toward specifc aspects about target language and/or culture. On the other hand, we had to devise the project in a carefully guided manner to prepare our novice student researchers for an inquiry-based project. As pointed out by other LL researchers, more guidance could be benefcial not only at the initial stage, but also at a later stage when pursuing learning opportunities emerged from student work (Chesnut et al., 2013; Malinowski, 2016). Another reason why a more guided inquiry was suggested had a lot to do with the logistics. This was particularly true with our program. It was almost too ambitious to even think about using such a project with high school students who had only learned Chinese for 4 days and where all activities had to be completed within a few hours. The decision to incorporate LL was based on evidence of incidental learning that occurred among learners from previous years' student projects. When it came to making modifcations to our original feld trip design, our guiding principle was to provide more guidance for students without making the task too cognitively demanding.

We added a brief pre-trip discussion/brainstorming task preceding the shopping experience to determine prior knowledge and to prepare students for the trip (see Appendix A). In addition, this pre-excursion task allowed the researchers to

determine and assess possible gains in attitudes, knowledge, and language skills. We also provided a handout to facilitate note-taking during their trip (see Appendix B). In pairs, learners were assigned two research questions adapted from Kluver's (1997) grocery store ethnography exercise and were tasked to create and deliver a presentation in response to these questions. To further guide students to refect on their experience, we also tailored the journal prompt questions on the day of the feld trip so that students could compare, make connections, and gain a deeper understanding of the community (see Appendix A for more details). Unlike previous studies on foreign language learning in the LL, we decided not to formally introduce and defne or explain LL research during class. As mentioned earlier, it would be too ambitious to model LL studies during class time and to conduct an LL research project in approximately two hours given the intensive nature of our program. It could also be cognitively too challenging to assign related literature to our students given their age and academic preparation. In a similar light, we decided not to formally introduce the term "LL". Without adequate introduction to the term and what LL research entails, using the term could mislead our students and narrow the scope of their exploration since our goal was to use LL as a pedagogical tool to bridge culture learning in the language classroom with culture learning in an authentic real-world setting. Based on previous experience with this shopping excursion, we knew our students would collect abundant "LL data" in their photos and/or videos, even though they were not formally taught about LL research. This decision was made in order to allow students to focus their attention to the cultural aspect of language learning but not limit them to the linguistic aspects.

Each of the three researchers played multiple roles in the current study. One was the STARTALK Chinese Academy director, who did not serve as an instructor in the Academy, but was one of the drivers who took students to the stores and accompanied them during the feld trip. The second researcher was one of the instructors of this year's Academy who facilitated the feld trip project, conducted the data collection, and recorded feld notes after participating in the feld trip. The third researcher was a former instructor of the Academy who did not participate in the teaching and the feld trip this year which allowed her to provide an outside perspective when reviewing and analyzing the data. All three researchers collaborated throughout the project, from discussing the research design, to data analysis, and fnally to the writing of this chapter.

# *5.2 The Context of the Study*

Before the feld trip, students had just fnished learning about one of the most important Chinese festivals, the Spring Festival, during which they experienced the customs, clothing, music, artifacts, and food associated with the festival. For example, in the lesson about "Chinese New Year foods," students not only learned about popular foods associated with the Chinese New Year, they also were involved frsthand in the preparation of these foods. As part of one of the classroom projects, "Our Dumplings," students worked in groups composing a shopping list of ingredients they needed to buy to make their favorite dumplings. The feld trip provided a venue for students to explore Chinese food in an authentic setting, shop for the appropriate ingredients, and negotiate a sale in the target language. In order to extend students' attention to things besides food, a feld trip handout provided more observational angles, such as the organization of the grocery store, the communication between people in the store, and the behaviors of people in the store. In addition, to encourage students to explore the Chinese language and culture during the trip, the instructors facilitated a pre-trip discussion where students shared their opinions about how cultural values, attitudes, and beliefs are manifested in everyday life.

To further pursue students' understanding of cultural practices and perspectives, students were asked to respond to post-trip refection questions focused on comparing students' previous grocery store experiences in their own culture with this feld trip experience. In addition to the pre-trip, during-trip, and post-trip activities that facilitated students' active involvement in learning both language and culture throughout the feld trip, each pair of students also presented a fnal project based on what they had discovered from the trip and from their own follow-up research. As part of the presentation, students were encouraged to voice their own impressions and opinions. In order to motivate and promote student participation and active engagement in the learning process, each student could earn *renminbi* (Chinese currency) based on their active participation. At the end of the Academy, the staff set up a "temporary Chinese-style grocery store" focused on what they had learned from the feld trip, where they were able to use the *renminbi* they had earned to buy Chinese souvenirs. This step-by-step language and cultural learning process allowed each student to voice what they had learned in the classroom, interact with cultural products and practices during each stage of the feld experience, exchange perspectives and share fnal projects, and, fnally, apply what they had learned through the shopping experience in the re-constructed store using Chinese currency. Throughout this learning process, students not only consolidated what they had learned, but also had the opportunity to experience frst-hand what they could do with language, and equally important, were able to identify the gaps in their language and cultural learning. Such a discovery approach to learning promoted autonomous learning and self-regulation in the students, important characteristics when pursuing a non-Western language such as Chinese where persistence determines retention and mastery.

# *5.3 Background of the Asian Markets*

The feld trip occurred in the afternoon of the ffth day of the Academy. It included a visit to two ethnic grocery stores and one Vietnamese restaurant located in a highly immigrant populated portion of Lincoln, which is also home to many of the city's ethnic grocery stores. The frst grocery store, the Oriental Market, is housed in a stand-alone, one-story building. Owned and operated by a Thai family, the Oriental Market is probably the largest "pan-Asian" market in Lincoln, featuring food and products from a variety of Asian countries and areas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines (personal conversation with one of the store employees). The majority of its regular customers are college students from these Asian countries. Residents of Lincoln and neighboring towns also shop for Asian foods, sometimes with their international friends. The Oriental Market has a large selection of dry goods with instant noodles being the store's biggest seller. The store also has a variety of fresh produce, meat, frozen foods, and kitchenware. The market has been in operation for over 45 years.

The second grocery store and the Vietnamese restaurant, the Little Saigon Oriental Market1 and the Bánhwich Café, are located on 27th and Vine streets and are part of what is known as Saigon Plaza, together with another Vietnamese Restaurant (Phở Factory), a travel agency (NGA Travel), and a nail salon (VS Nail Supply). Thuy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant, opened the Little Saigon Oriental Market in 2002 and now her family business has expanded into a plaza with six lots, with three of them managed by Thuy and her children (the grocery store, the cafe, and the Phở restaurant). The Saigon Plaza not only brought together the Nguyen family members (Staats, 2012), but also brought a taste of Asian food and culture to the community. The Little Saigon Oriental Market has a large selection of Vietnamese foods and products as well as Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Japanese food. The store is frequented by Asian customers, especially Vietnamese families in Lincoln. The Bánhwich Café features specialty Vietnamese sandwiches, bánh mì, with over 17 favors inspired by Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai cuisine. The restaurant also serves bubble tea and frozen yogurt in a multitude of favors. With a distinctive Asian feel, the plaza is now catering to a larger international clientele.

# *5.4 Data Collection*

In the 2017 Academy, we had a total of 20 students. They were seated at four tables, with each table consisting of fve students and a teacher facilitator, who was assigned to assist student learning from the frst day of the Academy. Prior to leaving for the market, students were introduced to the feld trip project by a researcher of this project who also served as an instructor in the Academy. Time was given for students to ask questions about the market excursion; however, no questions were raised as everyone seemed eager and excited to go to the Asian markets. Then, students were invited to brainstorm about two pre-trip questions at their tables (see Appendix A). The teacher facilitators were restricted from contributing to the group discussion, unless there were questions raised by students that needed clarifcation. Group discussions were recorded and collected for later analysis. After the

<sup>1</sup>The store is marked as "Little Saigon Asian Grocery Store" on Google map (see Fig. 1). We stay with "Little Saigon Oriental Market" as this is the way the shop sign reads.

discussions, students were paired up and each pair was assigned two of the 10 research questions adapted from Kluver's (1997) grocery store ethnography exercise (see Appendix A). Students were given time to work with their partner, reading and reviewing the questions. At the same time, the researcher distributed a handout for each student to jot down notes during their trip (see Appendix B).

During the feld trip, all students frst visited the Oriental Market, and then headed to the shopping plaza where they visited the Little Saigon Oriental Market and the Bánhwich Café (see Fig. 1. Field Trip Route). Some students worked together with their paired partner, while some chose to work on their own. As each student received an iPad on the frst day of the Academy to be used both inside and outside of class during the Academy, students brought their iPads to the feld trip. They used their iPads either for taking pictures or recording videos about the trip based on their own observations. As one of the instructors in the Academy, the researcher was responsible for assisting with Academy activities and monitoring how students were doing. Therefore, the researcher's presence in the feld trip was quite normal to students. In their trip, students sometimes raised questions to the researcher. Most of their questions were about products in the store that they had not seen before, such as the name of a product and how it tasted. To avoid any information intrusion, the researcher only answered what students asked and did not provide extra comments.

After the feld trip, all students were driven back to campus. Students then created presentations based on the two assigned research questions and completed a post-trip refection journal containing fve prompts (see Appendix A). As part of the

**Fig. 1** Field Trip Route Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/ copyright)

Academy routine, students uploaded their presentation products onto Seesaw, a student-driven digital portfolio, before their presentation. Student presentation products were later collected and analyzed by the researchers. Student presentations were also recorded for data collection. Students used English during the presentation; the researcher and other teachers gave brief comments occasionally and provided time for class discussions. Compared to the class discussion prior to the feld trip, the discussion after the feld trip was rich and generated excitement as students shared "new and different" ideas from their feld trip.

As shown in Table 1, our dataset included class discussions, video and observation notes prior to the feld trip, during-trip observation notes, student feld trip reports, student projects (3 PowerPoint presentations and 7 video presentations), class presentation videos and observation notes, student journals, and more than 50 photos taken by researchers. We also collected student responses to online discussion prompts before the onset of the program. In their posts, students introduced themselves and shared their knowledge and views about Chinese language and culture. This information was collected to further help us understand our students' trip experiences.

# *5.5 Data Analysis*

Our approach to data analysis was a qualitative content analysis as detailed by Sayer (2010) that described the dataset and identifed connections and patterns across parts of the data. Class videos of pre-trip discussions and post-trip presentations were reviewed and summarized with a focus on students' cultural and language awareness. Class observations and feld notes were compared and discussed. The analysis of student feld-trip projects was two-tiered: an examination of the assigned questions of each student group and the examples/photos that supported their responses. We also examined the images students included in their projects by counting and sorting them into three categories: food/drinks, non-food/drink, language/LL. The last category is not mutually exclusive to the frst two categories as a photo of a pack of snacks can also feature the languages used on the package. Therefore, such a photo could also be counted in the food/drinks category. Similarly, a photo of a handwritten "on sale" sign could be counted in both the non-food/


**Table 1** Summary of data set

drinks and the language/LL category. Of the 10 sets of feld trip partners, three groups created PowerPoint slides as their projects. We coded the texts (their answers to the two assigned questions) for themes in relation to language and culture learning (the 3 P's and World Readiness Standards2 ); then, we counted and categorized the photos students selected for their presentation. Seven groups created video presentations with Adobe Spark Video, an app that allows users to create a personalized video with photos, texts, and video footage. Six of the videos included only photos and texts; therefore, we treated and coded these videos the way we coded PowerPoint presentations, reading the text and categorizing the photos according to themes/patterns. One group included segments of video footage they recorded during the trip as well as photos and texts. We coded only the photos and texts for the frst round of coding so that it was comparable to the other groups' projects. Then, we coded the video segments separately for additional themes.

# **6 Results and Interpretation**

Based on the theme, "Experiencing Chinese Festivals through the Five Senses," that guided instruction and learning throughout the Academy, this feld trip was designed not only to expose students to authentic Chinese language and cultural input, but also to apply what they learned in the classroom to the real world they encounter outside the classroom.

# *6.1 Learning About Culture*

Both student writing and presentations show abundant evidence of awareness of cultural products and practices. Since our students visited two grocery stores and one restaurant during the feld trip, it was not surprising that food and drinks received a lot of their attention. As shown in Table 2, 50% of the photos in the student presentations consisted of food and drinks; of the 10 groups, two used only photos of food and drinks. Those photos featuring non-food/drinks items, such as eating and cooking utensils, medicine, interior decoration, register, aisles and shelves, were less frequently selected by students in their presentations, with the exception of one group who selected an equal amount of food and non-food photos. The remaining groups included 0 to 30% of non-food/drinks photos. Figure 2 is an example of a Pic Collage presentation created by our students, with all the pictures carefully selected to illustrate their answers to the two research questions about store organization and the relationship between food and culture.

<sup>2</sup>See https://www.actf.org/resources/world-readiness-standards-learning-languages/standardssummary


**Fig. 2** Pic Collage presentation created by McKenna & Sam

Of all the food/drinks items mentioned in writing and/or featured in presentation photos, we found that those not typically sold in American grocery stores were most frequently selected by students. For example, most students were amazed at the selection of subtropical fruits such as jackfruit, durian, and lychee, as well as the seafood-favored snacks such as seaweed and squid snacks. Students also noticed items that were not new to them but usually carried in American grocery stores with much less variety, or in smaller quantity. For example, they found a large selection of noodles and big stacks of rice in the stores and were able to connect such a phenomenon to the shared cultural practice of eating rice and noodles as staple foods in East and Southeast Asian countries. Another example consisted of the different types of sauces and spices for cooking. Noticing how many choices of sauces of bitter, sour, and spicy favors were available on the shelves, one group conjectured that "From what it seems like, the Chinese love foods that give a special experience,

that fll the mouth with a lot of favor" (McKenna & Sam, presentation). Of course, the large variety of condiments and salad dressings available in American grocery stores suggest that Chinese people are not the only people who love to "fll the mouth with a lot of favor," but the students were correct in pointing out which condiments and sauces are used for cooking and how they are used is usually associated with specifc cultures. Students also tended to notice items that are familiar but different in favors or packaging. For example, they were excited to fnd KitKat in green tea favor, mango favored ice cream, strawberry milk popsicles, Jell-O in panda/cat/soccer-shaped containers, tea cans/packs labeled as "jasmine tea" or "dried rose". Besides food and drinks, students also noticed a few items typically associated with Chinese or Asian culture. For example, they took photos of porcelain dining ware, herbal infusion, and bamboo mats used to make sushi rolls.

Most of our students noticed the diverse Asian cultures represented in the store. Some of them were able to identify specifc items from a specifc culture. For example, one student pointed out that the store "... is full of a wide range of different products from Asian countries that can't often be found in other American markets, like durian and lychee fruits, Chinese and Japanese porcelain products, and Vietnamese Phở mixes" (Matt & Breanna, presentation). Some students described the Asian stores as being more "diverse", more "accepting" of and "tolerant" of other cultures. Students' responses echoed Rowland's (2012) observation that a pedagogical LL project can increase language learners' appreciation of language diversity or, in our case, both language and culture diversity, or lack thereof, in their local community. Such appreciation was also evident when students compared cultures, connected classroom learning to everyday life, and gained a new understanding of their community, which is our next theme.

# *6.2 Comparison, Connection, and Community*

In their description of the feld trip experience, students made comparisons at multiple levels. Comparing Asian grocery stores to large grocery chain stores in America, most students noted that the Asian stores were smaller and looked less organized compared to the stores where they usually do their grocery shopping. Some attributed the organizational differences to the size of the store, "too much stuff in the small space." Other differences they noticed included the products, the smell, lack of aisle labels/signs, boxes and packages of products sitting around the store, languages used on packages, less interactive initiation from the shop associates, crowded shelf and aisle spaces, and handwritten/printed advertisements around the store. Those differences could be understood both positively and/or negatively. For example, the smell of the store could be both an "odd" or "weird" odor and some nice "aromas." The level of their awareness and the depth of their observations also varied. For example, one student wrote "(t)he greens are in fridges and are not set out. I don't think this is common with other places" (Matt, presentation). Another student noted the differences in the patterns of product arrangements in his journal. "The organization of the store preferred to keep the stock organization quite static and stable, and trying to be reliable. However, American stores tend to change stock to get more proft" (Sam, journal). Both observations indicate that the students have moved from the noticing of cultural products to the understanding of cultural practices and perspectives.

Students also compared their trip to the Asian stores with their experience in other ethnic grocery stores, other Asian stores, or stores in China. Three students mentioned Vietnamese, Burmese, Indian, and Japanese stores in their explanation of the similarities and/or differences and these students are of Vietnamese, Burmese, and Indian heritage, respectively. Jordan was born and grew up in Houston, Texas. She is of Indian heritage and goes to Keemat Grocers, a Texas-based Indian grocery chain. She also goes to Nippon Daido, a local Japanese grocery store, because at the current moment, Japanese food is her favorite (Jordan, journal). Unlike most of the students, Jordan didn't enjoy the bubble tea at the Bánhwich Café because "The milk tea was just milk with no tea and the boba was very cold and not cooked right." As explained in her journal, she usually buys bubble tea at a teahouse called Kung Fu Tea, where "They mix white and black boba both of which are soaked in sugar water to enhance the taste. The milk tea is strong and sweetened with honey" (Jordan, journal).

Another student, Matt, is from a Myanmar refugee family. His family was frst relocated to Chicago, and then moved to Austin, TX, before fnally settling down in Omaha, NE. He goes to an Asian market on a daily basis because his mother works at one in Omaha. He recalled seeing sardine cans and noodles and pastes from Thailand and Burma sold in Asian stores, which were his favorite food. While noticing the differences in the way items were placed in different Asian stores (a Burmese store, a Thai store, and a Vietnamese store), he added, "Asian stores are owned by different people of different origin, thus it is safe to say that the way they handle the store is different" (Matt, journal).

There were also students who had never visited an ethnic grocery store and found a lot of things new to them. One student was from Gering, Nebraska, a small city of 8500, of which 0.4% is Asian. She wrote in her journal, "Although we only went a few miles, I was [saw] plenty of new things. There was corn in an airtight bag. They had boxes all over the store and I've never seen seaweed in bulk before. Corn is either in a frozen bag or just left out" (Amanda, journal). It is evident that students drew on their previous experience to unpack the meaning of what they saw in the Asian stores. Prior cultural exposure played an important role in their understanding of the products and practices of another culture. Students also learned from their peers. When refecting on her feld trip experience, Emily wrote, "I found that some of the people already went to some of these places, and that others had never been in an Oriental store. I learned more about those people and the fact that I cannot assume that others have experienced similar stuff to me" (Emily, Journal).

Students were able to make connections between what they learned in the classroom with what they saw in the stores. For example, a few students noticed that fsh was sold with the head on in the Asian market. One student wrote, "it is a custom to leave the fsh's head on while it is cooked. Furthermore, when the fsh is served, the fsh head always points to whoever is paying for the meal, typically the father of the family" (Branden, journal). We also found evidence showing that students were developing a new understanding of the local community, as students wrote, "(t)he trip taught me about the other kinds of subcultures in my own community and ways of living" (Breanna), "(t)hat we have access to other cultures foods that many people aren't aware of" (Gloria), and "Lincoln is more diverse than what I had previously thought, which is a good thing" (Alexis).

# *6.3 Language Learning and Linguistic Awareness*

Given that it was only Day Five of the Chinese program, we did not expect to see a prevalence of Chinese language use in their projects, although we encouraged them to use the language whenever they could, in both writing or speaking, in the hope of addressing the lack of language learning observed by other researchers such as Dubreil (2016) when using LL projects with language students. Although very limited, we found evidence of language use. For example, four students used their Chinese names either in their presentation or feld trip report. One group used the conjunction "and", or 和, to join their names in the presentation (see Table 3). A few students also included basic greeting phrases such as "Hello", "Bye" and "Thank you" in their presentation. Another student used Pinyin when referring to her teacher in her journal. She wrote, "I learned a lot about what kind of traditional staples are very common. They had different meats and fruits than what you can fnd in a typical American grocery store. Lín Lǎo Shī showed me a few things that are common in hot pot" (Breanna, journal). What's worth noticing is that when the students used Pinyin in writing, they oftentimes made sure to add the tone marks, which is an important feature of the Chinese spelling system and supported by iPad input system. Being in a Chinese immersion program might help explain students' attempts to use language (Fig. 3).

Although students' language use was still limited, the feld trip did provide them an opportunity to link classroom language learning to real life language use. Sayer (2010) talked about his struggle as an EFL teacher to fnd ways to connect classroom content to real world encounters. Such a struggle is probably shared by all foreign/second language teachers around the world, including Chinese teachers in North America. We were able to make that connection happen by engaging our


**Table 3** Summary of Chinese language use in student presentations

**Fig. 3** "郭雨林和艾明锐", Breanna's and Matt's names typed in Chinese, joined by "and"

students in an LL project. One student wrote in her refection, "I learned that the Chinese language is used by many, many people and it was nice to see it outside of the classroom setting" (Delaney, journal). Such a connection is of great value when teaching less commonly taught languages such as Chinese. The fact that language students themselves were able to make that connection is even more valuable; students are more motivated if they fnd Chinese learning relevant in their daily lives.

When documenting the LL of the Asian markets, especially the language used inside the stores, students used photos featuring labels, packages, and signs in different languages. Six groups used photos displaying 3 or more languages, two groups 2 languages, and two 1 language. No matter how many languages students chose to include in their presentations, they all noticed the multilingual LL of the stores. Some of the students were Japanese anime fans and/or K-pop fans, so they had learned or taught themselves some Japanese and Korean before coming to the Chinese program, which helps to explain the inclusion of a large number of photos featuring Japanese and/or Korean languages. We found in Jordan's group presentation a photo of a Korean star, who is the leading actor of a K-drama Jordan just watched. What is also worth noticing is that four groups did not include any photos of Chinese language: 2 of them showed Korean only, 1 English & Korean, and 1 English, Korean, and Japanese. This of course refects the LL of the Asian stores, but this could also mean that it is challenging for novice Chinese learners to distinguish between written Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. In one of the presentations, students misidentifed the bamboo mat used to make sushi rolls as some kind of Chinese food. Nevertheless, students' awareness of non-target languages in the LL and the heterogeneous linguistic reality of the local community should be welcomed; as suggested by Malinowski (2016), multilingual language use in the LL can be seen as an opportunity to possibly bring different language classes together


**Table 4** Summary of languages featured in student presentations

for more collaboration and larger-scale documentation projects in multilingual communities (Table 4).

# **7 Discussion and Suggestion for Future Research**

Based on our fndings, we can support pedagogical benefts reported by other researchers using LL in foreign language education. Specifcally, we found evidence indicating that classroom learning was being connected to the outside world and promoting analytical thinking (Sayer, 2010) when students documented the Chinese language displayed in the store and compared what they observed in the stores to their own culture. With a focus on culture learning, we were able to create a learning space for our students to move from the noticing of cultural products and practices to the understanding of cultural perspectives. As a result of the Asian market feld trip, students discovered aspects of their own local community they had not experienced previously and developed multilingual awareness. In this sense, combining LL with foreign language education has great potential in the promotion of bilingualism/multilingualism (Dressler, 2015).

The Asian market excursion study has signifcant limitations. The time limitation of this feld trip, due in large part to the tight scheduling of the immersion Chinese program, posed challenges in identifying signifcant changes in participants' language and cultural learning prior to and after the feld trip. The data collected from participants, specifcally refections and journal entries, are limited in depth and details. The causes for limited data could be due to the tight schedule, the lack of guidance from teachers, and the lack of preparation of participants. For future studies, we recommend programs lasting at least 4 weeks, which would then allow additional time for participants to reveal and present their learning and for teachers to better understand students' perspectives and thus guide their learning experiences over time. With additional support and guidance from teachers, students can more substantively track their learning and thus provide more detailed data. Individual and multiple case studies focusing on students' before-, during-, and after- such feld experiences and observations could be an effective venue for revealing the changes accompanying their learning. Due to a lack of fully understanding the background knowledge of our students at the time of the grocery feld trip, we did not make optimal use of those students who had actually experienced shopping in Asian stores, one of whom had actually visited China. Their prior experiences could have been better integrated as valuable resources during the pre-trip and post-trip discussion. As mentioned earlier, one of the students noticed that some of her peers had prior experience with Asian grocery stores and she learned a lot through interacting with her peers. We can further help our students develop cultural awareness through peer sharing. When analyzing some of the "not-so-great" things about the Asian stores, one student wrote,

Some Americans might think the store as being not good enough, or too messy. What I mean is, some might think that laying boxes around as 'dirty'. Or, there are very few stores that allow a customer to see a drain in the foor, in the center of an aisle as well. What I am saying, the Chinese really care a lot about the product, enough to go there despite these things [Sam, Journal].

Of course, his conclusion might not be persuasive, but his observation can serve as a very good conversation starter and could invite students to think about their own bias when encountering cultural differences. At the same time, as instructors and researchers, we should also not assume that visiting an Asian grocery store is a new experience for all our students. As Matt mentioned in his journal, he was not fond of the store because he goes to Asian markets on a daily basis at home in Omaha and his mother works at an Asian store. Given the fact that some of our students are of Asian heritage, more preparation and better communication regarding the purpose of the project would help these students see this trip as an opportunity to embrace and celebrate their cultural heritage and identity. In this sense, we second Chesnut, Lee, and Schulte's (2013) suggestion of "explicitly engaging with different learners' and instructors' backgrounds, while studying linguistic landscapes to purposefully develop these sensitivities" (p. 117).

Rowland (2012) acknowledged that the analysis aid provided to students, namely a list of questions about how to categorize the signs, might have directed students to focus on particular aspects of public signs, thus possibly limiting their perspectives of the LL. As seen in Appendix A, our questions may have resulted in limiting the students' focus. As Rowland (2012) pointed out, "a different set of questions may have produced different reports and opinions from the class" (p. 502); it could be true in our case as well. Yet, we would still suggest more guidance and modeling to prepare students as researchers, echoing other LL researchers (Chesnut et al., 2013; see chapters by Jiménez-Caicedo "Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Content-Based Spanish Course", Ruvalcaba & Aguilera "A Collaborative Asset Mapping Approach to the Linguistic Landscape: Learning from the Community's Linguistic Capital in an L2 College-Writing Course", and Sekerina & Brooks "Multilingual Linguistic Landscapes of New York City as a Pedagogical Tool in a Psychology Classroom", this volume). More facilitation/refection/discussion time would also be helpful to avoid overgeneralization about language and culture. If class time is limited, then we suggest reducing the scope of the task or making the task more specifc. For example, with beginning learners, we can ask them to select a language photo and learn the language on the photo, or to pick a culture photo and explain their choice. To some extent, this may limit students' creativity in how they want to present the target language and culture; however, there will be more selection and information processing involved in completing the task, which could be more benefcial to our students. It seems that the dilemma between open-ended inquiry and guided-inquiry will always exist in this type of project.

Last, but not least, for language program administration, it is recommended to invest more resources in educational technology, such as iPads and computers. Technology, which Saville-Troike (2006) defnes as the techniques that students adopt in their efforts to learn a new language, can open another door for students to explore both the target language and the target community. By using technology, students can not only practice language skills by utilizing different learning strategies, but also get motivated to further explore what they "really" want to know about the language and culture and thus exercise learner autonomy. As Duff (2012) argues, besides concerted efforts and strategic practice, learning a new language requires opportunities to access linguistic and interactional resources to sustain students' involvement in learning. With the opportunity to learn Chinese through the local community or the LL feld trip, combined with the opportunity to explore both Chinese language and culture online through technology, the learners' views of themselves and the targeted language and culture might change based on the responses and feedback they receive, either through real or virtual communication. The available interactional options and resources through either real communication with instructors and the targeted community or virtual communication online tend to exert long-lasting infuences on sustaining students' motivation to make continuous progress.

# **Appendices**

# *Appendix A: Discussion, Research and Refection Questions*

Pre-trip discussion questions


and arrangement of products, the variety of specifc items, purchasing procedures, and so on.

During-trip research questions


Post-trip journal refection questions


# *Appendix B: Field Trip Handout*

# **Field Trip Report**

**Name\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Date\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_**

# **When you are in the store,**

	- The use of space
	- The language(s) used by people
	- The language(s) displayed on signage/packages/labels/price tags/etc.
	- The availability of products
	- The arrangement of products
	- The behavior of shoppers and shopkeepers
	- The variety of specifc items
	- The purchasing procedures

# **When you are back from the trip,**

	- The answers to the two questions you received before the trip
	- Photos you took during the trip
	- Anything you found interesting about the store

<sup>3</sup>We give students tokens as rewards for achievement. Students redeem them at the end of the program for souvenirs and gifts from China.

# **References**

Byram, M. (1989). *Cultural studies in foreign language education*. Multilingual Matters.


Hewitt-Bradshaw, I. (2014). Linguistic landscape as a language learning and literacy resource in Caribbean Creole contexts. *Caribbean Curriculum, 22*, 157–173.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Multilingual Landscapes in Telecollaboration: A Spanish-American Exchange**

**Margarita Vinagre and Reyes Llopis-García**

**Abstract** In this chapter we aim to explore the role that the linguistic landscape (LL) can play in intercultural telecollaborative exchanges. Although research in the feld of LL has gained worldwide interest over the last decade and some studies have analyzed its potential for foreign language learning (Cenoz J, Gorter D, Int Rev Appl Linguist Lang Teach 46(3):267–287, 2008; Gorter D, Cenoz J, Knowledge about language and linguistic landscape. In: Hornberger N (ed), Encyclopedia of language and education. Springer Science, Berlin, pp. 1–13, 2007; Dagenais D et al, Linguistic landscape and language awareness. In: Shohamy E, Gorter D (eds), Linguistic landscape: expanding the scenery. Routledge, New York, pp. 253–269, 2009; Gorter D, Ann Rev Appl Linguist 33:190–212, 2013; Malinowski D et al, Language teaching in the linguistic landscape: mobilizing pedagogy in public space. Springer, Berlin, 2020; Niedt G, Seals C (eds) Linguistic landscapes beyond the language classroom. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2020; Krompák E et al (eds) Linguistic landscapes and educational spaces. Multilingual Matters, Bristol, 2021; Solmaz O, Przymus S (eds) Linguistic landscapes in English language teaching: a pedagogical guidebook. Available from https://www.llineltproject.com/, 2021), works that analyze its impact for language and culture awareness in telecollaboration are still scarce (Vinagre M, Engaging with difference: integrating the linguistic landscape in virtual exchange. System 105:102750. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.system.2022.102750,2022).

In order to explore these issues, we organized an exchange between undergraduate students of English at Autónoma University in Madrid (UAM) and undergraduate students of Spanish at Columbia University. Over the course of two and a half months the students worked together and discussed a series of topics relating to each other's and their own cultures. As a fnal task they were required to take photos of shops, posters, announcements, and walls in their respective cities that showed how English was

M. Vinagre (\*)

Autónoma University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: margarita.vinagre@uam.es

R. Llopis-García Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: rl2506@columbia.edu

used in Madrid and how Spanish was used in New York. Findings suggest that attending to the LL as an activity within a telecollaborative exchange provides an ideal opportunity for learning about language diversity from an intercultural perspective. The project also provided evidence of its potential for the creation of a dialogic third space in which participants negotiated their cultural identities.

**Keywords** Diversity · Intercultural competence · Telecollaboration · Third space · Virtual exchange

# **1 Introduction**

In this chapter we aim to explore the role that the linguistic landscape (LL) can play in intercultural telecollaborative exchanges. In such exchanges, as defned by Belz (2004, p. 1), "internationally-dispersed learners in parallel language classes use Internet communication tools such as email or synchronous chat in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange with expert speakers of the respective language under study". Although research in the feld of LL has gained worldwide interest over the last decade (Barni & Bagna, 2010; Burwell & Lenters, 2015; Malinowski, 2015; Shohamy et al., 2010; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009), and some studies have analyzed its potential for foreign language learning (Cenoz & Gorter, 2008; Gorter & Cenoz, 2007; Dagenais et al., 2009; Gorter, 2013; Malinowski et al., 2020; Niedt & Seals, 2020; Krompák et al., 2021; Solmaz & Przymus, 2021), studies that analyze its impact for language and culture awareness in telecollaboration are still scarce (Vinagre, 2022).

The main focus in the LL is the use of language in its written form in the public space (Gorter, 2006). Other authors refer to the "linguistic items found in the public space" (Shohamy, 2006, p. 110), or the *Word on the street* (Foust & Fuggle, 2011, original emphasis). Another metaphor that can be applied usefully to the study of the LL is the notion of cities as texts (Mondada, 2000). From this perspective, cities are dense and feature signs that must be deciphered by the citizens who participate in the dynamic, literary display of the metropolis. According to Colletta et al. (1990), readers may decipher what the texts intend to communicate, interpret the rapport between the writer and intended reader, and consider the social and cultural repercussions of the messages. Landry and Bourhis (1997), in one of the most widely quoted defnitions of LL in the literature, refer to "the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs" (p. 23). They elaborate on this concept as follows:

The language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration. (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p. 25)

69

Although nowadays the variety of signs is much wider, this defnition still captures the essence of LL, which is multimodal (it combines visual, written and audible data), whilst it can also incorporate the use of multiple languages. In this study, we were interested in exploring students' perceptions of cultural issues and identity associated with the presence of the foreign language in their respective cities (English in Madrid and Spanish in New York). The presence or absence of languages "sends direct and indirect messages with regard to the centrality versus the marginality of certain languages in society" (Shohamy, 2006, p. 110). At the same time, "the signs can be a display of identity by certain language groups and the use of several languages in the linguistic landscape can contribute to its linguistic diversity" (Cenoz & Gorter, 2008, p. 268). Together with these aspects, LL can also add information about "societal multilingualism by focusing on language choices, hierarchies of languages, contact-phenomena, regulations, and aspects of literacy" (Gorter, 2013, p. 191). Because of the LL's multimodal and multilingual nature, this study follows Burwell and Lenters (2015) in approaching the LL from "a pedagogy of multiliteracies by encouraging the critical study of multimodality and linguistic diversity in context" (p. 201).

# **2 Linguistic Landscapes and Telecollaboration: Multiliteracies in the FL Classroom**

Research on LL has focused not only on the social construction of spaces, but also on how public texts connect to socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts. From an educational perspective, as students move around their cities, interact with others and read the signs, they attribute meaning to the public texts they fnd (Dagenais et al., 2009). In this process, students can develop a range of literacy practices, i.e., multiliteracies, since they read multimodal texts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) that take many different forms and serve a variety of purposes (Vinagre, 2021). In a similar manner, research on telecollaboration (Guth & Helm, 2012) has claimed that this mode of learning can foster the development of multiliteracies when students, who are in different locations and socio-cultural contexts, engage in tasks and project work using multimodal online environments. In both contexts, the concept of multiliteracies expands the traditional language-based view of literacy to include many linguistic and cultural differences in society (on multiliteracies in LL-based pedagogy, see also Jiménez-Caicedo, "Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Contentbased Spanish Course" and Bever & Azaz, "An educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic", this volume). Elaborating on the importance of this concept in education, Cope and Kalantzis (2000) suggest that it is necessary to

[...] extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalised societies; to account for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate [...and to] account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies (p. 9)

According to these authors, it becomes essential to move beyond the conventional view of literacy as a simple matter of the ability to read and write, and to consider the multiple systems of meaning or multiliteracies, since negotiating the linguistic and cultural differences in our society is central to people's everyday lives. With this in mind, our mission as teachers should be to provide students with the necessary abilities to open up equal opportunities and access their chosen paths in society (The New London Group, 1996). In this respect, the use of a multiliteracies approach in the classroom can facilitate students' access to the evolving language of work and power, and foster the critical engagement necessary for them to participate fully in public life. This multiliteracies approach is related to multimodality since many modes, technologies, and communication channels are encouraged to be used in different forms of expression. According to Marchetti and Cullen (2015), these modes, which include text, audio, and image, can be creatively combined to produce meaning and encourage learning in the classroom, and the appropriate selection of modes can satisfy all learning styles and cognitive differences. Moreover, through the integration of technology, "multimodality provides resources that challenge traditional forms of communication and even language itself" (Marchetti & Cullen, 2015, p. 40). However, multimodality and multiliteracies should not become confated; while multimodality refers to the semiotic resources that we use to communicate, whether through text, audio or image, a multiliteracies approach entails interacting with these resources. Through re-presentation and recontextualization of meaning, learners can transform themselves. In this process, learners create new resources and modes, including linguistic, visual, gestural, spatial, and audio, thus the notion of multiliteracies. Linguistic modes include orthography, vocabulary, syntax, cohesion, and coherence, as well as rhetorical patterns, genre, style, and cultural models (Kern, 2000). In the LL, production and interpretation of meaning involves access to, choosing from, and interacting with these resources in a sociocultural context (Reinhardt, 2021). Therefore, introducing students to the LL within a multiliteracies approach has the potential of "not only accomplishing multiliteracies' aim of responding to global communicative diversity, but also realizing the more intimate and local benefts of a place-based pedagogy that introduce[s] learners to the complex political nature of … the places they call home" (Gruenewald, 2005, p. 264).

The idea that places can shape the meaning potential of a text or visual element seems to be the common belief underlying the discussion outlined above. However, as some authors have suggested (Malinowski, 2014), a spatialized view of literacy practices does not take a specifc context for granted, but "highlights the multiplicities, contingencies, ideologies, and thus, the productive role of context itself" (p. 68). In connection with this idea, some researchers have emphasized the importance of developing a third-space approach to literacy education (Bhabha, 1994; Kramsch, 1993; Moje et al., 2004; Malinowski, 2015), one that, from a socially critical perspective, portrays the tensions between a monocultural conception of literacy and sociocultural diversity. As Kostogriz (2004) suggests, "by emphasizing the recognition of ever-growing diversity of sociocultural and textual practices, multiplicity of text forms and multimodality of meaning-making practices… literacy [is conceived] in multicultural conditions" (p. 3). As this author mentions, this *thirdness* is essential when having to defne the principles of literacy pedagogy that would enable students to understand and negotiate differences, their connectedness and meanings in a dialogue in which different awarenesses and discourses are present. This third space is characterized by (a) not being a fxed space but rather a fuid dialogic space which is constantly constructed and reconstructed by participants who actively engage in dialogue and negotiate identities, not only through selfexpression but also through mindful listening and the co-construction of meanings; (b) being infuenced at times by national/local/ethnic cultures but not determined by them; (c) presenting differences that are not hidden or minimized but acknowledged and valued; (d) being situated with its own culture and processes, which may be infuenced by communication technologies but not created by or located in them; (e) having an attribution of power that is not fxed, but rather "may change as the context evolves in response to the positioning of participants" (Hewling, 2009, p. 123); f) being both an individual and a collective space: without the group it cannot exist, but it is not experienced by all members of a group in the same way; and g) being a place where answers are not found but, rather, questions are raised (Schneider & von der Emde, 2006) and which is "problematic and problematizing […], risky and as prone to chaos, or even heightened confict, as to producing new understandings" (Burbules, 2006, p. 114).

# **3 Telecollaboration and the Third Space**

One of the ways in which this third-space approach to literacy pedagogy can be implemented in the foreign language classroom is telecollaboration. This activity refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations with the aim of developing their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work (Vinagre, 2016). In these projects, students engage in social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange with native speakers of the language they are studying, thus becoming an activity where "theory hits the street" (Belz, 2004, p. 1). The implementation of telecollaborative exchanges provides a unique opportunity for the creation of a third space from which students can explore and see the world through someone else's eyes (Furstenberg et al., 2001) and understand the relativity of their own linguistically-mediated signs. In this in-between space of culture, participants go through the process of negotiating and transforming their own identities. Here, "the fxed identities of the traditional social order do not hold sway" (Doran, 2004, p. 96) and hybrid identities need to be developed and affrmed whilst "the importance of the interrelationship between the new emergent cultural identities, literacy practices and learning [is emphasized] in order to foster a dialogue between differences in schools and beyond" (Kostogriz, 2004, p. 3).

In this environment, the participants feel secure enough to fully engage in sustained dialogue, "a process of multiple and progressive interactions through which participants have an opportunity to develop relationships and deepen their understanding of each other" (Coogan et al., 2009, p. 12). Participants' feelings of security and trust are largely due to their telecollaborative teachers supporting those with technical or linguistic diffculties, facilitating and mediating dialogue and supervising task completion (Vinagre et al., 2020), and many report "feeling free to express themselves openly and being comfortable with disagreements in the group appreciating different opinions (Helm, 2013, p. 42). In this process, culture is negotiated and participants can become intercultural communicators through their efforts to understand and interact with speakers from other cultures. Although negotiation should not be taken for granted since it has been known for some students to hold even more frmly to stereotypes and beliefs (O'Dowd, 2003), participation in initiatives such as this provide students with opportunities to engage with diversity and negotiate difference in ways that would be impossible in traditional learning settings and exclusively within the physical walls of the classroom.

In order to explore these issues and to document students' contact with the foreign language in their own cities, we organized an intercultural collaborative exchange between undergraduate students of English at Autónoma University in Madrid (UAM) and undergraduate students of Spanish at Columbia University. Over the course of two and a half months the students worked in pairs and discussed by email a series of topics relating to each other's and their own cultures. As a fnal task they were required to take photos of shops, billboards, posters, announcements, and walls in their respective cities that showed how English was used in Madrid and how Spanish was used in New York. The research aims of the LL project were to discover (a) how students perceived the use of the foreign language in the LL of their respective cities and (b) to describe their impressions regarding language representation, language speakers, and language awareness within this context.

# **4 Method**

# *4.1 Description of Project: Context and Participants*

The UAM participants in this project were fourth-year undergraduate students who enrolled in an optional course titled *Information and Communication Technologies* (ICT) offered in the B.As. in English Studies and Modern Languages. The course aimed to foster a critical stance towards the academic literature underlying computersupported collaborative learning and to involve participants in exploring different ICT tools and their possible applications in EFL teaching and learning contexts to help them move from theory to classroom practice. In order to provide participants with hands-on-experience of virtual collaboration, we organized an intercultural exchange with students from Columbia University.

At UAM, teachers and students met twice a week and tasks were carried out mostly online, working in small groups inside and outside the classroom. The level of experience regarding the use of the technology was very similar among participants and they had no previous experience of online collaborative learning, although some were familiar with the use of some ICT tools (blogs, Skype) and most of them used social networks (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter).

The Columbia students were undergraduates from all concentrations who were taking an *Intermediate I* or *II Spanish* course (depending on the semester of implementation). As regards their competence in the foreign language, the Spanish students' level of English ranged between B2 and C2, whereas the American students' level was B1, all according to the European Framework of Reference for Languages.

At the beginning of the project, all students were given a written form with which they were asked for their consent to use the data gathered from the project for research purposes.

# *4.2 Activities and Data Collection Instruments*

Over the course of two and a half months the students worked in pairs to discuss a series of topics related to each other's and their own cultures by email (see Table 1). Following tandem principles (Vinagre, 2007), the messages were written half in English and half in Spanish.

Once they fnished the discussion of these cultural topics, participants were asked to carry out a fnal task according to the following guidelines (Table 2).

This fnal task provided students with an opportunity for multimodal analysis through digital media. Nowadays, educators can take advantage of students' access to mobile technology to incorporate this method of documentation into their literacy pedagogy. As explained in the guidelines (see Table 2), as part of their fnal task the students had to take photos of how the foreign language was used in their respective cities and upload them onto *Cityscape,*<sup>1</sup> where they also had to tag them by adding the location and a short description. Then they were asked to hold a discussion via Skype and write a joint essay with their partners in which they compared the photos from Madrid and New York and critically analyzed *who* created the signs and *for whom* the signs in the photos were intended in each city and the reasons *why* they were located where they found them. Answers to these questions were discussed in class prior to discussion with the partner and, although no specialized readings were recommended, students in Madrid were familiar with the LL since they explore this concept in a compulsory course offered in their BAs. As regards students in New York, no explicit instruction on the LL was offered except for in-class clarifcation of questions posed by the students regarding the project.

<sup>1</sup>Cityscape was an open-source geolocation platform developed and maintained by Columbia's Language Resource Center that allowed students to upload photos to a map and tag their location, thus creating a visual landscape of specifc urban areas.


**Table 1** List of topics for discussion

After the fnal task was completed, the authors and a research assistant tagged the photos and, following Silverman (2006), qualitatively analyzed them according to sign type, language, purpose, and intended audience, looking specifcally for connections and patterns across the data. Keeping the research objectives in mind, namely, (a) to document how students perceived the use of the foreign language in the LL of their respective cities and (b) to describe their impressions regarding language representation, language speakers, and language awareness within this context, the photos were classifed into categories (i.e. billboards, storefronts, product descriptions, traffc signs, fyers, posters, graffti, political announcements,


**Table 2** Final task for the virtual exchange

commercial signs, community/religious signs, and public art) that could explain all the photos in the data set. These categories are the result of our own analysis and are not meant to be exhaustive, since other interpretations and meanings are also possible.

After the photos were tagged and classifed, the essays written by the students were collected and analyzed qualitatively. All students' names have been changed to ensure anonymity, and their excerpts have been left in their original form without corrections.2

# **5 Results and Discussion**

Over the course of two weeks, the Spanish students took 273 digital photos of fxed signs, more specifcally, billboards (6), storefronts (143), product descriptions (9), traffc signs (1), fyers (6), posters (22), graffti (5), political announcements (8), commercial signs (38), community/religious signs (31), and public art (4). Although they were asked to take monolingual photos in the foreign language, they also took many of bilingual signs. Thus, a total of 212 photos were monolingual (English), 56 were bilingual (English-Spanish), and 5 were multilingual with more than two languages in various combinations. The American students took 116 photos of fxed signs, more specifcally, storefronts (22), product descriptions (7), fyers (4), posters (5), graffti (4), political announcements (3), commercial signs (20), community/

<sup>2</sup>Partial data from this project has been analyzed in another study.

religious signs (46), and public art (5). Like their counterparts, although they were asked to take monolingual photos in the foreign language, they took many of bilingual signs. Out of 116 photos, 64 photos were monolingual (Spanish), 48 bilingual (Spanish-English), and 4 were multilingual with combinations of more than two languages. Most of the photos taken by the Spanish students (237) were private signs while 36 were public signs. In the case of the American students, the result was the opposite with 62 private signs versus 54 public signs. While these numbers cannot be interpreted in absolute terms, they are indicative of some observable differences in the LL of these two cities that were noticed and discussed by the students as we shall see below.

Having to take these photos of the LL of their respective cities helped students to look at familiar places with the "eyes of a curious stranger", as Sara from Madrid mentions in her essay:

Linguistic landscapes is a concept of which I had already heard about, read in some texts dealing with intercultural communication and even studied theoretically. However, I had never had such a hands-on-manner experience as I've had in this exchange. It was a complete feld work meant to be shared by means of new technologies with people living thousands of kilometers away. Taking photos as raw material for the project, being this the basic requirement, was really revealing as it made me see my own city, which I knew already very well, with the eyes of a curious stranger, or a researcher who has stopped enjoying the city for a while to start analyzing it, looking for evidence of something which is very evident in a multicultural and touristic city such as Madrid but that very often passes us by without realizing (i.e. English language traces in messages, panels, instructions, etc)

As can be seen in this excerpt, for the students in Madrid, who were already familiar with the theory behind LL, this project was a way of putting something that they had learned in class into practice. As Sara noticed, the LL project also allowed them to take on the role of the researcher who collects data by taking photographs and analyzes them while looking for answers to the questions *why*, *who* created the signs and *for whom* they are intended. This process allowed speakers who are used to the landscape and its particularities to continue to acquire new insights from their environments. Thus, interacting with the semiotic resources in their own LL had a demonstrable impact not only upon the sense the students had of themselves but also of the sociocultural dimension of their own city (Gruenewald, 2005; for additional studies of students as researchers in the LL, see chapters by Jiménez-Caicedo, "Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Content-based Spanish Course" and Sekerina & Brooks, "Multilingual Linguistic Landscapes of New York City as a Pedagogical Tool in a Psychology Classroom", this volume).

Referring to the purpose and intended audience of the signs photographed by her and her partner, Natalia from Madrid writes how "most of the signs I saw related to the use of English in Madrid were restaurants of fast-food or markets specialized in American products importation. On the other hand, my partner Rachel found posters written in Spanish mainly related to medical and social issues, probably addressed to the Latin-American population." The students remarked not only on salient differences related to the type of sign, purpose, and location, but also on the relation of the signs to social, political, economic, and cultural realities. As Rocío from Madrid mentions,

I did not upload any of my photos of restaurants of junk food, but I saw that many of my classmates did and there were a lot. I think that even though the Mediterranean diet has the fame of being very healthy and good, nowadays we have notably mixed it with the American diet. In my opinion, this is something related to the Internet […]. This could sound ridiculous, but when we fnd a restaurant or cafe where we can buy 'dunkins' or muffns' or cookies' we become practically regular customers (at least young people). The proof is that we have almost replaced the Spanish words for these things with the American name.

Thus, issues related to healthy living, age, and the use of English words in the Spanish language were discussed in this student's essay. She also mentions how unaware she and her fellow citizens are of the ways in which American culture impacts Spaniards' lifestyles ("we accept these trends as if we were a kind of extension of America") and discusses its effects on personal identity. Examples like this one suggest that understanding and interpreting the meanings behind the signs is perhaps more important than the textual content, focusing on the semiotic landscape more than on the purely linguistic one (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010). Moving through the LL in this way can help expand the traditional language-based view of literacy to include not only linguistic but also socio-cultural references in society.

In their discussion the students also mentioned how most of the photos showed that English is used in slogans and storefronts in Madrid for advertising and marketing reasons in order to attract customers (see Fig. 1).

In Madrid, the use of English is perceived by the students as "more fashionable and upmarket." In the words of Elena (a student from Madrid), companies use English because:

In our current global society English has become a world language at least to the extent that it is understood and spoken in every country. It is, therefore, very useful for companies if they want to be able to compete on an international level. We have seen that a lot of our classmates' pictures and even ours are pictures of language schools like 'The Green Monkey'. In our opinion, this last fact illustrates the importance that English is gaining in Spain and it refects the growing interest of our society in learning and being fuent and competent in the global language.

**Fig. 1** Storefronts in Madrid

In the students' excerpts above, we can see that, as English becomes increasingly globalized, it also acquires new, local meanings as people in those contexts take it up, learn it, and begin to use it for their own (global or local) purposes. Elaborating on this, Ana from Madrid wrote the following:

When we think about the English language, ideas related to modernity, technological progress, business, science, innovation, fashion, the New York stock exchange, Obama, Hollywood, globalisation, etc. rapidly cross our minds. Once these mental associations are formed in the collective imaginary, every time we come across a sign written in English, we subconsciously think of those.

As can be observed, the students' perception regarding the use of English in Madrid's LL is that it is a language associated with prestige, fashion, modernity, technical effciency, and innovation and is meant to address Spaniards, expats, and foreigners3 alike. When comparing these signs to those in New York, Marta and Cassandra, from Madrid and New York, respectively, write: "However, most of the signs in Spanish found in New York are not aimed at addressing everyone like in Madrid but have a more specifc target audience" (Fig. 2). That is, the use of English in Madrid is perceived by the students as being intended mostly for cross-cultural purposes, whereas the use of Spanish in New York is perceived as being intended for intracultural consumption (i.e. day-to-day informational and transactional purposes). These comments show how the impressions these signs create rely not only

**Fig. 2** Signs in New York. Do not feed or leave food for the birds, they attract contagious bugs and animals. Do it for your community, cooperate; Would you like to earn some money for what you are doing now for free by looking after and helping a relative, friend, or neighbour who are eligible by a Medicaid program?. We are hiring now and we offer the best pay. Do not wait any longer, call us (Translation into English by the authors)

<sup>3</sup>The student establishes the distinction between expats (expatriots) to refer to people from other countries who reside permanently in Spain and are, therefore, familiar with many aspects of Spanish culture, and foreigners (people from other countries who are visiting and tend to be ignorant of such aspects).

on how well we understand the discourses they represent, but also on how they are meant to be read (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) and how we choose to interpret them. With this perception also comes the recognition that it is impossible to read a sign in the landscape without being aware of our own subjectivity in relation to it. In this regard, the LL becomes a tool that exposes the stances of members of the community, raising the awareness of visitors with respect to its residents.

Another student, Emma from New York, justifes the above-mentioned claim by discussing the location of these pictures:

Many of these pictures have been taken in Spanish Harlem and Washington Heights. In these two areas there are large communities of immigrants from Spanish speaking countries. This fact is refected everywhere, in the instructions to use the subway, in the hospitals, storefronts, and commercial signs. Many of these are in 'Spanglish' because they aim to integrate the Hispanic community and the audience is primarily the Spanish speakers.

This comment suggests that although fnding an individual sign may not have a lasting impact on the viewer, over time, given enough signs, a geodiscursive identity begins to form that the individual may embody while in that landscape. The students have also noticed the differing faces of globalization and had to come to terms with the fact that the purpose behind the choice of language in the signs they compared was fundamentally different in both cities. In their own words: "the use of English in the signs in Madrid is more fashionable and the use of Spanish in the signs in New York more pragmatic". Analyzing these differences more in depth, Ellen from New York mentions:

I have realized that Spanish in New York is considered an inferior language. I listen to people speak Spanish in companies, in my lessons, in the streets every day and yet most people favor English. In some situations, it'd be easier for me to speak Spanish especially when I know the other person speaks the language but we use English instead. It wouldn't be acceptable to speak Spanish and this is not because I'm not fuent but rather because I don't want the other person to think that I'm insulting or degrading them by assuming they can't speak English. If this were the case, they would be considered inferior or less intelligent because English is necessary.

Having to critically analyze *why*, *who* created the signs and *for whom* the signs in the photos were intended in each city helped students notice and discuss issues concerning language status, power, and social representation. In this case, the social representation that this student had associated with the use of Spanish in New York was contested and she had to face divergent or contradictory notions that she did not have previously. In this context, representations became dynamic, since they had to be "reshaped through the confrontation of differences and negotiation of new meanings" (Dagenais et al., 2009, p.255).

Other issues also explored by the students were those of cultural and subversive identities. Enrique from Madrid and William from New York decided to compare the graffti they photographed in the two cities (Figs. 3 and 4), and asked themselves the following questions: "Why would the artist chose [sic] to use the foreign language?" and "Would an American street artist have the same reasons to use Spanish in New York as the Spanish street artist who uses English in one of his works in Madrid?"

**Fig. 3** Graffti in Madrid

**Fig. 4** Graffti in New York. The text in capital letters in the righthand picture reads 'The true revolutionary is guided by the greatest feelings of love-Che' (Translation into English by the authors)

After discussing these questions via Skype, they wrote the following in their joint essay:

A graffti artist uses English in Madrid as an act of rebellion, whereas a graffti artist in NYC chooses to write in Spanish as a way to reinforce their cultural identity/background. The variable factors in this equation are the native tongue of the country where the graffti is found in, as well as the status of the language in which the graffti is written in the country where it is found.

The students suggest that in the graffti found in NYC "there is a clear connotation of cultural pride and what LaWare (1998) calls 'community activism.'" By comparison, they interpret the graffti found in Madrid as a form of social protest or to represent non-mainstream social identities. In the students' own words, [it is] "an act of rebellion without a political/cultural/racial or otherwise agenda motivating the artist; the choice of English simply broke away from the native tongue of the country to further violate the social norm".

In this example, the polysemy of the landscape meant that, where some observers may see merely a wall of graffti, others learned the social structure of a particular local street culture. Judging by the comments above, it seems that while striving to critically interpret the linguistic, political, and social signifcance of multilingual signs in their situated spaces, students take on the active role of "conceptualizers, making the tacit explicit" (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 185). As they do so, they also begin to develop ways of thinking and talking about the language. Carmen from Madrid writes:

While walking the streets of Madrid, I have often found myself wondering why the English language is so present in this city and, after refecting on it, I have come to the conclusion that behind every instance there is always a motivation lying underneath. Different languages are utilised in different contexts to accomplish different objectives. Languages are indeed powerful instruments of persuasion: they can make people feel angry, miserable, or excited. As speakers are aware of the effect languages have on human beings, they dexterously exploit this potentiality in pursuance of various ends. At this point, it is relevant to introduce Myers-Scotton's markedness theory (1983: 115–136), which suggests that in each conversational encounter, there is an expected, unmarked language choice and an unexpected, marked language choice for each participant. An unmarked language is one that listeners expect to hear in a particular communicative situation, a language that does not create surprise among the listeners (e.g. two girls speaking Spanish in Atocha station). On the contrary, a marked language is one that is never expected and, therefore, calls the attention of the listeners who will start delving upon the reasons that might have led the speaker to utilise the marked language (e.g. a politician speaking English in a political rally).

This development of "languages for talking about language" (Luke, 2000, p. 459) and of socio-pragmatic awareness for "global coherence relations" (The New London Group, 1996, p. 83), both key components of multiliteracies, were spontaneous effects of having participated in the project, since they were not explicitly taught or encouraged by the facilitators. This fnding would suggest that the integration of the LL in telecollaboration offers real opportunities to enhance "the logic of multiliteracies […] which recognises that meaning making is an active, transformative process, and a pedagogy based on that recognition is more likely to open up viable life courses for a world of change and diversity" (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 10). This observation also raises the question of the need (or not, as the case may be) and roles of 'instruction' in multiliteracies pedagogy. For Cope and Kalantzis (2009), literacy teaching is not about skills, but is aimed at creating an 'active designer of meaning' who is open to differences and capable of negotiating the differences between one community and another. As we have seen from the analysis of the students' excerpts, developing these 'active designers of meaning' can be encouraged through projects that ask students not only to consider language in context, but also to analyze language within their own and others' cultural contexts, "allowing them to draw on insights, experiences and knowledge" (Burwell & Lenters, 2015, p.216). In this process, students develop a "symbiotic relationship" as a way of simultaneously "being in the world and making sense of it" (Vasudevan & Reilly, 2013, p. 458).

Trying to make meanings in their own LL, but also in their partners', also facilitated the development of a third space where students looked at their partner's reality but also at their own from an outsider's perspective. This *thirdness* is "mediation, habit, interpretation, representation, communication, signs" (van Lier, 2002, p. 150) and according to Kramsch (2009) it "stress[es] process, variation and style over product, place and stable community membership" (p. 248). In this safe environment, the students feel secure enough to fully engage in sustained dialogue and they can become intercultural communicators through their efforts to understand and interact with speakers from other cultures. This aspect is mentioned in Maria's (a student from Madrid) essay:

In an intercultural exchange, it is extremely important to acquire informed knowledge of the other culture: not knowing about the other dehumanises him or her. […] In the process of getting to know the other's culture, it is indispensable to rethink both our own culture and our linguistic ideology. To put it differently, we need to question stereotypes in order to subsequently subvert them. Stereotypes, generalisations and ethnocentrism lead to uneasy situations, conficts and misunderstandings. It is also very important to be empathetic and caring about the other's issues. The following might serve as an example: I was scared after the terrorist attack in Paris and Karen was immensely supportive. These gestures bring people together, no matter the distance, the language or the cultural differences between them. Having an open-minded attitude towards other ways of living also helps. To sum up, the attitudes that need to be promoted in an intercultural conversation are curiosity, desire to learn about other cultures, open-mindedness and empathy.

As can be seen in the excerpts above, through intercultural LL projects such as this one, students can become aware of the importance of this third space, one that, as María writes, "allows us to rethink both our own culture and our linguistic ideology, to question stereotypes in order to subsequently subvert them, to develop curiosity, open-mindedness and a desire to learn about other cultures, and to be empathetic and caring towards the other".

# **6 Conclusions**

This study suggests that attending to the LL as an activity within a telecollaborative exchange provides an ideal opportunity for learning about language diversity from an intercultural perspective. In this context, the students take on the role of researchers by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data in an attempt to understand not only their own LL but also that of their partners. As mentioned by other authors (Burwell & Lenters, 2015), the study of linguistic landscapes seems to ft especially well with a pedagogy of multiliteracies which "grows out of a recognition of the very sorts of global shifts – in language, culture, media, technology and fnance – that shape our semiotic environments" (p. 219). In connection with this, the integration of the LL project into the telecollaborative exchange added an extra dimension by allowing the students to explore beyond their local realities into more global realities. Having to critically compare and analyze the LL, not only of their own

cities but of their partners', encouraged students to discuss themes about language status, power, social representation, and (cultural) identity, which forced them to reconcile their own knowledge and experience with those of their partners. In this process, students became active participants as they move through, decode and make meaning of their multimodal and multicultural environments.

The telecollaborative LL project also provided evidence of its potential for the creation of an (intercultural) dialogic third space that led participants to question "the cultural stereotyping which usually involves the polarization of essentialized cultural identities and practices" and instead encouraged "radical cultural creativity" (Kostogriz, 2004, p. 10). In this safe environment, students can develop the knowledge, attitudes, and abilities that they need to become effective intercultural communicators.

# **7 Next Steps**

In future telecollaborative exchanges, following fndings from Vinagre (2021, 2022), we intend to structure the process differently in order to ensure critical refection and a deeper level of engagement with difference by all participants. First, we shall adopt the 'Progressive Exchange Model' (O'Dowd & Lewis, 2016) which entails participants undertaking three interrelated tasks that move from information exchange to comparing and analyzing cultural practices and fnally working on a collaborative product. The frst task, carried out asynchronously, shall engage students in information exchange of specifc cultural topics. This task will also incorporate an 'ice-breaker' activity in order to facilitate dyads' becoming mutually acquainted before working together. In the second task the students will meet virtually in order to contrast and compare the information of those cultural topics that they have focused on in the frst task. Finally, in the third task, the students will participate in the LL project. In order to prepare them, they will start by exploring cultural identity issues, taking the TED talk by Taiye Selasi, 'Don't ask me where I'm from, ask me where I'm a local' (Selasi, 2014) as the base for their discussion. The video, together with questions for refection, will be provided in the face-toface lesson and a brief introduction to the concept of linguistic landscape will also be facilitated. During the project, in addition to taking, tagging, and uploading photos of how the foreign language is used in the LL of their respective cities, the students will be asked to categorize the photos by analyzing offcial lettering (top-down) as well as commercial or private signs and posters (bottom-up) following taxonomies such as those by Ben-Rafael et al. (2006). Classifcations such as this should provide students with a clearer picture of the differences in the use of the foreign language, as well as bringing to the fore issues of power, majority versus minorities, discrimination, identity, community markers and interest in benefts attached to language uses. Finally, questions for refection will be provided in order to help students prepare for their joint essays and self-refection videos with the purpose of facilitating engagement with difference at deeper levels.

# **References**


Kern, R. (2000). *Literacy and language teaching*. Oxford University Press.


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Part II Places Made and Remade Through Learning in the Linguistic Landscape**

In tandem with the diversity of spaces that help to generate parameters and possibilities for language learning, teachers can leverage the richness of place in the linguistic landscape as well. As human geographer Tim Cresswell argues, far more than just a geographical location, "place is also a way of seeing, knowing, and understanding the world. When we look at the world as a world of places, we see different things. We see attachments and connections between people and place. We see worlds of meaning and experience" (Cresswell 2011, p. 136).1

In this volume, the chapters by Troyer, Jiménez-Caicedo, and Ruvalcaba and Aguilera are particularly apt demonstrations of the fact that the various human attachments, connections, meanings, and experiences that converge to form a place may be both powerful and not transparently accessible to learners of language. Language teachers play an important role in mediating their students' experiences in place, which is why in this volume we foreground the role of the term "place" as a verb rather than a noun. As noted in the introduction, for our purposes "Placing highlights the agentive role that language instructors play in making intentional pedagogical use of the particular geographic, historic, cultural, political, material, and virtual settings in which language learning activities take place" (p. 8).

Here we offer guiding questions regarding teachers' Placing of projects in the linguistic landscape, with an invitation to explore answers in the three chapters that follow.


<sup>1</sup>Cresswell, T. (2011). Defning place. In M. Himley & A. Fitzsimmons (Eds.), *Critical encounters with texts: Finding a place* (7th ed., pp. 127–136). Pearson Learning Solutions.


# **Agency and Policy: Who Controls the Linguistic Landscape of a School?**

**Robert A. Troyer**

**Abstract** Agency has been an ongoing topic of concern in Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies since the feld's emergence while more recently notions of top-down vs. bottom-up power have been questioned in favor of more nuanced appreciations of the multiple factors that infuence a local LL actor's selection and emplacement of public language. Agency in public schools in the United States exists at the nexus of policy (determined at national, state, and local district levels) and the many decisions made by administrators at individual schools while teachers and support staff, students, and other stakeholders act according to and sometimes against explicit and implied policies. Previous studies of the LL of schools (schoolscapes) have demonstrated the role that public displays of language play in constructing identities, agency, diversity, and ideologies that affect multilingualism and literacy practices. This chapter reports fndings of a mixed-methods study of all three elementary schools and the two secondary schools in a mid-sized public school district in Oregon. The combination of photographs, video-recorded walking tours led by schoolscape actors, and interviews with teachers and administrators documents the district's schoolscapes and provides insight regarding their composition. This data leads to a classifcation of the functions of schoolscape signage and comparisons across the three elementary schools and across educational levels in terms of languages present, attitudes, policies, and agency. A Nexus Analysis focuses on the ideological positioning of Spanish relative to English and the construction of collective identities primarily as they affect English Language Learners and Spanish heritage speakers in the district.

**Keywords** Schoolscape · Minority language · Spanish · Language policy · Nexus analysis

R. A. Troyer (\*) Western Oregon University, Monmouth, OR, USA e-mail: troyerr@wou.edu

# **1 Introduction**

The growing body of schoolscapes research (studies of the linguistic landscape in and around schools) attests to applied linguists' interest in the intersection of language teaching and learning, language ideologies, and the dynamics of agency in educational institutions. Whether we are working at or conducting feldwork at a K-12 school, walking on a college or university campus, or in a classroom with students, we are, as the larger body of linguistic landscape scholarship reminds us, awash in public discourse. The walls around us, the immediate hallways, and the sidewalks beyond are likely the frst places to which we draw students' attention if we seek to raise their awareness of the language that surrounds us. Is the local schoolscape providing input for language learners? Is it promoting multilingualism and giving voice to minority languages? Do you or your students seek to become agentive actors of schoolscape modifcation? Following an introduction to and brief summary of schoolscape research, the primary goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how a nexus analysis from a Language Policy and Planning perspective can frame an understanding of the multiple factors that affect the public discourse of schools as exemplifed in a case study. Using these theoretical frames of reference, schoolscape scholars and language teachers may be better equipped to study and act as agents in their sites of research and places of daily teaching and learning.

# **2 Schoolscape Research**

Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies have long been closely connected to schools and education. Landry and Bourhis (1997), who are most often credited for coining the term 'linguistic landscape' in the sense that it is used by LL researchers, drew their data from questionnaires distributed to 2000 Canadian high school students. Their exploration of Francophone students' perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality concluded that the linguistic landscape is a signifcant factor in shaping subjective views of vitality. However, it was not until 2012 that Brown published the frst analysis of an educational setting as a linguistic landscape and added the term 'schoolscape' to the LL feld. Whereas most LL studies target public spaces as sites of research, educational settings are institutions that are not open to the general public. Yet as Brown (2012) stated, "The state-funded school, a central civic institution, represents a deliberate and planned environment where pupils are subjected to powerful messages about language(s) from local and national authorities" (p. 281). Her study of the use of Võro, a local marginalized minority language in Estonia, in the ecologies of several schools revealed that, despite the reintroduction of the language in classrooms, it remained largely excluded from the public spaces of institutions except for small 'niches' of Võro claimed by teachers. Brown concludes with a call to action, stating,

LL researchers need a deeper understanding about the way the material use of language in school shapes the ideologies and consciousness of those who study and work in these educational spaces including pupils. (2012, p. 296)

A growing number of subsequent studies have explored schoolscapes, providing additional methodologies and theoretical perspectives. Signifcant contributions from several researchers have applied a wide range of methodologies and analyses. Gorter and Cenoz (2015) photographed signage in the classrooms, hallways, other rooms, and the immediate surroundings of seven schools in Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain and interpreted their quantitative data using a framework of Informational and Symbolic functions similar to much previous LL work. Dressler (2015) conducted qualitative research in the German-English bilingual program of an elementary school in Alberta, Canada, which led to a nexus analysis similar to the approach used in this study. In the context of four elementary schools in Hungary, Szabó (2015) employed his 'tourist guide technique' to co-explore the schoolscape with participants while taking video, photographs, and feldnotes in order to draw conclusions about the organizational cultures of public and private schools. Similarly, Laihonen and Todór (2017) relied on ethnographic methods to study the language ideologies present in an elementary school in Romania where Romanian competes with standard Hungarian in the linguistic landscape to the exclusion of vernacular Hungarian. Laihonen and Szabó (2017) draw on data from the previous two projects and add an emphasis on visual literacy practices in the linguistic landscape in order to situate schoolscape studies within the larger framework of visual socialization that occurs as children orient to adult literacy practices.

The frst collection of studies dealing with educational policies and practices from an LL perspective appeared in the 2018 special issue of *Linguistics and Education*. Edited by Laihonen and Szabó, who provide an editorial introduction to the seven articles, the issue concludes with Gorter's review of LL schoolscapes research. The frst three studies in the collection demonstrate ethnographic and qualitative approaches. Pakarinen and Björklund (2018) investigate how students in a Finnish primary school that offers a Swedish immersion program constructed multilingual identities relative to the LL and their discourses outside of school. Brown's (2018) contribution presents a diachronic study of Estonian schools comparing data from 2001–2003 and 2013–2014 to draw conclusions about the dynamic forces that infuence schoolscapes. Implementing ethnomethodological conversation analysis, Jakonen (2018) studied video recordings of a secondary-level classroom in Finland to reveal the role of material artifacts in the social action that occurs during instruction. Shifting to quantitative approaches to the schoolscape, Savela (2018) compiled a corpus of 6016 signs from a Finnish primary and secondary school which he analyzed with a comprehensive scheme of 22 categories for data categorization. Zheng et al. (2018) ventured beyond the school setting and offered a multimodal and cognitive event analysis of language learners' mobile game-playing interactions resulting in a novel exploration of how students engage in languaging in place. Przymus and Kohler (2018) in their article examined 1652 signs in 30 neighborhoods in Tucson, Arizona, and cross-referenced these fndings with neighborhood demographics and the language programs and policies of the neighborhood schools; not only were the schools in wealthier neighborhoods with predominantly Anglo-American residents more likely to have expensive dual-language Spanish-English programs, but there was also more Spanish in these local linguistic landscapes whereas the poorer, Mexican-American communities suffered from deficit bilingualism in English-only schools while surrounded by the English signage of nativist naming policies. The fnal research article in the special issue is the least LL-oriented, but Tapio's (2018) visual-embodied approach to the spatial practices of signing students demonstrates the importance of multimodal places in these classroom contexts.

In addition to addressing LL work inside of educational settings, such as the works referred to above, Gorter (2018) reviews studies in four other educational contexts: teachers' use of environmental print with students; the more specifc cases of using the linguistic landscape to teach English as a foreign language; examples of engaging university students and preservice teachers in LL research; and studies of the linguistic landscape outside of schools but that rely on data collected from students (i.e., Landry & Bourhis, 1997, and others). Three schoolscape studies not included in Gorter's (2018) review, but that provided background for this chapter are Hanauer (2009, 2010), which documented the linguistic landscape of a university microbiology lab in a unique application of LL methods to a single classroom environment to explore how representational space contributes to students' identity formation, and Garvin and Eisenhower (2016), who compared the linguistic landscapes of two middle schools: one in the United States and the other in South Korea—this comparative approach across schools is refected in the current chapter's analysis of similarities and differences among four school sites within a single district.

# **3 Theoretical Frames of Reference: Nexus Analysis, Geosemiotics, Language Policy and Planning**

A linguistic landscape is more than a mere collection of visible language (Troyer & Szabó, 2017). In order to account for the complexity of language use and the multiple levels of discourse that affect it, for this chapter's case study of the linguistic landscape of a mid-sized rural school district in the US, I will primarily rely on the analytical apparatus developed by Scollon and Scollon in two signifcant books: *Discourses in Place* (2003), in which the authors lay the groundwork for a semiotics of place, or geosemiotics, as well as the more broadly encompassing *Nexus Analysis* (2004) which argues for a multi-level theory of situated social action. At the core of their approach is the belief that language, be it spoken, signed, or emplaced on a sign, is a mediational means or resource that allows social action to be conducted. Of course, language is not the only semiotic resource available; all manner of cultural tools and knowledge from cell phones to shoes to the principles of visual literacy are at our disposal as we enact our social identities. Furthermore, our social actions, which "must take place somewhere in the material world" (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 19), and which are mediated by the conglomerate of semiotic resources, are all part and parcel of multiple discourses that intersect in a given place and time.

As demonstrated in previous LL studies (Pietikäinen et al., 2011; Dressler, 2015; Hult, 2009, 2014; Thistlethwaite & Sebba, 2015), a nexus analysis allows researchers to untangle and account for these discourse cycles that converge to create a linguistic landscape. These cycles, or overlapping currents, consist of *discourses in place*: the widely circulating ideas and beliefs that shape people's actions; *the interaction order*, which constitutes the types, norms, and expectations for social interaction; and *the historical body* (or individual habitus in Bourdieu's 1979 terminology), which is the sum of an individual person's lifetime of experiences and practices. Scollon and Scollon (2003, 2004) use the term *actors* to refer to any individuals who engage in social actions; in this chap. I follow other LL-researchers in using *actors* in the sense of *LL-actors*: "actors who concretely participate in the shaping of LL by ordering from others or building by themselves LL elements according to preferential tendencies, deliberate choices or policies" (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006, p. 27). LL-actors possess some degree of agency to infuence the LL, but this conception of actor and agency need not be limited to those who directly emplace a sign or individuals with greater power status in the school. A child who amends (possibly transgressively) a sign in a hallway, a custodian who removes a sign, and an administrator who creates a signage policy are all LL-actors. From a discursive perspective, a teacher who advocates for or against some kind of signage or a parent who posts comments on social media regarding school signage are contributing to the discourses in place and should also be considered relevant actors though with different goals and kinds of agency.

Regarding the historical body, Hult (2009) noted that much linguistic landscape research up to that point had focused on "the objects produced by these actors" (94) without seeking to document or analyze decisions from the perspective of individual actors:

Admittedly, this may be one of the most challenging dimensions of nexus analysis to incorporate with linguistic landscape analysis since it would involve a great deal of individual contact with the multitude of people involved in the construction of a particular public space. Nonetheless, it may also prove to be an especially illuminating perspective since there is surely a story behind every object in any linguistic landscape. (94)

In that same volume, Malinowski (2009) did in fact address authorship in the linguistic landscape by interviewing shop owners in a specifc business area, and subsequent studies have incorporated emic perspectives by engaging in qualitative and ethnographic feldwork with LL actors (Brown, 2012; Garvin, 2010; Poveda, 2012; Szabó, 2015; Troyer et al., 2015). This study accounts for the historical body in the nexus analysis by including interviews with a range of school district personnel. As detailed below in Table 4, I interviewed nine individuals consisting of both teachers and administrators, all of whom had been employed for several years in their current positions, and several of them had been employed in the district in multiple positions and buildings for more than 10 years. These personal histories provided a rich

account of developments in the district regarding language policies, language ideologies, and the linguistic landscape, all of which were essential for understanding the context of this study. Likewise, I had maintained close connections to district personnel at all levels during the previous 6 years in which I had conducted professional development trainings as part of multi-year grants, and several of my former students (in linguistics courses required for Education majors at our institution) had obtained teaching positions in this school district.

In this nexus analysis, the interaction order is addressed through a functional classifcation of school signage and language choice as detailed below. These norms of interaction in the schoolscape are intertwined with the personal histories of agentive individuals and the language ideologies that circulate nationally, regionally, and locally as discourses in place that are embodied in state and district language policies. In addition to nexus analysis, this paper draws on perspectives from the feld of Language Policy and Planning (LPP) to explain the connections between discourses and the attitudes and belief systems entailed in language ideologies. As Bever's (2016) analysis of the Ukrainian linguistic landscape from an LPP perspective explains, "offcial and non-offcial ideologies can be extrapolated from the properties of the signs, negotiating the meanings of the text in particular social, cultural and political contexts and addressing particular audiences" (p. 342). Furthermore, Bever endorses Ruiz's (1984) three-part classifcation of policy orientations, language-as-problem, language-as-right, and language-as-resource, as a critical framework for analyzing the discourses in educational places. As her article demonstrates, "LLs continually invoke the aspects of language *resource, problem, right*: each of these daily reminders surrounds the population through the visual world" (348). These orientations are applied below in the Results and Discussion.

# **4 Case Study Location and Methodology**

This case study of Central School District, a mid-sized district in rural Oregon composed of approximately 3480 students distributed across three elementary schools, one middle school, and an adjacent high school, began in the fall of 2016. All proper names used here have been changed and measures have been taken to protect the anonymity of individual participants. After obtaining Institutional Review Board approval from my university, I contacted the Superintendent of the district to seek access to the school grounds to take photographs when classes were not in session and to interview teachers and administrators. Following this assent, I contacted building Principals to arrange specifc dates and times for site visits and interviews with them whenever possible. I also arranged interviews with other relevant administrators and began contacting teachers at each school to schedule interviews.

This project served as a follow-up to earlier research in one of the towns served by the school district and conducted by my colleagues and me (Troyer et al., 2015). One town, Monmouth, had a population of 9900, was home to one of the elementary schools in the district, and contained a population that was demographically and

socio-economically similar to state-wide averages in Oregon at that time: 12% Latino, 10% Foreign born with 48% of these being Latino, and 9% reporting speaking Spanish at home (2010 US Census and 2006–2010 American Community Survey). The other town, Independence, was the location of the other two elementary schools and the two secondary schools, which were situated very near where the city limits of these neighboring towns meet. In contrast to Monmouth, Independence's population of 8590 was 35% Latino, 18% Foreign born with 85% of these being Latino, and 34% reported speaking Spanish at home (2010 US Census and 2006–2010 American Community Survey).

Despite these signifcant differences within a relatively small geographic area, the school district unites the members of both communities, and in interviews with school personnel, individuals did not distinguish between students from different parts of the towns, but rather consistently referred to the collective group of students and families they served. Yet, the ethnic, linguistic, and socio-economic differences between Monmouth and Independence can be seen in the demographic data (from the year following data collection) of the three schools which are arranged in Fig. 1 to represent their geographical location: Elementary 3 and the Middle and High

**Fig. 1** Demographics of the schools

schools are located within Independence but near the shared border with Monmouth. Figure 1 reports the percentage of students who had reported Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, the percentage who were or had been classifed as English Language Learners, and the percentage who were eligible for free or reduced cost lunches.

Our previous study of the linguistic landscape of the two main streets through the center of Independence revealed that despite the very large and historically present community of Spanish-speakers, 88% of the 646 signs visible from the street and shopping areas were in English only (Troyer et al., 2015). Furthermore, 10% were bilingual with half of these displaying English more prominently than Spanish, and only 2% featuring Spanish only. Detailed functional analysis of these signs and interviews with a city offcial and several owners and managers of businesses with and without displays of Spanish allowed us to conclude that the linguistic landscape of Independence refected, among other fndings, long-standing socio-economic disparities between the white middle-class and the Latino/Hispanic citizens, the lingering presence of linguistic intolerance combined with racial and social prejudice, and the fear of immigration problems among many in the Hispanic population, but also a growing optimism for and acceptance of multilingualism, especially among the younger generation.

By venturing into the buildings of Central School District and interviewing people who interact in and shape the schoolscape, in this study I sought to answer the following questions:


Between October 2016 and January 2017, I visited all fve school buildings to collect a photographic record of all signage on the school grounds outside the buildings and in all 'public' areas including foyers, hallways, cafeterias, and student commons areas, but excluding the insides of classrooms and offces (see Table 1).

# *4.1 Functional Categorization of Schoolscape Signage*

Though many of the schoolscape studies described above have categorized the signage they documented, little attempt has been made to create a functional framework that encompasses all of the signs posted in educational settings. Gorter and Cenoz (2015) relied on the distinction between the Informative and Symbolic functions of language and their possible combination for their classifcation, shown here in Table 2 (from Table 11.1, Gorter & Cenoz, 2015).

Similarly, Garvin and Eisenhower (2016) considered the form, placement, and meaning of signs to classify them into a broader set of fve functions: navigational,


**Table 1** Buildings, locations, and number of signs documented

a One small wing (hallways outside of classrooms) of the High School remained locked during the photo-documentation visit. Subsequent visits for interviews revealed this area to have no obvious differences of LL composition from the rest of the school


**Table 2** Functions of signage inside multilingual Basque schools (Gorter & Cenoz, 2015)

informational, expressive, interactive, and symbolic. For the current project, rather than relying on a predetermined set of functions, I organized signs into similar groups using a genre-based approach informed by the interviews I conducted and the perspective available from the webpages of a company that designs the signage for institutions and facilities such as hospitals, universities; hotels, public buildings, airports, and other transportation terminals (www.wmwhiteley.com). Subsequently, I named four general categories, which may better be understood as orientations toward broader functions, with four to fve types of sign in each (see Table 3).

The category of signs that are oriented toward *requirements* for public buildings include those related to disability access, regulations for facility use, safety information, and explicit warnings, as well as navigational information including the names of offces that indicate building specifc locations and/or the services or kinds of personnel at locations. *Interactive* signs include advertisements, information about group events, notices aimed at promoting some kind of action or involvement, and greetings. The latter often contained a secondary text that functioned as an implicit regulation in signs such as "Welcome to our tobacco-free school." *Educational* signage consisted of behavioral guidelines and rules; demonstrations of learning such as displays of student work; information related to academic content and the day-to-day activities such


**Table 3** Functional categories of schoolscape signage

as posted schedules; instructional materials used by teachers; and motivational signs. Signs oriented toward marking *identities* included displays of awards; decorations; optional, inessential, or redundant place-marking or naming signs such as "Central Elementary School Pioneers" written inside the building where it serves no navigational function; and expressions of either personal ideas or those shared (public) by members of groups. Though the types of sign in each category are sometimes similar, e.g., safety information vs. explicit warning against unsafe practices, or information about an event vs. an explicit request for attendance at an event (promotion), all of these types were present in the more than 1000 signs documented. This categorization is intended to be inclusive enough to account for most schoolscape signage, though there may be types at other locations that are not present in this case study. The only kind of signs not recorded in this study were the ubiquitous, small, permanent numbers labeling individual rooms.

Interviews were conducted from Dec 2016 to Sept 2017 and included the participants listed in Table 4. The semi-structured interviews began with pre-selected questions for teachers and administrators that allowed for follow-up discussion and impromptu questions with the goal of gaining an emic perspective from participants. All of the participants had worked in the district for several years, many for much longer, and some were already my acquaintances from previous interactions with district personnel. Interviews were conducted in teachers' classrooms and administrative offces, but I showed selections of photos and preliminary results of the photographic quantitative analysis to them on a tablet device to raise consciousness of the signage in the schoolscape. After initial questions to orient each other and the topic, the following items are representative of the kinds of questions/topics we discussed.



**Table 4** Interview participants

• Given the relative amounts of English, Spanish, and other languages that my preliminary research found in your school, do you think there would be advantages and/or disadvantages to increasing or decreasing the prominence of one or more languages?

The results and discussion that follow present the quantitative data, informed by review of the audio recordings and transcription of thematically relevant sections, in order to analyze the interaction order of this nexus of practice and answer the frst two research questions. Comments from the participants are the basis for analysis of the historical body from several points of view; however, rather than presenting a detailed account of each individual, the subsequent results and discussion emphasize commonalities in perspective among the nine teachers and administrators, and these will inform the third research question. This collection of qualitative and quantitative data and their interpretation allow a description of the discourses in place and orientations toward non-English languages in the schoolscape in answer to the fnal research question.

# **5 Results and Discussion**

# *5.1 The Interaction Order*


The emplacement of signs in and around a school is a mediational means of social interaction between the LL actors who are able to choose, create, and enable the posting of signs and the audience who encounters the signs. The answers to the frst two research questions are given below as a description of this interaction order in

terms of both signage form and function across the district and within each school. Analysis of the functions of the signs, as classifed above, revealed that the three elementary schools share a similar constellation of functions which differ from the middle and high school (Figs. 2, 3, 4 and 6). At the elementary level, Required signage played an important role with navigation, regulations (mainly for parents and visitors), and safety at the fore. The relatively higher percentage of these signs at Elementary School 1 is due to the overall fewer number of signs at that site (discussed below). Following Required signage, signs promoting positive behavior were the most frequent at the elementary schools along with Educational signs providing information and motivation. Personal expression was commonly present in individual teacher's displays on or beside their classroom doors on which they conveyed their interests and affliations to places or social causes (i.e., sports teams, universities, LGBTQ communities).

Notable differences among the three elementary sites included the presence of Place-marking and naming at Elementary School 3. There, students in one hall

**Fig. 2** Elementary School 1 functional distribution of signs, n = 122

**Fig. 3** Elementary School 2 functional distribution of signs, n = 186

**Fig. 4** Elementary School 3 functional distribution of signs, n = 230

**Fig. 5** Old west themed signage (Elementary School 3)

had chosen an 'old west' theme, named the hall "West Pod," and in addition to the standard room numbers and teacher's name plates beside classroom doors, each room featured a decorative sign conveying the same information (Fig. 5). In contrast, Elementary School 1 was unique for several reasons which serve as an important reminder of the role that architecture plays in constructions of the LL. The lower number of signs at Elementary School 1 is not a result of a signifcantly smaller school, but its construction. Rather than one large building as at Elementary Schools 2 and 3, the Monmouth school is composed of fve smaller structures that are adjacent to each other and connected by walkways. There are no internal hallways—outside of the single-story rows of classrooms are large covered play areas and walkways, and this explains the noticeable lack of displays

**Fig. 6** Middle school functional distribution of signs, n = 64

that demonstrate student work in public areas. Without large indoor bulletin boards in halls, this LL element which was very salient at all the other buildings in the district was nearly absent from Elementary School 1. Whereas the other elementary schools seemed full of language and decoration, the minimal amount of these elements at Elementary School 1 resulted in a stark public face of the school, though it should be noted that the insides of classrooms (not included in the data) were quite the opposite with student work, instructional materials, and decorations in abundance.

The quantitative and functional analysis of signs at the middle school summarized in Fig. 6 is actually misleading due to the ever-present challenge in LL studies—identifying the unit of analysis when the size and composition of functional items are disparate. For example, most individual schoolscape items are the size of a poster or smaller. At some schools, a four-foot-tall by eight-foot-wide bulletin board was occasionally flled with examples of student work (as opposed to various items with different functions), so I counted the bulletin board as one unit; however, at the middle school the entire hallways above student lockers were lined with strips of cork for easily tacking up displays, which in this functional analysis were counted as one unit (one class's set of work—see Fig. 8). If each item of student work on display had been counted separately, the number of signs at the middle school would have easily surpassed 200. Thus, despite the low percentage of demonstration signs indicated in Fig. 6, these displays of student work were the most visually salient feature of the middle school schoolscape, but, as discussed below, one that was very monolingual.

As the largest and most architecturally complex building in the district, the high school contained a higher number and larger percentage of navigational signs (Fig. 7). Aside from size, the need for navigational signs in the high school was compounded by the many services and academic departments available there but not at the lower grades' buildings: educational and career counsellors, athletic department, facilities for art, mechanics, music, business, theater, etc. Similarly, the

**Fig. 7** High school functional distribution of signs, n = 513

**Fig. 8** Halls lined with demonstrations of student work (Middle School)

posting of information regarding the different class and bell schedules and college and career planning are to be expected in an environment where students are more independently responsible for their schedules and the imperative to prepare students for life beyond secondary education is a primary goal.

One commonality across the buildings in the district was posters featuring an acronym intended to foster desired student behavior. Referred to by district administrators and teachers as PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Supports), each school had their own approach or keyword which was nearly ubiquitous in the schoolscape:


Only Elementary School 3 did not feature an acronym. Instead, the building PBIS team had posted location-specifc guidelines for behavior (expectations for playground, hallways, restrooms, etc.) in school colors with the school mascot and the words "Be Safe! Be Respectful! Be Responsible!" Most of these educational behavior signs were printed on durable laminated posters or heavier, professionally supplied banners, though it was also common for teachers to post student-generated reproductions or interpretations of the behavioral guidelines.

While analysis of the LL interaction order can also include conventions of sign placement, materials, fonts, colors, and graphic design, the more germane consideration in addition to sign function for this chapter is the choice of language that carries these functions.1 Of the 1115 signs in the district on the days of photographic documentation, 98–100% of signs in each building contained English, with the percent of English-only signs varying as follows by location: Elementary School 1 = 90%, Elementary School 2 = 87%, Elementary School 3 = 83%, Middle School = 78%,2 High School = 95%. The most frequently occurring non-English language was Spanish, which only appeared alone seven times in the district. Of the 94 bilingual (English + Spanish) signs across all 5 schools, 77% displayed English in the more salient position (above and/or to the left), and the vast majority of these were instances of the same message content rendered in both languages with matching font, colors, and materials. Only seven signs contained a language other than English or Spanish: with approximately one display each of German, French, Kiswahili, Chinese, Latin, Russian, and Vietnamese, typically on small fyers along with English.

Figure 9 provides details on the percentage of signs of a given function at each school that contained a language other than English. The 114 signs accounted for in Fig. 9 were all bilingual English-Spanish except for the seven monolingual Spanish signs, and the few instances of other languages as mentioned above. In the category

<sup>1</sup>Regarding the materiality and durability of signs, those in the Required category as well as greetings, behavioral signs, awards, place-marking, and public expressions (see Table 3) were typically professionally produced and relatively permanent, most having been there for several years. However, the other Interactive, Educational, and Identity-marking functions such as decorations and personal expressions were produced by staff, teachers, and students and changed at least annually or in the case of event notices, educational instructions, and demonstrations of student work, far more frequently.

<sup>2</sup>However, as noted earlier, if displays of student work which very seldom included other languages had been counted as individual tokens, the percentage of English-only signs at the middle school would have been much higher.

**Fig. 9** Primary function % and # of signs containing a non-English language

**Fig. 10** Bilingual regulations (MS)

of Required signs (the frst bar shown for each location), all of the schools posted 3–12% of these notices as bilingual English-Spanish except for the middle school, at which nearly 40% were bilingual. Figures 10, 11, and 12 present typical examples of these signs which were not standardized across schools in the district.

At the elementary schools, signs in the Interactive category which offer greetings, inform about events, and promote activities were bilingual far more often than at the middle or high school. Most often these were greetings + regulations as in Fig. 13, though bilingual event notices such as in Fig. 14 were present especially at

**Fig. 11** Bilingual regulations and navigational signs (Elementary School 1)

**Fig. 12** Bilingual regulations (Middle School)

Elementary School 3. Interview responses revealed that most regulatory signage, including the greeting + regulation versions, were chosen and emplaced by building administrators, often several years prior to the current administration. However, event notices, such as in Fig. 14, were posted by teachers or other staff members of their own accord or with the approval of building administrators. Figure 15 is an example of a teacher's bilingual greeting on their classroom door. The library at Elementary School 3 featured several displays of bilingual Spanish/English books

**Fig. 13** Bilingual greeting + regulation (Elementary School 2)

and Spanish-only books (classifed as promotions) which contributed to the much larger percentage of bilingual Interactive postings.

Notably absent from the schoolscape were bilingual signs here classifed as creating or fostering a sense of place or group Identity-marking: awards, decorations, place-marking, and expressions of personal or public ideas. The only one of these signs in the district containing Spanish was on a tile mural in a hallway/workspace of Elementary School 3 (Fig. 16). On the other hand, the most frequent use of Spanish in the district was on the PBIS posters discussed above, which mostly accounts for the 10–20% of Educational function signs that include Spanish (Fig. 9). Figures 17, 18, and 19 are examples of the large posters that appeared throughout the schools, the text of which was sometimes also printed on smaller, 8.5x11 inch paper and posted in hallways often with more specifc behavioral examples. During interviews when participants were asked about these bilingual signs, they clarifed that PBIS teams consisting of teachers and administrators at each building had developed most of these themes within the past 2–3 years and had started with the English acronyms which they then had translated into Spanish by bilingual teachers and staff members; thus, it is coincidental (due to the shared cognates) that on the middle school signs, the PRIDE acronym works in both languages.

This functional analysis of signs indicates a schoolscape and LL interaction order which is primarily monolingual; however, the presence of a few very salient elements serves to create a public face that acknowledges the English/Spanish bilingualism of a large portion of the local community. The bilingual greetings and regulations tended to be located at entrances and locations where parents or other visitors

**Fig. 14** Bilingual promotion (Elementary School 3)

**Fig. 16** Spanish on a Tile Mural—a public expression of identity (Elementary School 3)

**Fig. 17** Bilingual positive behavior intervention supports (Elementary School 3)

would notice them, and this echoes the comments from participants that highlighted the need for bilingual signs to accommodate parents with limited English profciency. Similarly, the bilingual PBIS behavioral signs were very salient due to their large format and relatively frequent distribution throughout the common areas and halls of each building. Nonetheless, the percentage of all PBIS signs that included Spanish (including smaller, 8.5x11 inch versions) varied greatly across the district and never exceeded 38%: E1 0%, E2 28%, E3 38%, MS 33%, and HS 6%.

**Fig. 18** Bilingual positive behavior intervention supports (Middle School)

**Fig. 19** Bilingual positive behavior intervention supports (High School)

# *5.2 The Historical Body and Discourses in Place*


Before distilling the information I gathered from 10 individuals into a summary of ideas that are relevant to this chapter, I would like to express my gratitude to the participants here in the body of this text. Each person to whom I spoke provided a unique insight into the use of languages in the schools and the history of practices established among the various stakeholders in the district and community, and each person's contributions deserve far more detailed treatment than I am able to provide here. In order to protect the anonymity of participants, I will not indicate which individuals reported specifc information. The photographic data discussed above, comprehensive as it may be, represents only one snapshot of the dynamic system that is the schoolscape (Troyer & Szabó, 2017), and the visual schoolscape is but a refection of the larger linguistic landscape and the myriad variables that infuence how language mediates social action in educational settings.

The results presented in the previous section indicate a nexus of practice in which the interaction order creates norms for the display of signage across the district. A relatively small percentage (8–20% except for two exceptions) of highly visible types of Required, Interactive, and Educational signs were bilingual whereas all but two of the approximately 125 Identity-marking signs in the district were monolingual English. As the data from interviews below confrm, Spanish was included on signs not as a positive marker of the bilingual skills and Hispanic heritage of the community but in order to remedy a lack of English profciency in parents and students, often under the guise of accessibility, which orients toward a 'language-asproblem' ideology.

At public schools in the US there are different levels of policy (federal, state, district, building, classroom) and especially at the district and building levels there are degrees of top-down offcialdom from published documents intended for all stakeholders to written documents intended for groups and committees to impermanent memorandum and notices produced by building administrators for their staff. Likewise, there are spoken 'policies' that emerge with varying degrees of planning at faculty meetings and in conversations with administrators as well as the kind of bottom-up, implicit, de facto guidelines that result from shared practices and informal conversations among colleagues (see Johnson 2013, p. 10 for 'Language policy types'). The perspectives that follow concerning district 'policies' or guidelines for public postings should be understood as distinct from written policy documents which may not have been available or known to all the participants. As became clear during the interviews, policy enactment is guided less by documents and more by individual actors' perceptions of policy, or rather, each person's historical body of policy information and experience. Also, while the interviews included discussion of all kinds of signage decisions, the following results emphasize language choice.

While some participants understood federal laws regarding "equity and access" to education to apply to local posting of bilingual signage, most saw language choice as a local, building-level decision. When asked about explicit language policies for public postings, administrators and teachers who had been more instrumental in shaping the schoolscape were certain that there was no offcial district policy regarding the language on signs, and that there was widespread support for bilingual English-Spanish signage. Among participants who would not be considered LL actors (outside of their classrooms), the common belief was that there was defnitely not an English-only proscription, and that at some point(s) in the previous 2–4 years there had been an increase in the promotion and production of English-Spanish signs.

In addition to policies regarding public postings, an important facet of the local discourse in place is the policies that determine language curriculum which directly affect the schoolscape—these are often framed as a school mission statement or part of a strategic plan for second language instruction and /or bi- and multilingualism in accordance with state and national standards. In the months before this project began, the district had signifcantly altered its services for English Language Learners (ELLs). Following changes to how students were identifed as potential ELLs and assessed for English profciency, the early exit bilingual program that had been used for several years at the elementary level was replaced with a sheltered instruction model in which students, depending on their profciency level, were mainstreamed into classrooms with teachers who had been trained in literacy and language development practices, and provided with daily ELD (English Language Development) instruction of various forms. The change of services had incited some debate, and while some stakeholders saw it as a removal of bilingual programs, the administration clarifed that the district policy had always been to ensure English profciency with no school responsibility for the maintenance or development of minority languages within the curriculum.

The emphasis on promoting English profciency within classrooms should not imply that school offcials in any way endorsed an English-only perspective—district personnel had provided free workshops targeted at, but not exclusive to, Latino/ Hispanic parents in which early literacy practices in the home language were taught and encouraged, and bilingual and Spanish-language books were on display in school libraries. Administrators showed interest in the potential for dual language instruction; however, they faced budget constraints which made it diffcult to recruit qualifed bilingual teachers who are in short supply and can earn larger salaries at much larger school districts elsewhere in Oregon. Most participants were very proud of the extensive measures taken district-wide to have bilingual offce staff, automated phone messages and alerts in English and Spanish, school documents available in translation, interpreter services available at public events, and the fact that frequent conversational use of Spanish in the hallways and occasionally in classes was in no way prohibited or offcially discouraged.

Yet the inescapable fact was that the only language aside from English taught in the district was introductory Spanish at the high school level, which L1 Spanish speakers typically tested out of. Thus, at all levels, demonstrations of student work that included languages other than English were almost completely non-existent in the schoolscape. Though this was not a change from the past in the middle school and high school, elementary schools that previously had early-exit bilingual classrooms had seen a marked decrease in displays of Spanish as demonstrations of student work.

More importantly, from a curricular and programmatic perspective, regarding research question #4, in Ruiz's (1984) classifcation of orientations toward language, the high Spanish profciency but limited English profciency brought to school by 30–40% of the students in the district was implicitly viewed as a "problem" to be overcome rather than a "right" or a "resource." Rather than offering Spanish as a medium of instruction to serve as a resource for learning math or history, for example, or as the right of students to be educated in their home language,

the district's curricular policies emphasized students' lack of English as a barrier to their education. Despite much talk among the participants of the benefts of including Spanish in public language to increase inclusion and welcoming of the Latino/ Hispanic community, the discourse about what is taught in classrooms—English profciency—had a substantial effect on the role that Spanish played in the district, limiting the language to non-curricular contexts and erasing it from displays/demonstrations of student-produced work.

# *5.3 Agency*

The aforementioned lack of consensus about language policies for public postings that emerged from the interviews revealed both a hindrance to and potential for agentive LL action. On one hand, the absence of policies that directly required or promoted bilingual signage led to a general lack of awareness of the role language choice played in the schoolscape. Several participants reported that before the interview they had given little conscious thought to these matters or that occasional attention to the language on signs was simply eclipsed by the more immediate concerns of teaching in or leading a public school. Likewise, the inclusion of Spanish on, for example, the PBIS displays had always been an afterthought rather than an initial goal. One participant offered,

my guess is that everybody has so much on their plates that when the issue [of bilingual signage] arises... most people would be well intentioned and then support more [bilingual] signage. And ultimately if it's really not the responsibility of an individual it's gonna get dropped.

When estimating and assessing the amount of Spanish in the schoolscape, most participants overestimated the amount, probably due to the saliency of the large PBIS posters, and one commented that students had "grown up with it—there's Spanish signs all over the place." Yet both this study and the larger study of the community revealed that this is certainly not the case. However, other participants reported that given the relatively high percentage of Latino/Hispanic families in the community and students in the schools, there is very little Spanish in the schoolscape, with one adding that this lack was "pretty representative of this sort of not conscious effort to push kids aside... sort of this hegemonic, I guess you could say, sort of current in which students do get pushed aside a bit."

On the other hand, efforts, mostly on the part of teaching staff, to increase the saliency of Spanish in the schoolscape were applauded by current administrators. The best example of this was the PBIS programs that were developed by building teams of teaching staff and students (at the middle and high school levels) and sometimes parents (at the elementary level). In all cases, after a set of behavioral guidelines, usually in the form of an acronym and sometimes with more detailed descriptions, was developed, the teams created Spanish translations and incorporated them into the large-format posters usually printed by the district print shop.

Thus, while there was no top-down mandate regarding language choice, and building administrators were responsible for approving all public postings, a great deal of freedom was accorded to teachers, students, and other groups. Teachers were generally allowed to create their own displays of student work, and those who wanted to include Spanish or other languages on items they posted were never censured. One teacher in particular at the high school was especially agentive in adding Spanish to the schoolscape. Around 3 years earlier, this teacher, one of the participants in this study, had created an elective leadership course in which one of the priorities for students was to make the new PBIS program (PRIDE) more visible and to increase investment in its ideals by the student body. In addition to many other measures taken, the class and instructor considered the posting of Spanish versions to be essential for ensuring that as many students as possible understood behavioral expectations, and she also cited the goal of increasing the level of inclusiveness in the school by including Spanish.

This shaping of the high school's schoolscape can be seen as a response to signage that had been posted around 6 years earlier following a large-scale remodeling and expansion of the building as described by several participants. One interviewee in particular recounted that these events from the past had a profound impact on language in the schoolscape. According to this source, the former district Superintendent had hired a construction project manager with whom many stakeholders were dissatisfed. When decisions about new required signage for the remodeled building needed to be made, the project manager stated emphatically that English is the language of the United States, the school district's responsibility is to teach English, and new signs on the building would be posted in English only—a sentiment that the Superintendent at the time agreed with. In the words of my interviewee, "It was very purposeful. It truly was very purposeful on the part of the project manager that this [English-only signage] was going, and the superintendent." This was a top-down decision that stood despite opposition, and it was the direct cause of the low percentage of bilingual Required signs at the HS at the time of this study—see Fig. 9.

Thus, in answer to research question #3, the agency of LL actors is not evenly distributed in schools. Upper administrators play a regulative role and, in the case of this district, former leaders dictated policies that excluded Spanish. Under later administration, while there was no instructional support for minority languages, very favorable attitudes toward inclusive bilingual practices passed from the district offce through the building administrators, which allowed teachers and students to alter the schoolscape. With this laissez-faire approach, the onus was on bottom-up actors to translate and post signs and, as nearly all the participants stated, given their workload and numerous responsibilities, these practices were simply not near the top of their list of priorities nor part of their conscious attention.

Finally, I would like to summarize participants' thoughts about the reasons for including other languages, especially Spanish, in the schoolscape and its effects on school personnel, students, parents, and community members. One participant who had worked in the district for 17 years and had long felt that the schoolscape did not refect the student body or community stated:

I think if you have a population of students that speak a different language, and they see that language posted equally with the English that it validates the importance of that language and that culture, and I think that, you know, that is going to have a huge impact on students. And if there is nothing in their native language, then that demeans that language... so I think it has a big impact. I think it also helps make staff aware that we have a signifcant number of students that speak something other than English, and it's important for them to be reminded of that, 'cause you can forget.

Multiple interviewees pointed out the benefts of bilingual signage to make the school more inclusive of students and more welcoming for parents, especially ones who were hesitant to attend school events due to their limited English profciency. They discussed at length how bilingual signage would validate the heritage of the community and the bilingual resources that much of the population possess, but that is not salient in the visual environment. One of the Spanish teachers commented on the potential for using the schoolscape to teach language, saying, "we have so many students [whose] Spanish is so infuenced by English they really think the word for library in Spanish is *librería*, so labeling that *biblioteca* is not just a matter of recognizing the language, it's also a matter of educating."

It should be noted, however, that the sample of 10 individuals interviewed, while they all were in infuential positions in the school district, cannot represent all possible perspectives. It is likely that their positive attitudes toward bilingualism made them more willing than other potential interviewees to participate and to express positive assessments during an interview with a sociolinguist. When asked whether increased Spanish in the schoolscape would lead to more acceptance of Spanish and Spanish speakers, one participant showed non-committal agreement while another stated, "I don't know that it would make a difference. If I had some data to suggest that it might make a difference, I'm certainly willing to consider it."

# **6 Conclusion**

This case study of the schoolscape of a rural school district in Oregon reveals the potential for approaching language in educational settings from a nexus analysis perspective. In this chapter quantitative data that documents the norms of interaction is combined with qualitative interviews that provide insight into the historical body of LL actors while considering the broader discourses in place, all of which intersect to shape the LL of the fve schools in the district. National and state discourses in the form of educational policy required that students who are identifed as ELLs are provided with instruction that allows them access to public education. The form that these accommodations for ELLs could take varied from district to district with offerings in Oregon ranging from dual-language (two-way) immersion to early-exit bilingual programs (i.e., home language instruction used to facilitate a transition to English typically over 3 years) to ELLs mainstreamed into Englishmedium classes but with specifc lessons and materials ("sheltered instruction") for English Language Development taught by the classroom teacher(s) and/or a specialist inside the classroom or in a separate location. It is my contention that these discourses and the local selection of only sheltered instruction for ELLs is ideologically oriented toward viewing the Spanish-speaking emerging bilinguals in the district from a defcit, or language-as-problem, perspective. This orientation in discourse manifests in the interaction order of the schoolscape as a distinct lack of Spanish in students' demonstrations of learning.

Likewise, the majority of comments made by participants regarding the district's efforts to post signage in both English and Spanish in and around the schools and to engage with Spanish-speaking parents outside the classroom (bilingual handouts, fyers, voice messages, personnel, etc.) were framed as accommodations to allow access. Not celebrations or expressions of fundamental rights, but solutions to the perceived problem that these families' lack of English profciency would limit access to educational opportunity which was afforded only in English. While several interviewees passionately extolled the role of Spanish in the schoolscape both as a means of inclusion embracing the right of people to use their home language and as a resource for the promotion of bilingualism, it was clear that these voices were overshadowed by the discourse of access and accommodation that primarily shaped this nexus of practice. Furthermore, while laudable efforts had been made to allow such access via translations and bilingual staff, the district had not made a concerted effort to create a bilingual schoolscape, instead relying on a few salient tokens of signage to accommodate parents and students with much of the burden of agency falling on teachers and staff with limited time and resources.

The functional analysis of schoolscape signage developed in this paper and the multiple levels of policy combined with the roles that top-down infuence and bottom-up agency play in a historically situated context are essential frameworks for understanding the linguistic landscape of an educational institution. Following Scollon and Scollon's (2004: Chap. 7) explanation of the stages and actions of nexus analysis, the research documented here began by *engaging* and then *navigating* the particular nexus of practice of this school district. The third step advocated by Scollon and Scollon is *changing* the nexus of practice. Accordingly, I shared the results of this project including a draft of this paper with district administrators. However, this should be seen as merely a beginning to the kind of sustained and interactive relationship that Scollon and Scollon call for if we are to enact positive social change.

To these ends, there are many avenues for future research and collaboration with the school district. One approach would be to work in conjunction with classroom teachers on projects to raise students' awareness of the roles that multiple languages play in the community and facilitate explorations of how the LL refects and constructs identities. A less participatory form of research would involve documenting the specifc actions taken by agentive individuals and groups such as the teacher and students in the leadership course that produced many of the bilingual signs at the high school. Follow-up interviews and diachronic analysis should also be conducted to determine whether or not shifts in ideological orientations, discourses, and the interaction order of the schoolscape change over time and to determine causation. In the last chapter of *Nexus Analysis*, Scollon and Scollon (2004) elaborate on the "unfnalizability" of a nexus analysis, and they conclude as I will with "a charge to discourse analysts to locate ourselves within meaningful zones of identifcation and to continue to pursue our active interrogations of the discourses of our lives" (p. 150).

# **References**


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# **Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Content-Based Spanish Course**

### **Juan Pablo Jiménez-Caicedo**

**Abstract** Linguistic and cultural diversity are hallmarks of postmodern globalized societies. In New York city, for example, the massive infux of immigrants from the Caribbean, especially Puerto Ricans after 1917, altered the linguistic and cultural landscape of an urban center already known for its large concentration of foreign settlers. This chapter reports on a case study of an advanced Spanish course application of the *linguistic landscape* (LL) as a site for learning. Drawing on a literacyoriented approach to Foreign Language (FL) education as a framework for integrating LL into an advanced foreign language curriculum, It focuses on the critical role L2 students' agency plays in making sense of LL as 'lived spaces' (e.g., Malinowski) in New York's El Barrio (Spanish Harlem). Specifcally, the chapter demonstrates students' use of ethnographic tools for interpreting meanings and functions of multimodal cityscapes as situated signs-in-space, in order to understand the social, cultural and political complexity of these immigrant communities in the city. After describing the course design, the chapter provides concrete examples of students' ethnographic linguistic landscapes projects, followed by a discussion on the importance of implementing LL as a way to contextualize advanced language and literacy practices.

**Keywords** Spatialized L2 learning · City as expanded classroom · Language in public spaces · L2 students' agency · Semiotic landscapes · Lived spaces · Ethnographic LL projects · Spanish Harlem

*... signs in public space document complexity -they are visual items that tell the story of the space in which they can be found, and clarify its structure* (Blommaert, 2013, p. 16).

J. P. Jiménez-Caicedo (\*) Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: jj2415@columbia.edu

# **1 Introduction**

It is 11:35 am on a Thursday morning. Today is only our second class of the fall semester and the whole group and I are already standing at one of New York city's street corners. It is the corner of East 104th Street and 5th Avenue in the Upper East side of Manhattan. Above the large glass wall of the building's entrance a sign in large capital letters reads in English: "A MUSEUM IS A SCHOOL: THE ARTIST LEARNS HOW TO COMMUNICATE. THE PUBLIC LEARNS HOW TO MAKE CONNECTIONS;" while through the glass panels another sign in a larger orange font over a light gray background in the back of the lobby says in Spanish: EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO (Figs.1 and 2).1

I briefy introduce students to the museum as well as to the Boys & Girls Harbor – the frst Latin music conservatory housed in the basement of the same building located in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem), the most signifcant neighborhood for Latin music in New York City. After a few minutes, we continue our group walk on 104th street towards Lexington Avenue. Enticed by the sign from the entrance to El Museo, we start making connections with the cultural and linguistic landscape of Spanish

**Fig. 1** Main entrance to El Museo del Barrio in Spanish Harlem, located in the corner of East 104th Street and 5th Avenue in the Upper East side of Manhattan

<sup>1</sup>Founded in 1969 by artist and educator Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a coalition of local parents, educators, artists, and activists fueled by the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement, El Museo's Permanent Collection (...) spans more than 800 years of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino art (El Museo).

**Fig. 2** Lobby of the Museum with *El Museo del Barrio* sign in Spanish

**Fig. 3** 'Bottom-up' LL with unoffcial Spanish plaques attached to a playground fences on East 104 street between Madison and Park Avenues

Harlem, home of a large Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Mexican diaspora over the last century (see Fig. 3). This class session embodied the connection between the advanced-level Spanish course I was teaching that semester and the language-andculture-laden physical environment in which the course was taking place, namely, New York City.

This chapter reports on a case study2 of advanced language teaching in the linguistic landscape of New York City's El Barrio (please see chapters by Vinagre & Llopes-Garcia "Multilingual Landscapes in Telecollaboration: A Spanish-American Exchange", this volume, and Sekerina & Brooks "Multilingual Linguistic Landscapes of New York City as a Pedagogical Tool in a Psychology Classroom", this volume, for other projects in New York City). First, I present a conceptualization of what foreign language learning entails at the advanced levels from a sociocultural perspective, namely, a literacy-oriented approach to foreign language (FL) education (New London Group, 1996; Kern, 2000, 2002, 2004; Byrnes, 2000, 2001, 2002; Maxim, 2004; Swaffar, 2004), along with Michael Halliday's (1993) premise about the three fundamental aspects of a second language learning process: learning the language, learning about the language, and learning through the language. Second, I describe the curricular design of the advanced course, "*Salsa: popular music and Afro-Latin-American cultural history,"* in terms of the selection of thematic and linguistic content and the pedagogical tools used, which include the book *La Salsa en discusión: Música popular e historia cultural* by Colombian anthropologist Alejandro Ulloa Sanmiguel (2009), one of the leading experts in the feld, and its companion hypermedia *Salsabarriocultura* (2014)*.* Third, I present and analyze examples of the ethnographic linguistic landscape projects and the students' learning practices based on the texts they produced, and the perspectives on their own knowledge about the language and/of the Latino/a/x3 culture throughout the course. Finally, I discuss some implications for the curricular development of advanced courses from a sociocultural perspective, all framed within the use of linguistic landscapes (LL) as a site for language learning.

# **2 Background on Advanced Language Learning and Multiliteracies**

# *2.1 Advanced Language Learning*

Swaffar's (2004) defnition of advanced learners as "...those whose language competencies enable them to enroll in non-sequenced, topic courses that a department designates as advanced or upper division" (p. 20) was retained for the purpose of

<sup>2</sup> I draw on Yin's (2003) case study defnition as an empirical investigation of a phenomenon [the advanced Spanish course in the LL] within its natural context using multiple sources of evidence.

<sup>3</sup> I borrow Haslip-Viera's (2017, p. 42) defnition of the terms "Latina/o" and "Hispanic," which are used interchangeably in this chapter except in direct quotes of other authors' work, to refer to all persons living in the United States whose origins can be traced to Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Included in this category are all US immigrants who have come from these countries and their descendants who live in the United States, whether they are Spanish speaking or not. For an explanation about the term Latinx, see Ramirez, T. L. & Blay, Z. (Oct 17, 2017).

this article. As argued by Byrnes and Maxim (2004), such courses engage students in language use in a range of public settings and discursive genres associated with advanced capacities for accomplishing civic, political, economic, and communicative needs and for researching and creating their own language-based cultural products. They also expose students to contextualized learning that goes beyond foreign language "sentence-level comprehension and production" (Byrnes & Maxim, 2004, p. 189), by reading and discussing for the frst time longer more complex texts in different genres within a literacy-oriented approach to FL pedagogy (Swaffar, 2004). In the case of the advanced-level Spanish course discussed in this chapter, the course also goes beyond the confned space of the classroom to pedagogically utilize the language and multimodal texts readily available on the streets and public places of the city—the linguistic landscape or cityscape—as the organic extension of the FL classroom.

# *2.2 Multiliteracies and Advanced Language Abilities in the Linguistic Landscape*

Recognizing the inseparability of language and culture, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (2006) stresses the importance of seeing language use as embedded in the diverse social activities in people's lives around the world (p. 316). Similarly, the multiliteracies pedagogical framework introduced by the New London Group in 1996 has been expanded both theoretically and practically in language education in the last two decades (Kern, 2000, 2004; Kumagai et al., 2016). For instance, drawing on the work of the New London Group, Kern (2004) states that:

...[Foreign language] literacy, then, is more than reading and writing as skills or patterns of thinking. It is about relationships between readers, writers, texts, culture and language learning. It is about the variable cognitive and social practices of taking and making textual meaning that provide students access to new communities outside the classroom, across geographical and historical boundaries. It involves an awareness of how acts of reading, writing, and conversation *create* and *shape* meanings, not merely transfer them from one individual or group to another (p. 3).

Kalantzis and Cope (2012) further delve into the pedagogical implications of written, visual, audio, spatial, tactile, gestural, and oral meaning-making systems introduced by the multiliteracies framework of the New London Group (1996). These authors argue that such diverse forms of meaning-making need to be seen as a dynamic process of transformation by students rather than a process of reproduction, which allows students to become agents interpreting, analyzing, and creating multimodal texts in their learning processes (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). In providing students with agency in their own learning, Kalantzis, Cope, and The Learning by Design Group (2005) put forward a pedagogical framework called Learning by Design, consisting of four knowledge processes (meaning making actions) that students can bring to different learning contexts in order to understand multimodal resources and to express their own understanding by creating with their new knowledge. The following are the four knowledge processes:


Expanding on the multiliteracies approach to education (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kalantzis & Cope, 2012; New London Group, 1996), Thorne and Reinhardt (2008) argue for the need to acknowledge the increasing presence of cultural and linguistic diversity thoughtfully assembled in semiotic fragments of language and cultural artifacts in everyday contexts of communicative activity; as well as their importance in developing intercultural and symbolic competence along advanced or high-level foreign language profciency.

Similarly, and within the feld of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), Malinowski (2015) states that language that is visible and audible in public spaces can become pedagogical objects, "... available to the learner as input, demonstrating the contextualized pragmatics of speech acts, and provoking the learner to sociopolitical awareness and action" (p. 96. See also Cenoz and Gorter, 2008). Refecting these expanded approaches to literacy development, Barni and Bagna (2015) emphasize that over the last two decades the feld of LL has indeed developed from Landry and Bourhis' (1997) seminal study and their highly adopted initial defnition of linguistic landscape, and argue that "the term 'linguistic' is now no longer just confned to verbal and written languages, but embraces the complexity of semiotic spaces as well as people as authors, actors, and users, all of which is part of LL analysis" (p. 7). That is, LL nowadays goes well beyond documenting signs and includes sounds, images, graffti, and is increasingly taking a multimodal approach to its analysis of the public space (Shohamy & Gorter, 2009). Therefore, within such development and openness of the LL feld, the multiliteracies approach to language learning is becoming accepted as a relevant complementary approach "for learning from the semiotically rich [multimodal], spatially embedded texts of the LL" (Malinowski, 2015, p. 98). More importantly, these visible, audible, and multimodal cultural artifacts – which I call here *multimodal cityscapes*- that are spatially embedded (glocalized in public spaces) need to be studied ethnographically (Blommaert, 2013).

Finally, with regards to the application of the multiliteracies framework to studies in linguistic landscapes, Lozano et al. (2020) argue that while the New London Group's (1996) and the Learning by Design group's frameworks have resulted in signifcant theoretical and practical investigation of multiliteracies in language education, these frameworks have to date not been applied to language learners' work in linguistic landscapes. Thus, their recent work and the work presented in this chapter may contribute to this rather new line of LL explorations.

# *2.3 Advanced Language Learning in the Conceived, Perceived and Lived Spaces of the Linguistic Landscape*

Malinowski (2015) encourages language teachers and researchers to consider links between theory, methods, and pedagogy-as-practice in the linguistic landscape. In doing so, he introduces a pedagogical framework drawing on recent studies, especially Trumper-Hecht's (2010) proposal of using Lefebvre's (1991) triadic model of conceived spaces, perceived spaces and lived spaces to investigate local perceptions in multilingual places (p. 97). The following is a synthesis of Malinowski's pedagogical model.

### **2.3.1 Conceived Spaces**

Malinowski explains that the ideologically-loaded *conceived spaces* include from the course syllabus, readings, and materials to national language policies and neighborhood development plans that reveal offcial and infuential intentions through sign-reading and sign-making practices (Malinowski, 2015, p. 106). In the focal advanced content-based course of this chapter, which intended to study the development of the linguistic landscape of Spanish Harlem and the social practices of its people in relation to the evolution of Latin popular music in New York city, students read selected historical, anthropological and sociological texts on the topics studied. In their LL projects they also use local census data, maps, and other offcial documents, which, as Malinowski (2015) writes, "can be used to frame, substantiate, evaluate or critique knowledge gained from learning activities in the perceived and lived spaces of the linguistic landscape" (Ibid: p. 106).

### **2.3.2 Perceived Spaces**

According to Malinowski (2015) most studies on linguistic landscape have focused on the *perceived spaces*, which Trumper-Hecht refers to "the 'physical' dimension of the LL, that is, the actual distribution of languages on signs that can be observed and documented by camera" (Trumper-Hecht, 2010, p. 237). While the focus of some LL studies on the perceived spaces as a mere act of counting and classifying signs has been criticized (see Jaworski & Yeung, 2010), other studies have taken a more critical reading of signs in space analyzing the meaning and intentions of such signs as "top-down" (coming from offcial institutions or the government) or as "bottom-up (emerging 'unoffcially' from the local communities) (See Ben-Rafael et al., 2010; Cenoz & Gorter, 2008). In the LL projects presented here, students carry-out several frst-hand observations of Spanish Harlem by collecting and analyzing images of signs, symbols, public art, etc. as an entry point to their ethnographic investigations.

### **2.3.3 Lived Spaces**

Malinowski (2015) describes *lived spaces* as the invisible, yet symbolically active everywhere "...subjective experience, imaginings and even desire of the inhabitants of a place" (p. 108). In this sense, he joins other authors, who have made lived spaces a major line of investigation of recent LL studies, in calling for the implementation of ethnographic methods in LL research as a way to better understand the subjective meanings made by participants in the linguistic landscape as these meanings change across time and space (see also Blommaert, 2013; Malinowski, 2009; Lou, 2010, 2016). In the LL projects in Spanish Harlem described here, students expanded their initial observations and ideas originated by their experiences in the perceived and conceived spaces through ethnographic interviews with local participants and residents in the community.

In concluding this presentation of Malinowski's triadic pedagogical model of conceived, perceived and lived spaces and echoing Trumper-Hecht (2010), Malinowski argues that "...these disparate spaces can only be understood together, in relation to one another, if they are to be of any help [in linguistic landscape studies]" (Ibid: p. 109). Keeping this in mind, I now turn to the present the educational context and the pedagogical design of the focal course of this chapter.

### **3 Design and Conceptualization of the Advanced Content-Based Spanish Course 'Salsa: Popular Music and Afrolatinoamericaribeño4 Cultural Histories'**

In the Spanish Department at Columbia University, the 3300 level consists of several thematically based advanced Spanish courses offered in the third year of undergraduate studies. The narrative presented in this chapter draws from several

<sup>4</sup>The term *Afrolatinoamericaribeño* adopted in the title of my course was coined by the Colombian anthropologist Alejandro Ulloa in 1998 to refer to: *Afro*, for the ancestral roots brought by the blacks enslaved from their African continent: music, drums, dances, languages, polytheism, ritual practices, all as an integral part of a cultural system and a worldview different from the Christian, patriarchal and androcentric Western civilization. *Latino*, for the musical, linguistic, and religious traditions mainly from Spain, France and Portugal, incorporated (or imposed) in the New World. *American*, for being this continent where the process took place as a whole. And *Caribbean* because it was in that warm natural kitchen that is the Caribbean where all

iterations of the course, spanning from 2010 to 2019, in which more than 130 students have participated (due to its highly experiential and face-to-face learning component, it was not offered in 2020 or 2021, but will be offered again in fall 2022). The course focuses on salsa as a phenomenon of popular music and its intrinsic relationships with the Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin American cultural histories, right in the middle of the socio-cultural context where salsa music emerged—New York's El Barrio—in the second half of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s (Ulloa, 2009). This theme serves as an organizing principle for the work carried out, both inside and outside of the classroom, which consists of studying and analyzing with a historical-anthropological lens the cultural practices of the Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean diaspora that contributed to the development of this music in the multicultural complex that is 'The Big Apple.'

In addition to reading and analyzing specialized literature on the development of Latin popular music in New York, participating in guided visits and attending live cultural performances, the course has as a fundamental component the completion of an ethnographic linguistic landscape project in El Barrio, where students carry out their own research throughout the semester (see a detailed description of the LL project below). Likewise, the course is designed as a space for students to strengthen their speaking abilities through presentations, class discussions, and interviews with native speakers, as well as their academic reading and writing in Spanish by analyzing and producing their own texts in the different genres studied, all of this within the linguistic landscapes course project.

# *3.1 Pedagogical Approach*

Methodologically, this course draws on sociocultural perspectives on foreign language learning, which conceive L2 literacy as a process of negotiation of a multiplicity of multimodal semiotic discourses and signs that circulate in social contexts; especially those of great cultural and linguistic diversity such as large urban centers in the world today (New London Group, 1996; Kern, 2000, 2004). It also draws on the multiliteracies perspective (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2015) and more specifcally on a literacy-based approach to advanced language learning responding to the students' need to make use of an expanding repertoire of academic literacy practices (see Byrnes & Maxim, 2004; Kern, 2000, 2002, 2004; Swaffar, 2004; Maxim, 2004). For instance, discussing reading and writing in second and foreign language programs, Kern (2000) writes that:

[...] academic language must foster literacy, not only in terms of basic reading and writing skills, but also in terms of a broader discourse competence that involves the ability to interpret and critically evaluate a wide variety of written, oral [and multimodal] texts (p. 2).

the rhythmic mixtures and melodic favors that preceded and led to salsa music were seasoned and slowly simmered, and later spread to New York through its immigrants (Ulloa, 2009, p. 273).

Additionally, within these sociocultural perspectives, throughout the course we take Halliday's (1980) postulate on the existence of the three fundamental and simultaneous aspects in the process of learning a language: learning the language, learning about the language, and learning through the language. That is, in this course students continue to learn advanced grammatical concepts and expand their vocabulary in Spanish while learning about popular culture and Latin American and Caribbean cultural history through this language. Students also acquire advanced concepts about the Spanish language at a discursive level. For example, they focus on how a given text is structured both at the level of the clause or phrase, and at the discursive level to achieve specifc communicative goals in different social contexts by reading and analyzing narrative, expository, and argumentative genres in class. Furthermore, following Matthiessen's (2006) recommendation from Systemic Functional Linguistics that "a central goal for advanced language learners is to increase their registerial repertoire" (p. 49), we work on the detailed analysis of the macro (discourse) and micro (clause) characteristics of these texts' registers. Specifcally, students are guided to pay particular attention and learn to identify how texts present information about a topic (the feld), how they establish relationships between reader(s) and author(s) (the tenor), and how such texts are organized by their authors (the mode) to achieve their communicative purposes through the registers employed in such texts. Finally, throughout the semester students work on developing their academic writing in Spanish by applying their new metalinguistic knowledge (e.g., lexico-grammar, generic moves, thematic development, etc.) in producing their own texts in the different registers studied in the course.

# *3.2 Materials and Text Selection*

A typical problem in the design of advanced language courses is selecting the texts to include in the course curriculum while considering the length of each text. Specialized literature on a particular subject is often presented in extended texts consisting of hundreds of pages. This is a fundamental issue if one takes into account that before the third year in our department (as in most foreign language departments in the United States) students typically work on very short readings included in their initial and intermediate level language textbooks (Lozano et al., 2020), and two or three complementary readings during the semester (e.g., short stories and essays of only a few pages long). In other words, the level of Spanish with which students arrive at these courses and their previous reading and textual analysis experiences are rather limited.

For this course, that problem was tackled by selecting relatively short texts to assign as weekly or bi-weekly readings (15–25 pages per week), mostly taken from the book *La salsa en discusión: Música popular e historia cultural* (Ulloa, 2009). The main reason for the selection of this book was the fact that its author utilizes multiple genres such as chronicles, personal narratives, song lyrics, expository and argumentative texts to present historical, anthropological, and sociological information on the topics. Though students fnd the readings challenging for their academic and specialized language, they also fnd them very interesting and engaging, particularly for how Ulloa Sanmiguel establishes an academically rigorous, in-depth discussion with authors of other important works on different perspectives about the origin and evolution of Latin music, through a detailed review and careful

analysis of them within the chapters of his book. Additionally, as a sort of companion to this book, throughout the course we use the hypermedia *Salsabarriocultura* (Ulloa et al., 2014), which is a public interactive online portal, whose project is also lead by Ulloa Sanmiguel (for an exhaustive presentation of the hypermedia project see Ulloa et al., 2018). The hypermedia documents the history of El Barrio in relation to the development of salsa and other Afro-Latin-American popular music. It depicts musicians, composers, and other celebrities related to the salsa cultural movement from key geographical locations (New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Curacao) through photographs, videos, interviews, and other texts (e.g., chronicles, essays, etc.). In a sense, the hypermedia *Salsabarriocultura* may be considered as a 'virtual linguistic landscape' in itself, which has a traceable sociocultural context. It portrays multimodal text, signage and landmarks in relationship with the localized social practices of the people (cf. Blommaert, 2013, p. 50). In the next section, I introduce the literacy practices students participated in throughout the course and present examples of the students' LL projects.

# **4 Literacy and Language Learning Practices in El Barrio's Multimodal Cityscape**

The course's literacy and learning practices included students' engagement with "primary and secondary discourses" (Gee, 1998). Gee argues that primary discourses are those that we acquire through everyday interactions at home and in our local community, while secondary discourses are those learned in schools as we learn to negotiate, for example, the language of the different academic disciplines. Students engaged in the production of written personal refections on different course activities in a course blog, in-class oral presentations and discussions based on their own selected topics, participation in whole group guided tours and individual visits to El Barrio, attendance at cultural events as well as in an academic forum with Ulloa Sanmiguel about the content of his books or with specifc questions based on the students' ethnographic LL projects in El Barrio and, fnally, the completion of a multimodal research report on their LL projects.

In alignment with a literacy-oriented approach to advanced language learning, the course begins with an introduction to the main concepts of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) during the frst three weeks of the semester, including defnitions of genre, register (feld, tenor and mode) and the presentation of the oralwritten continuum for the analysis of the different discursive registers used in the different texts assigned as readings (e.g., testimonies, chronicles, personal narratives, recounts, argumentative and expository texts). The following fve weeks, the course focuses on detailed reading, analysis, oral presentations, and discussions of the main points presented in chapter fve of the book *La Salsa en discusión*. This chapter provides a comprehensive historical, anthropological, and sociological exposition about the immigration process and the experiences of Latino/a/x and Caribbean immigrants to New York City and their cultural contributions to the musical development from the pre-salsa (1930–1960) to the salsa times (1960–2000).

Next, taking advantage of the fact that the course takes place a few blocks from New York's Spanish Harlem (El Barrio), we complemented the work done in class with the frst two visits to this historic neighborhood in which students walk, observe, smell, hear, touch, and feel; in other words, they experienced everyday life in this Latino/a/x community. For instance, the frst visit--narrated in the opening of this chapter—occurred during the second class. After this visit, students were asked to write a subjective personal recount about their frst contact with this neighborhood's multimodal cityscape.

Perhaps the most intriguing of these visits was a guided tour given by Aurora Flores during the fall of 2012. Aurora is a long-time resident of El Barrio, a journalist, writer, community activist, and musician in her own band "*Zon del Barrio*." We spent over three hours walking the streets of this immigrant community, listening to historical information about music celebrities and important community members, events and anecdotes (content most of which students were already familiar with based on the in-class work) directly from a frst-hand witness about the evolution of the salsa movement since the 70s; Aurora herself was an active participant in the industry at that time as the frst female music correspondent for *Billboard* Magazine (A. Flores, personal communication).

Our guided walk with Aurora started at the corner of 110th Street and 5th Avenue, right where The Park Palace nightclub once stood—an important landmark in the history of Latin music and of the Puerto Rican community during the frst decades of the twentieth century. Now the building houses a Christian church. As we continued our journey, Aurora told us, among many other things, about the origin of the small gardens found throughout El Barrio, which used to be dumpsters, but the local residents turned them into beautiful community gardens. Then, she made a sort of premonition when she said *"I believe that in two or three years all these things are not going to be here..."* Indeed, it caused much surprise among us when a few minutes later we experienced how the Puerto Rican community is being stripped of its history day after day through so-called "gentrifcation." That Saturday, October 27th, was precisely the last day of Mr. Jorge Vargas' ("Don Jorge") helping his clientele in "*Justo Botánica*<sup>5</sup> " on 134 East 104th Street (see Fig. 4). The students and I witnessed frst-hand how the words we had heard from Aurora minutes before became true.

<sup>5</sup>A botánica (less commonly known as a *hierbería* or *botica*) is a retail store that sells folk and alternative medicine, religious candles and statuary, amulets, oils, incense, perfumes, scented sprays and other products regarded as magical or thought to have special properties. These stores are common in many Latin American countries and Latino/a/x communities of the diaspora (Wikipedia.org)

**Fig. 4** Old and New LL on 134 East 104th Street due to gentrifcation in El Barrio

**Fig. 5** Screenshot of Doris' personal refection about the forum in the course blog (In this chapter, students and informants' names are pseudonyms to protect their privacy. When referring to public individuals from the community their original names are used)

That day, the emblematic *botánica* founded in 1930 by Mr. Jorge Vargas' father was being shut down after more than eight decades serving the local Latino/a/x community (a Mexican restaurant and a barber shop also were closed in the same building). We witnessed how 'old LL disappears' (Shohamy et al., 2010). When asked why he was moving, Don Jorge responded that he could not keep up with the continuous increases in the rent, due to the gentrifcation process that this historic neighborhood is increasingly facing, as one of "New York's Next Hot Neighborhoods" (The New York Times, 2016). Resigned to his apparent fate imposed by the pressures of capitalism in the city, Don Jorge ended his response by adding: "*That's just the way it is* ..." After the guided tour with Aurora Flores, students once again wrote their personal refections about it on the course blog (Fig. 5).

Towards the end of the semester, we had an in-class academic forum with Ulloa Sanmiguel, who had come to New York to conduct interviews for the Hypermedia

*Salsabarriocultura*. Since students had already done some feldwork in El Barrio, contrasting their own perception with what is presented in his book and the Hypermedia, they had the opportunity to write questions that were shared with the author before the in-class forum. Students asked for clarifcations on some of the content from the readings, or about their topics for further focusing their ethnographic LL projects. After the forum, they shared their refections about it in the course blog. The positive outcome of the in-class forum as a pedagogical activity for advanced language learning is summarized in the following vignette taken from one of the students' refections about it written in the course blog (Fig. 5 and its translation below).

Doris, a second-generation Latina student, began her refection talking about the quality and the academic demands of Ulloa Sanmiguel's book. She also described the forum as a "'spectacular' experience, because very rarely in a course you have a way to establish a conversation with the authors [of the texts they read in class]" (Doris, refection in the blog, November 27, 2012). It is worth noticing how Doris also refects on the content of the course in relation to her own Latina identity and culture, and on learning about her own language, when she says:

Although from a young age I was exposed to salsa music, I always appreciated it as an art form, but I never took the time to learn about its history, its cultural or social implications. [...] Enrolling in this class was one of my best decisions this semester. It defnitely helped me [see] my culture and my language in another way (Doris, November 27 of 2012 (Author's translation).

However, the discussion in the forum with Ulloa Sanmiguel transcended our faceto-face oral interaction and extended to the written mode of communication through the course blog. After reading the students' refections in it, the same author commented extensively on what the in-class forum meant to him:

I also learned a lot talking with you. Your smart questions required me to think, read, reread, write and search other sources of information to organize the answers they deserved. (…) I am happy to have contributed modestly to your education (...) and for having presented you with a new horizon on some of the culture, which affrms us as citizens of the world. (Ulloa Sanmiguel's comment on course blog, December 15, 2012 – Author's translation).

Several other students also mentioned that meeting and having a direct dialogue with the author of the main bibliographical references in our course was the best way to end the semester. Indeed, they benefted from participating in these advanced language literacy practices. Next, I present a detailed description of the course's LL project.

# *4.1 The Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Project in El Barrio*

The question driving the academic literacy practices around the ethnographic linguistic landscape project in *El Barrio* is: How could the city of New York 'as a text' (Dagenais et al., 2009, p. 255) be an integral part of this advanced language course? With that question in mind, this ethnographic LL project was initially conceived following Ulloa Sanmiguel's (2009) anthropological view when he writes that salsa music, as any phenomenon of human creation, is linked to a time (the time period and sociocultural context) and to the concrete and experiential space where it was born. That physical space is *El Barrio*, including the South Bronx and the "Loisaida", (lower East side of Manhattan), with:

its streets, corners, meeting points at the subway entrances and exits, theaters, social clubs, and dance halls where both Latino immigrants and US-born Latinos converged and where their everyday traces and stories of social experience crossed. A practiced space converted into place by those who inhabited it and represented it with their traits and crafts (Ulloa, 2009, pp. 152–53, my translation).

Therefore, and as a sort of response to Malinowski's (2015) call for more "informed, intentional and direct pedagogical intervention for learning in the LL" (p. 99), through this ethnographic LL project students were expected to: (1) explore New York's El Barrio of today experiencing it as a 'conceived, perceived and a lived spaced' by walking through its streets, visiting places of interest and interacting with its people in their daily lives as spatiotemporal referents to Latin popular music and other Latino/a/x cultural practices; (2) continue advancing their linguistic and cultural competence (e.g., academic reading and writing, oral practice in and outside of the classroom), through the investigation and analysis of specifc topics that they selected based on the students' different areas of study and their own personal interests. In order to achieve these two goals, the following specifc tasks and requirements were established for the ethnographic LL project:


presenting their interpretation of them. Students also discussed what they learned from *El Barrio* today, in relation to the content of the course.

• A fnal multimodal research report of their ethnographic LL project on a course wiki page. For this report students could use any of their academic writing work throughout the course, including their refections on the blog, extracts of feld notes, along with multimodal materials collected in their feld work (photographs, videos, songs, online texts, etc.). Here they were asked to use their voice as 'language-learners-as-ethnographers,' (Malinowski, 2015), not only to inform the data and observed facts and behaviors, but also to interpret and even discuss with existing literature their arguments and fndings on their LL topic.

# *4.2 The Wiki Project Multimodal Research Report*

Drawing on qualitative methods, I use content analysis of the students' fnal multimodal research report of their ethnographic LL projects. I analyze and describe their project reports in connection with students' literacy and language learning practices in the course presenting data samples from multiple sources in the analysis (e.g., vignettes from students' texts and ethnographic interviews, LL images, screenshots of their projects, etc.).

Building on the multiple pedagogical activities and tasks throughout the semester, and as explained in Sect. 4.1 above, students put together a wiki page with a fnal multimodal research report of their ethnographic LL project. Students chose their own topics, which included, for example, *Santeria and salsa in El Barrio*; *The role of women in the male-dominated world of Salsa music*; *The coexistence and tensions of different ethnic groups in El Barrio*; *The cultural symbols in public art of El Barrio*; *Salsa music presence in other forms of popular culture today*, among others.

# **5 Analysis of Students' Learning in the LL of New York's El Barrio**

In the interest of space, I present two examples of students' LL projects that were selected because they are representative of the type of students' advanced learning experiences in the LL of New York's El Barrio in my advanced-level Spanish course. Namely, the projects draw on previous and developing students' linguistic abilities beyond the classroom through research, critical reading and text analysis, academic writing, oral practice with native speakers and interviews, and even translation from English into Spanish of some of the interview data.

# *5.1 Example 1: 'ARTE EN EL BARRIO: Símbolos Culturales' (Art in El Barrio: Cultural Symbols)*

Jian and Christopher's (pseudonyms) LL project focused on uncovering some of the localized meanings of public art in El Barrio. Their multimodal report begins with a colorful title in capitals *ARTE EN EL BARRIO* (Art in El Barrio) and the subtitle *"Símbolos Culturales" (Cultural Symbols)* in orange, followed by a clear introduction of the topic summarizing what they learned, and explaining how they later decided to approach their ethnographic project by focusing on one specifc artist: Manny Vega.

Under the frst heading following the introduction, they present the types of art that can be found in the LL of El Barrio, broadly stating that it contains cultural symbols and messages about politics, music, and all sorts of aspects of past and present life in this neighborhood. They wrote a simile between art and salsa music of the 70 s: *"El arte, como la música y la salsa de los 1970s es una forma de expresar y sincronizar nuestras vidas con un desahogo creativo*" [Art, like salsa music of 1970s is a way to express oneself and create unity through a creative solace (students' LL project wiki page. Author's translation).

Next, Jian and Christopher's multimodal LL project report displays samples of public art including contrasting images of large murals around this neighborhood, each with a brief description and caption. The image on Fig. 6 below shows the 'Spirit of East Harlem' mural, one of the most famous murals in El Barrio.

**Fig. 6** The Spirit of Harlem mural (1973)

**Fig. 7** Images of the inside and the outside wall of the Graffti Hall of Fame

The 'Spirit of East Harlem' mural covers a four-story apartment building on Lexington Avenue and 104th Street. Artist Hank Prussing alongside his then apprentice Manny Vega worked for 5 years on this project starting in 1973 and it became the frst public mural in the neighborhood (El Museo).

The next three images displayed on Fig. 7 above captured the inside and outside concrete walls of The Graffti Hall of Fame6 located on the corner of 106th street and Park Avenue.

<sup>6</sup>The Graffti Hall of Fame was established by Harlem community leader Ray "Sting Ray''Rodriguez as a place where graffti artists could develop their craft in a safe space. Since its origin, the concrete walls of the Jackie Robinson Educational Complex's school yard have attracted some of the best street artists in the world for almost 40 years (Afnelyne, 2019)

Next, a second heading with bright green font reads "El Mural de Pedro Pietri." Here, Jian and Christopher explain how their LL project was sparked during the course's frst group visit to El Barrio during the second class meeting in early September 2012. Using most of Jian's subjective personal recount written after that visit (see LL project tasks described in Sect. 4.1), they narrate one of the experiences from the frst group visit, when we stopped in front of Pedro Pietri's mural by artist James de la Vega, located across the street from the Spirit of Harlem mural, and I handed out a copy of '*Puerto Rican Obituary'* (2004), one of Pietri's most infuential poems about the Puerto Rican immigrant struggle in New York City, and asked for a volunteer to read it aloud.

Written in a poetic style, the students' text in their multimodal report combines elements of the students' expository writing by adding key biographical information about Pietri. Interestingly, it also establishes a direct connection between the image of the mural and the words of the poem becoming the voice of El Barrio, a place whose surface does not reveal its secrets. It eloquently states how public art tells us the history of El Barrio: *"El arte en que las pinceladas imperfectas y un poco marchitas nos cuentan de las sombras dolorosas, y las vidas del pasado del Barrio. Nos cuenta su historia"* (The art in which the imperfect and slightly withered brushstrokes tell us of the painful shadows, and of the past lives of El Barrio. Art tells us its history). Then, exemplifying how LL in the form of public art refers to political and cultural symbols in El Barrio, images of murals of Pedro Pietri and famous 'Queen of salsa music' Celia Cruz are shown in their LL project report (see Fig. 8).

After carefully presenting the 'perceived space' documented through their ethnographic immersion in the feld, Jian and Christopher became intrigued by the fgures of vibrant colors on the corners and under the windows of several buildings in the area, particularly by what looked like the artist Manny Vega's signature. This

**Fig. 8** Images of Pedro Pietri and Celia Cruz Murals by James de la Vega

curiosity expanded Jian and Christopher's LL project to investigate beyond the 'conceived and perceived spaces' to the 'lived space' of El Barrio's local actors to encompass more specifc ethnographic research questions: Who is this artist behind the most vibrant murals and mosaics in El Barrio? What are the cultural symbols and their signifcance in his artwork?

Consequently, Jian and Christopher contacted Manny Vega via e-mail and on the morning of December 3, 2012, the doors of Vega's artistic world opened for them. As requested by the artist, the students brought him a bag of donuts in exchange for an interview. Notable is the fact that because Vega requested that the interview be conducted in English, Jian and Christopher's advanced literacy practices for their LL project required them to translate from English into Spanish the main points of the interview, which they quote in the forms of vignettes in their fnal report. The rest of their LL project's multimodal report focused on their unique experience with the artist.

Jian and Christopher included several images of the 'perceived space' including Vega's public art visible around El Barrio, as well as summaries of what they learnt in dialogue with this important actor in the 'lived space' of the linguistic landscape (Fig. 9). They also embedded segments of the original recorded interview in English as evidence of their ethnographic work. For example, they found out about how Vega started as an artist and how he developed from a storyteller through art to becoming a cultural referent of this community. Furthermore, Jian and Christopher's ethnographic questions and their pristine interest in Vega's work motivated the artist

**Fig. 9** Jian and Christopher's LL project displaying Artist Manny Vega's work

to drive them from his studio to one of the corners of El Barrio for him to walk them through the imagery of one of his mosaics. For instance, the artist explained the meaning of the reclining blue Buddha whose legs are intersected by the Nigerian deity Elegba as a representation of how people make their decisions in the intersections of life based on chance.

This mosaic also reminds Vega of his childhood experiences growing up in El Barrio where even traditional Catholic people used to rub for luck the belly of their Buddha's fgures at home (Fig. 10). While in front of Rivera's actual mosaic, he gave Jian and Christopher a mini-lesson about how religious syncretism developed as a result of colonization and slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean. Most importantly, he spoke about how his murals relate to the people as 'the spirits and temples of the community,' but syncretize beyond religion with life today in New York, by having Elegba ride a skateboard decorated with games of chance (e.g., dominoes), as a new form of cultural syncretism (*'Los murales son un recordatorio: Nos hicimos perezosos para ir a la iglesia, entonces le digo a la gente, sea la iglesia. Sea el templo."* – Extracted from a vignette in students' report).

Indeed, it is through these rich ethnographic interactions with Manny Vega, as a "conceived space" actor of the LL, that Jian and Christopher transcended the limits of the 'perceived' space of noticing vibrant colored fgures on the walls at the beginning of their project and moved to a more grounded understanding of the complex and purposeful references to different belief systems and cultural artifacts, and their localized meaning in the everyday life of El Barrio—that is, the 'lived space'. They conclude their LL project by stating: *"Art in El Barrio transcends its time, culture, voices and history. (...) it contains the secrets, stories, and the spirit of El Barrio from yesterday and today."*

**Fig. 10** Manny Vega's mosaic of the reclining blue Buddha and Elegba in El Barrio

# *5.2 Example 2: 'LA COEXISTENCIA DE LOS PUERTORRIQUEÑOS Y LOS MEXICANOS EN EL BARRIO' (the Coexistence of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in El Barrio)*

The second example of students' ethnographic LL work focused on two different Spanish speaking ethnic groups in El Barrio: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Through the 'perceived' space of its linguistic landscape, Doris and Lucy sought to uncover these groups' sensed rivalry that originated with the increased presence of Mexican immigrants in this community, mentioned by El Barrio's historian Aurora Flores during a class tour. They also wanted to challenge the general historical notion of El Barrio as a rather homogenous Puerto Rican neighborhood presented in most of the literature read in our course, as well as its stereotypical view portrayed in the media as poor and marginalized.

They began their LL project report by quoting one of their Puerto Ricans interviewees, Henry Calderón, who stated that "*El Barrio is a neighborhood of change, of immigrants. It has always been like that,"* (author's translation), then they continued with a condensed introduction of their general fndings along with contrasting pictures of Puerto Rican and Mexican stores and activities in the linguistic landscape (Fig. 11).

Doris and Lucy developed a set of questions based on their multiple visits to the site, starting from the guided tour with Aurora Flores. Next, to access the "lived space," they conducted a series of ten ethnographic interviews with residents of El

**Fig. 11** Doris and Lucy's LL project with Mexican and Puerto Rican LL in El Barrio

Barrio. Then, they critically compared and analyzed each of their informants' impressions and attitudes in relation to offcial demographic data (the 'conceived' space) and the 'perceived' space that they found during their feld work (e.g., information about educational opportunities; contrasting and unifying signs and murals, etc.). In a sense, and without knowing about it, their small LL project resembles Trumper-Hecht's (2010) study in Israel. In their LL multimodal report Doris and Lucy included a list of the salient themes of each interviewee's responses below the original sound recordings of their interviews in Spanish. Next, Doris and Lucy displayed summaries of what they learned from the conceived space of institutional data about El Barrio. They divided their fndings into two subcategories: political power, and education and employment. Regarding political power, they found that based on the Hispanic Pew Center data (the 'conceived' space), the majority of Mexicans living in El Barrio are undocumented residents and therefore do not have voting rights, as opposed to Puerto Ricans, who have been citizens since 1917. In terms of education, they found that more than 60% of Mexicans over 25 years of age do not have a high school diploma, which limits their employment opportunities to working in the service sector (e.g., construction, restaurants, cleaning and maintenance).

With a broader understanding of the 'conceived' space in the LL, then Doris and Lucy conducted a comparative analysis of the impressions and attitudes of Mexicans towards Puerto Ricans and vice versa within the 'lived' space of El Barrio, as expressed in their ethnographic interviews with local residents. They concluded that (even though their small study is not generalizable) the initial animosity of ten or ffteen years ago has toned down and both ethnic groups have been learning to coexist together. Most of the interviewed residents agreed on the fact that as immigrants they not only share the same language but also have the same basic needs: to live, work and support their families with an overall sense of Hispanic unity.

Finally, after summarizing their fndings, Doris and Lucy compellingly illustrated their conclusion around a developing sense of coexistence among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in El Barrio by displaying an image of the Soldaderas mural (2011), by Puerto Rican artist Yasmin Hernandez, located inside "Tin" Flores Community Garden on Lexington Avenue and East 104 street (Fig. 12).

Moreover, Doris and Lucy restated their fndings in the caption of the mural's image: *"Mural of two great artists, Mexican Frida Kahlo and Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos holding hands, a great representation of two blending cultures coexisting together.*" (Student's LL project report, author's translation).

# **6 Discussion**

The ethnographic projects presented in this chapter align with Malinowski's (2015) proposed pedagogical approach to literacy and language learning in the linguistic landscape. Students moved back-and-forth from the 'conceived' to the 'perceived' and the 'lived' spaces of local actors and their everyday practices, in order to answer

their ethnographic research questions and advance their understanding of the social constructedness of language and culture in local spaces in and through the linguistic landscape. As Blommaert (2013) writes:

Signs lead us to practices, and practices lead us to people: individuals and groups who live in a given area in a particular confguration, with a particular degree of regulation and order, and with different forms of social and cultural organization in relation to each other. This sequence, signs, practice, people, is the true analytic potential of linguistic landscaping (p. 50).

With regards to promoting students' advanced language abilities, the analysis of students' ethnographic LL projects on the everyday life of El Barrio show how they fundamentally supported their advanced language literacy practices in this Spanish course. The projects incorporated previous and developing students' linguistic abilities inside and outside the classroom (critical reading, text analysis, academic writing, oral practice, translation from English into Spanish, etc.). Moreover, when evaluating these LL projects, the focus was on paying attention to the deployment of an increased repertoire of technical vocabulary and sophisticated grammar usage refective of their new understanding of the discursive features of different academic genres in the students' written production. As Kern (2000) suggests, foreign language literacy must go beyond basic reading and writing skills towards fostering broader discourse competences, involving the ability to critically evaluate a wide range of oral, written and multimodal texts. Students in this course engaged in critical readings and discussions of technical and specialized texts in different discursive genres, (e.g. testimonies, chronicles, personal narratives, recounts, argumentative and expository texts). At the same time, they learned how to use the concept of

145

register when producing their own texts in some of those genres: frst, a subjective personal recount about El Barrio; second, an objective expository description of the same neighborhood, in which students changed the tenor and mode of their subjective personal recount adding more technical language with factual information; and third, an expository and argumentative text for their fnal LL report. In this way students increased their registerial repertoire which is considered a central goal for advanced language learners (Matthiessen, 2006).

Furthermore, throughout this course students were able to develop their speaking abilities through daily-class discussions, oral presentations of specialized topics, and participation in real communicative situations outside the classroom when interacting with and interviewing community members (most of whom are native Spanish speakers) for their ethnographic LL projects. As expressed by students in the anonymous end-of-semester course evaluations: "*We [students] had to use Spanish outside the classroom for the projects and it was a very good experience "and in addition" [...] it consolidated everything we learned in the semester."* Another student wrote *"[...] the LL project was excellent because we could choose the things we wanted to see and analyze. And with El Barrio so close [to our university], in conjunction with the theme of the course, there is no more suitable project for the course."* Remarkably, Jian and Christopher's advanced literacy practices required them to translate from English into Spanish the interview with a local artist who requested to be interviewed in English. They translated and quoted some of the artist's responses in their multimodal LL report. Indeed, all students were able to successfully condense the content of their previous written assignments and combine them with diverse elements collected in the feldwork (e.g., texts, images, sound recordings) into their fnal multimodal research report of their ethnographic linguistic landscape project.

# **7 Conclusion**

This chapter presented a case study of the design and implementation of an advanced content-based Spanish course that used the linguistic landscape as a site for introducing and exemplifying concrete literacy and language learning activities. It demonstrated the outcomes of such practices, through the analysis and discussion of the actual texts and products created by the students as well as their own perspectives about their language and culture learning experiences.

As shown in this chapter, a pedagogically sound implementation of the LL into the course as proposed by Malinowski's model does entail turning the city into the organic extension of the classroom by inhibiting its spaces, participating in its events, and including the voices of its actors. These types of academic experiences contributed to creating a unique learning environment for both the students and the instructor. Additionally, through the ethnographic LL projects students had opportunities to critically engage with all sorts of texts (written, oral, visual, audio-visual). As Kern (2004) writes, such texts "... give students the chance to make connections

between grammar, discourse, and meaning, between language and content, between language and culture, and between another culture and their own'' (p. 13). Furthermore, the examples of LL projects discussed in this case study also demonstrated the critical role of foreign language students' agency in making sense of and understanding of LL manifestations in large urban centers. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) argue that students' agency needs to be recognized in the quest for "a more productive, relevant, innovative, creative and even perhaps emancipatory, pedagogy" (p. 175).

In sum, these ethnographic LL projects in New York's El Barrio may be considered concrete examples of one application of Malinowski's (2015) pedagogical approach using the model of perceived, conceived, and lived spaces for designing learning tasks in the linguistic landscape. As Malinowski (2015) further concluded:

as the subjective experience, imaginings, and even desire of the inhabitants of a place, ["conceived, perceived" and] 'lived space' may also be one way to characterize the object of what has become a major line of inquiry in linguistic landscape studies of late (p. 108).

Indeed, the case study presented in this chapter might be seen as one example of applied 'pedagogy-as-practice' (Malinowski, ibid, p. 109) in the development of advanced literacy and language learning in the linguistic landscape of the multimodal cityscape.

**Acknowledgement** On my students' and my behalf, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to the community of Spanish Harlem for opening their homes, their businesses, their hearts and for opening our minds for us to appreciate the vast cultural resources surrounding our university classrooms. We are indebted to you all.

# **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **A Collaborative Asset Mapping Approach to the Linguistic Landscape: Learning from the community's Linguistic Capital in an L2 College-Writing Course**

### **Christian Ruvalcaba and Michelle Aguilera**

**Abstract** The Language Capital Project is a collaborative linguistic asset-mapping project that identifes non-residential locations in Tucson, Arizona, where languages other than English are present. This chapter introduces the project and theoretically situates it as LL research with a sociolinguistic justice approach. Through this approach, LL research is done alongside the language community members themselves, drawing from their knowledge and lived experience. This leads to a more complete understanding of the linguistic landscape, particularly minoritized community spaces, and it challenges homogenous, monolingual narratives of the southwest. After introducing the methods and outcomes of the project, the chapter presents an exploratory pilot case study of two undergraduate L2, frst-year writing students who participated in the project as part of an extra credit assignment. This exploratory pilot case study showed that the students who participated in the project reported having had a positive experience as well as shifts in roles and transformational identity experiences.

**Keywords** Collaborative mapping · Community spaces · Language capital · (Multilingual) narratives · Immigrant

# **1 Introduction**

In the summer of 2015, the authors initiated a project mapping places in Tucson, Arizona where one can meet speakers of languages other than English. The goal was to gather and share the information online to elevate the multilingualism present in the community and to provide a resource for new arrivals (e.g., immigrants, international students, refugees) to locate businesses and other places where their language was spoken. Specifcally, this resource would help new arrivals fnd helpful places and practical services like doctors, mechanics, lawyers, grocers, etc. The

University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA e-mail: chruvalc@ucsc.edu; miaguile@ucsc.edu

C. Ruvalcaba (\*) · M. Aguilera

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2023

S. Dubreil et al. (eds.), *Spatializing Language Studies*, Educational Linguistics 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39578-9\_7

project was titled the Language Capital Project (LCP).1 The two authors are Latinx and have lived in and around the southern Arizona border communities their entire lives. When the project began, they had lived in Tucson for several years and considered themselves knowledgeable of the places in the local community where Spanish was regularly spoken. For this reason, the LCP's initial focus was mapping spaces where one can encounter Spanish speakers.

To start off the Language Capital Project, the authors incorporated into the map their shared knowledge of locations around Tucson where Spanish is frequently spoken. Their participation in the local Spanish speaking community across the years made this process relatively straightforward. The authors also consulted with their Spanish-speaking friends and colleagues. Their knowledge of the local language communities beyond Spanish, however, was very limited. For this reason, the authors worked with international students who, in many cases, had already mapped out these locations informally. The role of international students in gathering information and media was indispensable in the development of the project. Many of the international students who collaborated did so while they were enrolled in English composition courses taught by one of this chapter's authors.

As the project evolved and new locations were added to the map, the broader theoretical, pedagogical, and social implications of this type of project started coming into focus. In Sect. 2 of this chapter, the LCP is theoretically situated as linguistic landscape research that incorporates social justice-based frameworks like asset-mapping (Kretzman & McKnight, 1993). In alignment with Bucholtz et al.'s (2014, 2016) concept of sociolinguistic justice, we propose that working alongside minoritized language communities while framing spaces where diverse languages are present as assets can lead to information about the linguistic landscape that extractive methods may overlook. Section 3 relates the activities involved in the LCP within the English as an Additional Language (EAL) college frst-year writing courses. We propose that participation in the project allows international students to build on the knowledge of their own languages, communities, and cultures in the classroom, and this knowledge can then be extended to the understanding of similar topics in English speaking communities. Additionally, bridging students' social and linguistic capital with the goals of the academic literacy classroom makes the students feel included, motivated, and it connects them to off campus communities. Ultimately, the LCP allows members of marginalized and excluded language communities to create their own representations of the broader linguistic landscape they inhabit as well as the specifc spaces that sustain their communities and cultural practices in unique ways. These can serve as counter-representations of multilingual spaces and regions such as the U.S.-Mexico borderlands where non-Anglo communities and their cultures have been historically suppressed as a result of assimilationist campaigns that date back to the colonial period (Otero, 2010; Vélez-Ibáñez, 2017). The remaining sections expand on the pedagogical implications through the examination of the experiences of one instructor and two international students who

<sup>1</sup>See https://lcp.arizona.edu/.

participated in the LCP. The goal is to provide a glimpse of the participants' experience and to encourage further inquiry into the theoretical and pedagogical implications of this type of collaborative linguistic resource mapping.

# **2 LCP: Linguistic Landscape Research as a Form of Asset-Mapping**

The type of research done throughout the development of the LCP shares many similarities with linguistic landscape research. Both reveal information about the language communities within a geographical region. Like the LCP, Landry and Bourhis (1997) propose that the "linguistic landscape can…provide information about the sociolinguistic composition of the language groups inhabiting the territory in question. Public signs can be unilingual, bilingual, or multilingual, thus refecting the diversity of the language groups in the given territory" (p. 26). For example, in the LCP, one of the most recognized languages other than English and Spanish in both public spaces and private businesses was Arabic (see also Bever & Azaz, "An Educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic," this volume). Specifcally, many of the students involved with the project recognized that Iraqi Arabic varieties were the most common. This is unsurprising since refugees from Iraq have and continue to relocate to Tucson (Coşkun et al., 2011). While the data so far contains mainly private business locations, Landry and Bourhis (1997) point out that "sociolinguistically, language diversity in private signs may most realistically refect the multilingual nature of a particular territory, region, or urban agglomeration… [and it can refect] a concrete manifestation of the linguistic and cultural diversity of the ethnolinguistic groups inhabiting a particular administrative territory or region" (p. 27). Thus, we propose that mapping places where one can encounter speakers of non-national languages, as done for the Language Capital Project, offers a unique way of collecting information about the linguistic diversity of a region. We also suggest that the information collected with the methodology of the LCP leads to data unattainable through observation of public signs and thus it is a useful method to get fuller understanding of the linguistic landscape.

At frst glance, there are some overt distinctions between LL research and the LCP's methods. For example, the LL chiefy focuses on texts in an attempt to identify (among other things) the range of linguistic capital of the inhabitants within a situated context, while the LCP focuses mainly on the knowledge of language group members to identify the linguistic capital of the inhabitants or of the general language group. Before moving on to other distinctions between the LCP and LL research, it is important to clarify what is meant by capital. We draw from Yosso's (2005) concept of community cultural wealth which asserts that there are varying forms of capital cultivated within Communities of Color "to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression" (p. 77). These forms of capital are intrinsically valuable and are used by members of speakers of language other than English to assist in their participation and navigation of new spaces and spaces where English is dominant. Two forms of capital are particularly important to this work, linguistic and social capital. Linguistic capital is defned as the "intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style" (Yosso, 2005, p. 78). Social capital refers to "networks of people and community resources" (p. 79) a person is capable of drawing from for various forms of support. Importantly, this work also contends that not only do the students who are part of the current study possess social and linguistic capital but the places that they visit do as well. Places are constructed and shaped by the people who own them and by the people who visit them. Places become physically shaped by signs, sights, sounds, smells, and objects that refect the discourses of the people who frequent them as well as objects that are in some cases symbolic extensions of the persons themselves.2 These features construct a familiar and welcoming identity of a location and allow it to become a type of nexus of resources and services for members of these language communities. In short, the linguistic capital of place is the manifestation of the linguistic capital of the people who frequent it.

The extension on Bourdieu's idea of 'capital' from individuals to groups is not a new concept in linguistic landscape research (e.g., Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Stroud & Mpendukana, 2009). It refers to the collective linguistic capital of a community, group, or population. The collaborators' shared linguistic and social capital allows them access networks that may not be perceivable by non-members. Importantly, collaboratively gathering information directly from members of the language community may provide a more complete picture of what types of signs are possible to begin with. For example, at the time in which it was added to the map, all of the employees at a local Tucson convenience store called Market Friendly were native speakers of Persian. However, all the signs were in English. The linguistic capital of the people who manage and frequent these given spaces is not perceptible, yet it is present. In this case, the absence of Persian in the written signs of the shop was an invitation for further analysis (cf. Richardson, 2020, on "silence" in the LL for language learning). Similarly, all of the current employees at India Dukaan speak Konkani, Kannada, and Hindi. Knowing the linguistic capital of that particular space, one knows what languages are possible to fnd in the linguistic landscape or soundscape of the shop. In addition, at Nur Market, one fnds that all employees and much of the clientele are Somali and Arabic speakers. However, the majority of the signs are in English, a few are in Arabic, and none are in Somali. It would be diffcult to note where multilingualism is possible and what the visibility of multilingual practices means if one is only relying on the incomplete picture of perceived space from the perspective of outside observers or even the broader picture of conceived space3 (Trumper-Hecht, 2010). Working alongside members of minority language

<sup>2</sup>See Jennifer Gonzalez's (1995) notion of autotopographies.

<sup>3</sup> In an article highlighting the importance of taking into consideration community members' own spatial representations of the spaces they frequent, Trumper-Hecht draws from Lefebvre's notion of spatial practice, lived space, and conceived space. Conceived space in this case is space "defned as conceptualized by technocrats, planners, politicians and other policy makers" (p. 237). In other

groups also provides information of the location that goes beyond language; in many cases, international students befriend and regularly converse with shop owners who speak their language. From this, they may be able to provide more insightful interpretations of the sign-makers' choices, an often neglected layer to Linguistic Landscape research (Spolsky, 2009; Malinowski, 2009; Stroud & Jegels, 2014). They acquire knowledge that one would only be able to attain through ethnographic research.

Another benefcial outcome of the LCP is its focus in creating a networking resource. In other words, the project is not only interested in understanding the language landscape from an academic perspective but in helping it grow by allowing new arrivals to fnd members of their speech communities. Although the goal is to gain a theoretically grounded understanding of minority language communities, there is sometimes a lack of practical social justice components or impacts to LL data collection. This is most evident in activities that involve foreign language students, sometimes from privileged backgrounds, photographing signs in underserved communities. There is often a power dynamic that is ignored during these 'camera safaris.' In contrast, working with members of these language communities may allow one to avoid the issue altogether. According to Bucholtz et al. (2016) "linguistically marginalized individuals and communities… [achieve] some measure of sociolinguistic justice whenever they claim the right to defne the social, cultural, and political roles of their own linguistic varieties" (p. 145). Claiming that international students are established members of local immigrant communities during their time abroad is an oversimplifcation, however. In some cases, there may be cultural or ideological differences between the international students and immigrant communities which prevent the students from gaining access to these communities. Nevertheless, we assume that in many cases, international students can more easily form bonds and achieve a more profound understanding of these communities than those who do have a shared language, ethnicity, or culture. They may also understand the experience of new arrivals and shape the overall objectives of linguistic resource mapping activities accordingly. For this reason, we conceptualize international students as temporary members of local minority language communities. In this way, Bucholtz's (2014, 2016) concept of sociolinguistic justice can be extended to a project like the LCP.

Ultimately, the LCP introduces an asset mapping component into linguistic landscape research (Kretzman & McKnight, 1993). It positions spaces where nondominant languages are practiced or understood as assets. As Low (2017) mentions, "words and their performance index space in multiple ways – linking transnational spaces, creating safe spaces and community for marginalized citizens...and spatializing class and race" (p. 122). In this way, these spaces are shaped by the linguistic practices of the people who inhabit them. In turn, the existence of these places sustains local, minoritized community identities by offering them a place to express their culture and socialize with others using a shared language. Arizona has a long

words, the perceptions of 'insiders' who dwell and feel a sense of belonging within these spaces may provide a more nuanced or unique understanding than what one might get from census data.

history of Americanization campaigns aimed at eradicating non-Anglo cultures from the region by erasing their most salient features: their languages and places (Ruvalcaba et al., forthcoming; Vélez-Ibáñez, 2017; Otero, 2010; Hill, 1993, 1998). A series of racist educational language policies combined with urban 'renewal' projects that displaced non-Anglo communities have framed languages other than English, as well as the places where they are spoken, as obstacles on the path to progress (Hill, 1993; Cammarota & Aguilera, 2012; Przymus & Kohler, 2018; Ruvalcaba et al., forthcoming). They are seen as places where people do not speak English or do not speak 'correct' English. These narratives erase the vibrant cultural and linguistic capital of communities by cloaking them with 'mental maps' of defciency. By incorporating an asset-mapping component, the LCP provides an alternative to a lens of defciency by highlighting the local community's cultural resources that persist despite being historically ignored, erased, and/or appropriated. It allows members of these communities to create their own representations of their cultures, places, and contributions to the region (Ruvalcaba et al., forthcoming). This aligns with Purschke's (2020) of citizen science which both democratizes research and embeds intellectual inquiry within the social domain. Beyond simply connecting research to community, approaching the community as an intellectual space begins by acknowledging the cultural wealth and intellectual production of communities as well as its potential to inform scholarly work (Rosa, 2018).

Finally, the LCP frames the linguistic landscape of a region as the emergence of unique places, each with its own social, political, and cultural context. The importance of understanding the local social context within which linguistic landscapes research takes place is prominent in recent research. Studies aim at understanding not only the distribution of languages and language communities, but also the social context within which they exist and the broader implications of their visibility. The placement of a sign is crucial to understanding what it represents and the discourses it may form part of. Public spaces, as Blommaert & Maly (2015) points out, are "social arenas -- circumscriptions on which control, discipline, belonging and membership operate and in which they are being played out." Thus, the meanings, implicatures, and functions of the language and design of a sign can represent and enforce local social structures. Serwe and de Saint-Georges (2014) extend Blommaert's idea of the normative nature of public space to his investigation of signs within a private space. More specifcally, they look at the shelf labels at a Thai immigrant's grocery store located in a rural German town. They point out that outside of economic and sociology disciplines, little research has been done on the language practice of ethnic businesses. Serwe and de Saint-Georges's (2014) investigation combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, and their fndings offer a glimpse into globalized local spaces, specifcally the "internationalisation of local markets" (p. 240) in rural settings. It is also telling of the presence of "multilingualisms that are usually invisible on a regional or even national scale in Germany" (p. 240). Serwe and de Saint-Georges (2014) also observe the complex linguistic strategies the shop's owner utilizes to best serve multiple language communities. Additionally, they gain insight about "the routinized ability of globally mobile individuals to access the resources of various semiotic systems" (p. 241) in a business setting (see also Bever and Azaz, "An Educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic", this volume). From Serwe and de Saint-Georges's (2014) study, one can see how much can be learned by carrying out both quantitative and qualitative research on the linguistic practices within private, non-residential spaces. In less urban environments, focusing solely on visible signs within public spaces may cause researchers to overlook important information about the language practices and social mobility of small language groups. They may misinterpret the lack of their languages' presence in public spaces as a sign of decreased ethnolinguistic vitality. While not all of the data collected as part of the LCP is as detailed as Serwe and de Saint-Georges's (2014) study, each entry classifes each location according the services offered (religious, business, cultural center, medical etc.), and this may provide an idea about the discourses occupants participate in. Although the information on the LCP resource can offer basic information such as this, we regard it more as an invitation for further research like that of Serwe and de Saint-Georges (2014) and the larger body of research on complex languaging practices in minoritized community spaces (cf. Blackledge & Creese, 2019; Peck et al., 2019; Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015).

# **3 LCP Research as Inclusive Classwork in L2 College Writing Courses**

The LCP is not only a collaborative, linguistic asset-mapping project that challenges conventional representations of diverse, contested spaces, it can also provide a more nuanced understanding of how place and language interact and shape one another. As a sociolinguistic research project, it can be incorporated into the L2 writing classroom where language diversity, discourse, and pragmatics are routinely discussed. The incorporation of the project's research activities can be turned into exploratory class assignments. Students can thus engage in data-collection, interviews, observations, and refective description of culturally diverse spaces in the local community. By incorporating the research aspects of the project in the classroom, students are able to participate in the project, become acquainted with qualitative research methods, and receive class credit for their participation. Ultimately, the collective fndings of students' engagement in these research activities allows for a more complete representation of culturally rich borderlands regions frequented by people whose presence have been historically erased, excluded, or overlooked. This section explains how participation in the project's research activities by students in L2 writing courses can connects to the students' sense of belonging, their own linguistic capital and awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity.

In recent decades, there has been a notable increase of international student populations in institutions of higher education in the U.S. Valdez (2015) explains that "the increasing number of undergraduate Chinese students… is drawing attention from higher education administrators, but unfortunately researchers and administrators have paid little attention to classroom experiences of international students…

(p. 8)." Valdez (2015) provides a critical literature review and overview of how classroom experiences in American institutions of higher education can lead to feelings of inferiority, uselessness, invisibility, and isolation among international students (Kim, 2012; Hsieh, 2007). Additionally, students' social networks help them deal with these notions of exclusion and the sense of not belonging (Heggins & Jackson, 2003). Valdez (2015) argues that including and starting with students' own culture and expertise is a way to make the classroom more inclusive and fundamental to a more equitable pedagogy:

Developing and nurturing a strong self-image based on the embracement of one's own culture and expertise, is essential to the successful implementation of a critical pedagogy of internationalization. Having a secure sense of identity allows students to see the value and potential of their own contribution to the class content and subsequently be able to develop a more critical comparative perspective on different topics. (p. 28)

From these assertions, one can infer that bringing the students' cultural knowledge into the classroom as well as creating opportunities for them to expand their social networks may help offset the sense of exclusion many of them experience. Although most research into international students' experience in American colleges and universities tends to look at their social networks on campus with fellow students, it is also possible to connect to social networks off campus as a way to help mediate these challenges.

While Valdez (2015) looks at international students' experiences in general college and university classes, her insights regarding the importance of bridging the classroom with EAL learners' communities and culture are especially applicable in the L2 classroom. Sharkey (2012) points out that English teaching standards in colleges and universities recognize the value of incorporating the students' culture, heritage, and communities into the English as an Additional Language curriculum.4 In this way, effective teaching in the EAL classroom builds on students' cultural and social capital. By creating activities that include students' culture and knowledge, students can participate more deeply and effectively in the classroom. This can lead to a sense of inclusion and empowerment. In turn, this can play a positive role in the development of their L2 literacy. In his discussion of the importance of bringing college English Language Learners' mother tongue into the EAL classroom, Parmegiani (2019) states that "'affective or motivational factors and academic achievement' are inseparable… To remove these obstacles, or at least reduce them, it is essential to remove academic literacy instructions from the 'experiential vacuum' (Cummins, 1996, p. 2) that often surround it and ground it in the social realities of the students" (p. 32). Parmegiani (2019) argues that by bringing students' culture and experiences into the classroom, the academic literacy is not only more relevant and meaningful but also "an instrument of inclusion and progressive social change" (p. 32). Designing

<sup>4</sup>Sharkey (2012) states that "…according to [TESOL and NCATE's 2009] standards, teacher candidates who exceed expectations in the domains of culture and planning, 'design classroom activities that enhance the connection between home and school culture and language; … act as advocates to support students' home culture and heritage language' (p. 43); and 'use students' community and family to locate and develop culturally appropriate materials (p. 55).'"

activities based on students' culture, expertise, and languages not only makes the content more meaningful, accessible, and relevant, but it also contributes to an inclusive class culture that may alleviate feelings of invisibility, inferiority, and isolation often experienced by international students.

Parmegiani (2019) advocates for the use of students' mother tongue in college L2 writing courses. He points out traditional approaches to teaching second language literacy have omitted students' existing cultural knowledge and identity and have trended toward assimilationist goals:

…among critical language and literacy scholars...there is a lot of consensus about the idea that traditional concepts of academic literacy, based exclusively on a dominant language, a dominant dialect, and a set of dominant discourse practices, create a sense of alienation in nonmainstream students. (p. 33)

It is the routine omission of students' social, cultural, and linguistic capital which reinforces the defcit-based approach of traditional approaches to teaching academic literacy. Like Parmegiani (2019), the LCP aligns with the assumption that EAL writing courses should build on students' capital, as defned by Yosso (2005). Not only is this conducive to a more inclusive classroom environment and more relevant activities, it allows students to position themselves as experts. This allows students to "develop more positive identities as learners who are knowledgeable and capable" (Parmegiani, 2019 p. 36). To that end, the LCP proposes an asset-mapping approach to collaborative linguistic landscape research which positions EAL writing students as experts with knowledge to share about their language and language communities. Students identify spaces in the city where speakers of their mother language socialize, gather, and provide services. They examine the signs at these spaces and situate them within their own experience as well as within a broader sociopolitical and historical context. They are not only able to transfer their knowledge of sociocultural, geographic, political, and linguistic factors surrounding the varieties they identify in the city, but they are also able to explore ways in which these spaces sustain and nurture local minoritized communities. This prior knowledge and critical examination of language and local spaces can be transferred to broader topics, such as the varieties of English as well as the power dynamics and competing narratives of each English variety (Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010).

# **4 Procedure**

# *4.1 Methods*

The current study seeks to understand how an asset mapping approach to sociolinguistic research as embodied by the LCP can be integrated in the EAL college writing classroom. More specifcally, it explores the extent to which this type of collaborative project facilitates the incorporation of students' cultural knowledge and background into the academic literacy classroom.

To explore these open-ended questions, the study presents the experience of an instructor who invited students to participate in the LCP as an extra credit opportunity within the EAL writing classroom context. The instructor's refection draws from their experience in the classroom, teaching notes, electronic communications with students regarding the LCP research activities as well as related classroom discussions and activities (e.g., discussing and in-class mapping of students' mental and experiential maps of the languages of the Tucson community). The experiences discussed in this refection are situated within the context and goals of a frst-year writing and composition course for L2 learners. The instructor's refection additionally serves to contextualize the other form of data collection, namely, a pilot case study of two students who completed an extra credit ethnography assignment as part of the LCP (see also Jiménez-Caicedo, "Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Content-Based Spanish Course", this volume).

The exploratory pilot case study (Yin, 2003) focuses on two students' experiences who participated in an extra credit opportunity that asked them to (1) identify a place off campus where a language other than English is spoken, and (2) interview a key stakeholder at this location (owner, pastor, employee, volunteer etc.). This exploratory pilot case study aims to understand students' experiences, particularly their response to the LCP research activity and what sorts of insights they gain through their participation. It draws from the instructor's knowledge and experience working with the students and from a questionnaire that elicited open-ended responses regarding students' experiences with the activity. These two sources of data serve to explore the question of how this sort of research activity can facilitate the incorporation of students' cultural knowledge and background into the academic literacy classroom.

# *4.2 Participants*

During the time that this study was carried out, the instructor who provided a refection was a graduate teaching assistant. He was a doctoral student in a second language acquisition and teaching program and had been teaching frst-year writing and composition courses for 6 years. He was also the co-creator of the Language Capital Project and one of the authors of this chapter. Like the students described in his refection, the instructor is an English as Additional Language learner with an L1 of Spanish.

The students discussed in the instructor's refection were all frst-year writing and composition courses for EAL learners at the University of Arizona.

The case study examined two students' experiences participating in the LCP, namely Li and Hamza (both pseudonyms). Li was an international student enrolled in the second semester of frst-year writing and composition for EAL learners. She was a business major from China whose frst language was Mandarin. Hamza was an international student enrolled in the second semester of frst-year writing and composition for EAL learners. He was an engineering major from Saudi Arabia whose frst language was Arabic.

# *4.3 Data Collection and Analysis*

Methodologically the current study drew on qualitative methods for both data collection and analysis (Merriam, 2009). Data included the instructor's written refection, and the two students' open-ended semi-structured questionnaires (conducted via email). The instructor's class notes, email exchanges, class discussion, and material items, such as in-class work and handouts, helped contextualize the main data. Both authors conducted an initial reading across all data. After the initial close reading, the authors individually coded in vivo. Afterwards, the two authors compared and categorized both sets of individually generated codes and located emergent themes. Smagorinsky (2008) states that "the fexible and generative nature of the collaborative approach [is] more likely to produce an insightful reading of the data because each decision is the result of a serious and thoughtful exchange about what to call each and every data segment" (p. 402). These emergent themes are discussed in the Student Experiences section below.

# **5 An instructor's Refection on the Collaborative Resource Mapping**

At frst, the map of multilingual spaces in Tucson mainly consisted of locations where people who speak Spanish work, volunteer, or gather. Since the instructor is a member of the local Spanish speaking community, these locations were not diffcult to fnd. Many of the instructor's Spanish speaking friends and colleagues also contributed to the map. Their knowledge of the presence of other languages in the city was practically non-existent. When the instructor and a colleague started the map, the instructor was teaching an international section of English composition. Towards the end of the semester, he sent a brief email to his students telling them about the project and asking if anyone knew anything about the foreign languages spoken in local Tucson businesses. The response was surprising. Students who rarely spoke in class replied with Yelp screen shots with accompanying information about languages spoken at each location, others sent detailed lists, tables, or excel fles containing the names and addresses of local businesses, the specifc linguistic varieties spoken by the people who worked there, where the employees were from originally, and the types of services they offered. Along with basic information about each place, some students also responded with observations about language use at these locations.

One student responded with the observation that bilingual waiters at some restaurants switch from English to Chinese when they are around international students from China. This student also said that many of the Chinese speakers of local restaurants came from southern China and spoke fuent Cantonese and used Mandarin mainly with international students. Other students specifed whether the people at these locations spoke the language (i.e. Chinese, Arabic etc.) as their native language or whether they had learned it as their second language. In some cases, the students specifed how they had gathered this information. Some proudly mentioned they were friends with the owners or employees of these locations. Others said their friends were friends of the people at these locations. One student explained that a local restaurant had so many international student clients that they created a separate menu with foods they knew the international students would like. In many cases, the instructor responded to their emails with more questions. The students answered with more details and explanations. The nature of the correspondence was one in which they were experts teaching the instructor about the local language community they belonged to. In the instructor's experience, it seemed that this topic was enjoyable for them. For this reason, the instructor decided to build on it in future semesters.

The following semester, the instructor taught another EAL section of English composition. This course focused on close reading, textual analysis, and academic writing. The instructor introduced the map to the class as a resource where they could fnd speakers of their L1s. The instructor also invited them to participate and offered extra credit for video-interviews of people who owned or worked at any of the locations on the map. In addition to the video-recording, they had to write a translation of the interviewee's comments and a refection on their experience. The students who participated typically went to locations from the map that were close to the university or close to where they lived. Many conducted interviews at places they frequented, and, in some cases, these were not yet on the map. Some students informed the instructor that they had chosen to conduct an interview at a specifc location because they were friends with the employees or owners. Because this was a peripheral activity, the instructor did not set up many constraints regarding the recording equipment they used. All of the video-interviews ended up being recorded on the students' phones with varying degrees of quality. While most of the students gravitated towards speakers of their L1, the instructor was surprised to see that some submitted interviews of people speaking languages the students did not know. The number of video-interviews that were submitted by the end of the semester was unexpected. In the past, students had not participated as much in extra credit assignments. The instructor anticipated that the process of going off-campus, meeting new people, introducing them to the project, and then getting them to agree to a videorecorded interview would be somewhat daunting for a class of frst-year students. Nevertheless, it seemed to him that students were able to build on the previously formed friendships to do the interview. Afterwards, some of them went on to explore new places with speakers of languages they did not know.

Other international sections the instructor taught focused more on rhetorical analysis, language variation, and language choice. The learning objectives were to help students develop pragmatic competence in their L2 writing (cf. Ritchey, "Building the Politeness Repertoire Through the Linguistic Landscape", this volume). These topics allowed the instructor to incorporate the resource mapping project into daily lesson plans. The instructor and the students discussed the rhetorical purpose and effect of the video-recorded interviews the instructor had accumulated from previous semesters. One student mentioned that immigrant business owners could use these media to promote their business directly to current and future international students, thus allowing their customer base to grow. The discussion also touched on how to make the video-recorded interviews interesting and helpful for both university students and immigrants or tourists. As a group, the class came up with a long list of questions they could ask in each interview to yield information relevant to the target audience. The class discussed other types of locations that could be added to the map, besides restaurants and shops, which people may seek out upon arriving in a new country. For example, many said they wanted to know where one could fnd a mechanic that could speak their native language. Others said they wanted to fnd barbers who spoke their native language. They understood the needs of new arrivals. Thus, they know what type of information the project should focus on collecting.

The concepts of linguistic variation and diversity were a common topic of discussion. For example, some of the international students who worked on the project attempted to identify the different varieties of Chinese or Arabic in some of the restaurants or shops they had visited. Most of the Chinese students were aware of the many Chinese varieties but did not see them as distinct languages. Many students referred to them as "accents" while others disagreed and said they were completely different languages. Some students reported having visited different places in China and being unable to understand what the locals were saying to them even though this local variety was offcially defned as Chinese with an 'accent'. This led to interesting comparisons between the varieties in China to other countries, like the U.S., and the discussion turned to the complexity of defning language, accents, and dialects. In one email thread, several students were trying to identify the variety of Arabic spoken by the owner at a local restaurant. Some students said it was Palestinian Arabic, but others said it was Jordanian Arabic. One student explained that they were very similar varieties, but she thought it was Jordanian because in Palestinian Arabic "the last letter in every word [is] pronounced differently" (Female international student, personal communication). This shows the extent to which students' expertise in these communities made them indispensable collaborators in the data collection process. In addition, this level of analysis showed not only students' awareness of variation but also their capabilities of describing the systematic differences like sociolinguists. Working on the project collaboratively allowed the instructor and the students to touch on concepts like language variability, the defnitions of "language" versus "variety," and the origins and nature of linguistic change. These concepts are helpful for students to gain awareness about nondominant forms of language and literacy as well as the hegemonic contexts they exist within.

In short, the instructor's personal experience has shown him that collaborating with international students on a resource mapping activity presents many pedagogical opportunities in the second language writing classroom. It naturally led to discussions of various 'levels' of language, like pronunciation, word-choice, syntax, and meaning. Importantly, the project seemed to be motivating to international students for multiple reasons. First, students seemed to understand that the project had the real-world purpose of unifying newly arrived immigrants, refugees, and international students with their language community. In conversation, several students talked about the type of help or information they got from these locations. For instance, one student from India said he regularly visited a shop owned by speakers of Hindi, Konkani, and Kannada. He said that during one visit, the owner gave him tips on how to fnd reliable and affordable transportation. Another positive aspect of the assignment was that the students could negotiate and defne their own language communities from a place of expertise. It aligned with other studies showing that allowing students to investigate their communities leads to more engagement (Bucholtz et al., 2014). In the instructor's experience, it gave some of the students more confdence to discuss concepts that may otherwise seem abstract. Third, the students understood that their role in the project is crucial. Their knowledge of multilingual spaces in the surrounding communities was not always available to outsiders. To the instructor, it seemed that they had already researched these places informally. When they lacked knowledge of the surrounding communities, they could consult with someone in their circle of friends and fnd out more. Valuing this knowledge in class discussions allowed the instructor to make the topics relevant to the students' experience. The project started from the assumption that the students' L1 was a resource rather than an obstacle5 on their way to develop English competence. A more systematic investigation is needed to measure the precise effect on their academic development.

# **6 Student Experiences**

From the instructor's perspective, many international students involved in the project appeared to enjoy the collaborative mapping of multilingual spaces in the city. It is important, however, to hear from the students themselves. The insights of two international undergraduate students presented below are by no means representative of every student's experience. Nevertheless, their perspective may inform future inquiries on these types of collaborative resource mapping activities. Although the students talked about their experience in conversation during, before, or after class,

<sup>5</sup>The literature about international students in higher education has been shown to follow a defcit perspective specifcally around language and culture. See Straker (2016) International Student Participation in Higher Education.

we asked them to write about their experience after they had completed the course (see Appendix A for Li's questionnaire and Appendix B for Hamza's). More specifcally, each student flled out an open-ended questionnaire via email. This method was chosen because both students had left the city for winter break and were not available to respond to the questions in person. Each questionnaire consisted of 8 open-ended questions designed to elicit responses pertaining to each students' experience and attitudes regarding the project, the class, the English language, and their L1. The questionnaire attempted to capture how participation in the project affected them as students and as new members in the Tucson community.

# *6.1 Li's Experience*

Li was an international student from China whose L1 was Mandarin. Her participation in the project started in an English composition course for EAL students. She submitted several video-recorded interviews of local business owners or employees for extra credit. In addition, she commonly made suggestions about how to expand and fund the project. The frst video-recorded interview she submitted was of a business where several Chinese speakers worked. The location had not been on the map; it was a place she regularly patronized. The second and third interviews were at locations she had never been to before. Overall, her answers to the questionnaire suggest that the student found her participation in the project to be a positive one.

According to the responses for the questionnaire, Li's participation in the project helped her gain more confdence in her verbal and nonverbal English despite feeling nervous. In response to a question that asked her how she felt about the class and the project at the end of the semester, she said that it made her "more comfortable using English." Her answers also showed that she compared her own English development with the English development of members in the Chinese immigrant community. Interestingly, she noticed how Chinese immigrants had progressed in their acquisition of English and cited this as a source of encouragement in her own experience as a EAL learner: "I felt I was not afraid of talking in English anymore because I talked with the business owner about how they were getting used to this different community and language and I got great advice." She also expressed that she was initially interested in participating because the project seemed "meaningful" to her. During her participation in the project, she managed to discover a location that was meaningful to her as well: a shop that sold traditional Chinese herbs (Fig. 1).

In conversation, Li reported that she had shared her discovery of the Herb Shop location among her social media circles and that other international students expressed an interest in visiting the place as well. Without being prompted to do so, Li took photographs of the location after interviewing the owner.

She photographed a multilingual sign listing out the business's products in Chinese, Pinyin, and English (Fig. 2). This sign refected not only the linguistic **Fig. 1** Still frame from Li′s video-recorded interview with the owner of Yong Sheng Herbs & More

**Fig. 2** Sign of available herbs in the shop. On the left are the name of the herbs in Pin Yin, in the middle is the English name, and on the right is the Chinese name

diversity of the space but also the broad range of imported products available to the Chinese community as well as the broader community of Tucson.

In another interview, she could not communicate with the interviewee because the interviewee only spoke Cantonese. Thus, Li asked her boyfriend, a Cantonese speaker, to translate. This exemplifed how she was able to use her own social capital to fnd out more about a location and then share her discoveries among her friends. Finally, in her answers to the questionnaire, she made the recommendation of translating the video-recorded interviews into English. In other conversations, Li mentioned that she discussed her participation in the project when she began to apply for graduate school. In this way, she was able to use her participation in the project to further her academic progress beyond the English composition classroom.

# *6.2 Hamza's Experience*

Hamza was an international student from Saudi Arabia and his frst language was Arabic. His participation in the project also began in an English composition course for EAL students. He submitted one video-recorded interview for extra credit and wrote a short description about his experience. The location he chose was one that was not on the map; it was one that he had discovered on his own. It was a restaurant owned by Iraqi immigrants housed in one of the city's malls. He used his phone to video-record the interview of one of the restaurant employees in-situ.

According to Hamza's responses to the questionnaire, participating in the resource mapping project helped him become more comfortable with the instructor. It also allowed him to feel more comfortable in the host community. This is evidenced by his answer to question three where he stated that he felt at home in places where his language was spoken: "I felt like I am in my home because they speak my language and have our food" (Fig. 3).

Besides making him more comfortable, he stated that participating in the project made the course more interesting to him as well, which he associated with his good grade: "I learned a lot honestly and I enjoyed it at the same time because there something different, I mean not the whole lecture was about English, and that made the class more interesting." Like Li, Hamza was drawn to the project because it was meaningful to him. He stated, for instance, that this type of information would be helpful for new arrivals who speak Arabic. He also expressed a desire to share the cultures that he associated with the Arabic language with "non-Arabic" people. In other words, he expressed an interest in using the map as a way to educate locals about his own culture and the culture of the Arabic speaking immigrant communities in Tucson: "First because it is a project that is going to help the new Arabic people when they got here. Second, it is a thing that will lead other people who are not Arabic to know more about our culture." He goes on to mention that he enjoyed hearing people who did not speak fuent Arabic were still greeting people in Arabic at these locations. Finally, he mentions that his visits to these types of locations do not always involve only speaking in Arabic; sometimes English is spoken. Because

**Fig. 3** Still frame from Hamza's video-recorded interview with the owner of Kebab King

of this, he points out, visiting these types of locations is useful for practicing English as well.

# **7 Questionnaire Results and Discussion**

The instructor's refection and students' answers to the questionnaire provide more insight on the pedagogical implications of the LCP in the EAL college-writing context. Reading through these accounts, one sees broad and inter-related themes emerge, such as (1) positive student experiences related to conducting interviews, and (2) shifts and transformations. In both students' accounts, they expressed that they were drawn to the project because it was in some way meaningful to them. Both students reported a positive experience at the locations they investigated. They also said they felt comfortable or, in Hamza's words, 'at home' at these locations. Moreover, one can see the resources, advice, and skills gained through their participation in ethnographic interviews. For instance, in his refection, the instructor states that one of the students who carried out an ethnographic interview at an Indian grocery store received help in navigating the wider community from a knowledgeable community member. Li explained that her work on this activity was listed prominently on her application for graduate school. Many of the other positive experiences that students reported were the result of a shift or transformation that came about through their participation in the project.

Another broad theme we identifed involved shifts in roles and transformational identity experiences. This theme emerged from statements in the instructor's refection and the students' answers to the questionnaire that describe or imply instances of change or modifcation of thought, feelings, or practices. This can refer to shifts in and outside of the classroom. For instance, Li explained that she felt the activity gave her more confdence in her use of English despite having felt nervous prior in the semester, moving her closer to an identity as an English speaker. Hamza also discussed how he felt like he was part of the same community as his interviewees at the Kebab King restaurant. He shifted from an outsider to an insider, from an international student identity to one where he also feels affliation with the local Arabic speaking community. Additionally, while he stated that he feels a sense of belonging in these spaces, the activity also gave him the opportunity to share his culture with others. In other words, Hamza ultimately went from being an international student to an ambassador of this community. Thus, it is now not just a matter of fnding community but also sharing it with others. Li also explained that after conducting the research for the asset mapping activity, she used social media to inform her friends about the local traditional Chinese herb shop. Students also had a chance to shift from student roles to that of teacher and researcher. Students were provided the space to share their knowledge and opportunities to work with their own language community in a researcher role. This shift in role and identity, in our opinion, provided positive outcomes for the students and shifts in their initial feelings and practices regarding the English from the start of the semester. Finally, the instructor's LCP asset mapping activity also transformed the way he approached the project because of the collaboration with his students. They helped inform and orient the project in ways the instructor had not initially considered at the onset. The ability of the LCP asset mapping activity to shift and respond to the needs of each class is what makes this compelling and appropriate for the language classroom.

Finally, another important and positive transformation happened within the classroom. The LCP activities provided an opportunity to bridge students' social and linguistic capital with the goals of the academic literacy classroom. According to the instructor refection, LCP activities opened classroom discussion in a way that students could talk from their own expertise and daily life observations in describing the language features in local spaces. As a result, students were able to contribute in ways they otherwise would not have. For instance, they contrasted L1 versus L2 accents within these spaces, they discussed phonological features from different regional varieties in trying to identify a local restaurant owner's accent, and they noted the codeswitching practices of waitresses. Additionally, they were excited to share these observations and interpretations of language practices in the surrounding communities. This also prompted classroom discussions about the geographic and political factors surrounding the labeling and categorization of language varieties as well as the ways language changes according to the situation.

The incorporation of the students' experiences, culture, and knowledge about the local language communities into the classroom and classroom activities seemed to have a positive impact on the students. Li mentioned that she was "nervous because it is my frst semester of studying abroad and I have never taken a English class with a native speaker at that time…" As discussed in Sect. 3, international students tend to experience isolation, exclusion, and a sense of not belonging in the college classroom. The current study suggests that students can draw from their social and linguistic capital to explore, become part of, and learn from the local community, expanding their networks beyond the campus. They can also draw from their knowledge and lived experience to reposition themselves as experts within the EAL classroom. Indeed, the LCP activities seemed to produce a positive change in the classroom.

In conclusion, each student saw the project as meaningful and interesting for similar and distinct reasons. Moreover, they both found that participating in the project allowed them to do well academically and improve their English and learn how "people who had already [lived] in Tucson improved their language." In this way, students can diversify their concept of the way English sounds in the U.S. Additionally, it altered classroom discussions and allowed the students to connect their cultural knowledge, experiences, and observations to the class content. Because this sample only includes two students' opinions, it cannot be generalized to the experience of others who participate in a project like this. Nevertheless, the discussion above provides a starting point for future investigations on this topic. Future investigations can look at ways to maximize any potential benefts of these activities in the L2 writing classroom. In addition, future studies can look at limitations and problems that may come up with these types of activities.

# **8 Conclusion**

This chapter has presented a brief discussion of the social, theoretical, and pedagogical implications of working alongside international students in resource mapping activities like the LCP. The pedagogical implications were explored through the analysis of an instructor's refection and participating students' answers to a questionnaire.

The social implication of this activity is that it normalizes the presence of languages other than English in the city. The project elevates these spaces as resources that are intrinsic to the cultural identity of the region more broadly. By supporting and acknowledging the contributions of these spaces, one can highlight their importance within our communities. Many of them serve as informal community-building resource centers for new arrivals, including international students. Moreover, following fndings in research on the role of spaces, social networks, and the mobility of immigrants (Nock, 2009; Garcia, 2005), it can be argued that new arrivals' L1 can help establish a bond between new arrivals and established members of these ethnic communities. This bond then allows new arrivals to access other forms of capital in these spaces. Additionally, these locations allow people to express their language and cultural practices outside of the home. Ultimately, the project allows

members of these communities to create their own representations of their own communities within a region that has been historically hostile toward non-Anglo communities, their places, and their languages.

The chapter discussed the theoretical and research implications of exploring the linguistic landscape through an asset-based approach (Kretzman & McKnight, 1993). By working alongside members of the marginalized language communities, one avoids an extractive approach to the language landscape and allows members of these groups to create their representations of their spaces, services, language, cultural practices, services, and contributions. It provides a glimpse into the way a language and/or the presence of its speakers is embedded in the identity and meanings associated with a particular space. Similarly, it shows how the locations provide a safe and familiar space that normalize otherwise ignored or marginalized cultures and can feel like "home," to quote Hamza. In this way, the spaces help sustain these cultures, languages, and communities by normalizing the outward expression of one's culture in domains outside of the home. Thus, approaching the study of the linguistic landscape through an asset mapping approach reveals another layer between community, language, and place.

Lastly, the chapter explored the pedagogical implications of integrating this activity within a frst-year writing and composition course for EAL students. The study reported here revealed that it leads to positive experiences and outcomes as well as positive transformation in attitudes, feelings, and practices. First, it provides an opportunity to bridge students' knowledge, experiences, and goals with the content and goals of the class. In addition, it allows international students to form connections with off-campus communities. As a result of these two outcomes, one can address some of the common challenges that international students face in institutions of higher education in the U.S. Nevertheless, this study is limited to the current context, namely, an urban public university in a diverse southwestern city. It is also limited mainly to the two students who participated in the project and agreed to fll out the questionnaire reported in this chapter. Future studies could create more indepth questionnaires with more students administered by someone other than their instructor. In addition, future studies could track how the language focused discussions generated by LCP activities can be more systematically connected with the variation within English writing.

The interrelated social, theoretical, and pedagogical implications discussed here can serve as a point of departure for future studies investigating how an assetmapping approach to linguistic landscape can help EAL college writing students gain a sense of inclusion and succeed in their L2 goals. Parmegiani (2019) mentions that "…valuing the knowledge base students bring to the class is crucial for promoting academic success, especially when this knowledge base is rooted in languages, dialects, discourse, and cultural practices that tend to be discounted by learning institutions and mainstream society" (p. xiv). For this reason, we see the LCP as a classroom activity that connects students' knowledge with the EAL classroom goals while contributing to the surrounding communities and to our understanding of the linguistic landscapes they inhabit.

# **Appendices**

# *Appendix A: Li's Student Questionnaire Responses*


# *Appendix B: Hamza's Student Questionnaire Responses*


3. How did you feel visiting and talking to the people at the location?


# **References**


Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? *Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8*(1), 69–91.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Part III Dislocating Selves and Locating Worlds in the Linguistic Landscape**

Together with the opportunities afforded by strategies for Spacing and Placing, as we have seen in Parts I and II, Dislocating is a crucial third dimension of pedagogical possibility. As discussed in the Introduction, this term refers to "a profound aspect of second language and culture learning, in which encounters with the unfamiliar give rise to the potential for novel meanings and new identities" (p. 8). Fundamentally, as the reader is invited to consider in the following chapters by Bever and Azaz, Sekerina and Brooks, and Zimmerman, Noodin, Mayes, and Perley, this has to do with students encountering—and teachers creating conditions for encountering—the authentic multiplicities of perspective and experience that places engender.

As in the previous two parts of this volume, we offer several guiding questions that invite teachers to consider practical means to incorporate the principle of Dislocation into their projects:


6. What learning opportunities may be afforded uniquely by studying the linguistic landscape in person (that is to say, by being physically present)? How about online? How can juxtaposing different modes of embodiment and presence lead to deeper understandings of, and investments in, the linguistic landscape?

# **An Educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic**

**Olga Bever and Mahmoud Azaz**

**Abstract** This chapter brings a fresh view on engagements with linguistic landscapes as learning environments and learning tools through the lenses of language and literacy studies and community-based language learning. We discuss the local linguistic landscape as naturally occurring and strategically constructed linguistic and semiotic representations of community languages and cultures. This approach highlights the link between learners, texts, social practices, and social environments, involving both dominant and minority community languages.

The chapter focuses on the multilingual multimodal linguistic landscape involving two local immigrant community languages, Russian and Arabic, in Tucson, Arizona, a city in the southwest of the United States. It shows how the linguistic landscape, as a fusion of the social space and a social practice, stimulates language learning through everyday social experiences, and how these social experiences can integrate with the learning process. We discuss how engagements and interactions with both the linguistic landscape and the representatives of those language communities as sign makers and sign readers, reinforce negotiation of linguistic and cultural meaning of the linguistic landscapes. Thus, the local linguistic landscape as a learning tool and discursive space, inspires the exploration, production, and interpretation of public signs, offers a learning context, and stimulates language and cultural learning in naturally occurring contexts.

**Keywords** Russian · Slavic · Arabic · Multimodality · Community languages and cultures · Multilingual competence · Multilingual and multicultural awareness · Learning environments · Informal learning

O. Bever (\*) · M. Azaz

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: oab@arizona.edu; mazaz@arizona.edu

### **1 Introduction1**

Community languages and cultures offer linguistic and semiotic representations incorporated in local linguistic landscapes. This chapter brings attention to engagements with linguistic landscapes as learning environments and learning tools through the lenses of language and literacy studies and community-based language learning. It opens novel perspectives on linguistic landscapes as learning environments in the naturally occurring contexts and practices of everyday life. It stresses the links between learners, texts, social practices, and social contexts. It explores and highlights the dynamics of these relationships across time and space, and sociocultural contexts in particular, involving both dominant and minority community languages. Our chapter focuses on the multilingual multimodal linguistic landscape involving two local immigrant community languages, Russian and Arabic, in Tucson, Arizona, a city in the southwestern United States (for another example of linguistic landscape-related work in Tucson, see Ruvalcaba & Aguilera, "A Collaborative Asset Mapping Approach to the Linguistic Landscape: Learning from the Community's Linguistic Capital in an L2 College-Writing Course", this volume).

It shows how the linguistic landscape, as a fusion of the social space and a social practice, stimulates language learning through social experiences, and how these social experiences integrate with the learning process. We discuss how engagements and interactions with both the linguistic landscape and the representatives of those language communities as sign makers and sign readers reinforce negotiation of linguistic and cultural meaning of the linguistic landscapes. Thus, the local linguistic landscape offers a context, a medium, and a texture for the exploration, production, and interpretation of the signs, while serving as a learning tool and discursive space. The chapter also explores how the local linguistic landscape provides strategically constructed social and learning environments which support economic, cultural, and linguistic contacts in the local community.

# **2 Linguistic Landscape and Language and Literacy Learning**

Recent Linguistic Landscape (LL) scholarship shows that linguistic and semiotic landscapes have become a valuable resource for language and literacy development, multimodal and multilingual awareness, and intercultural competence (Bever, 2012, 2015; Bever & Richardson, 2020; Cenoz & Gorter, 2008; Dagenais et al., 2009; Gorter, 2018; Malinowski, 2015; Malinowski & Tuf, 2020; Sayer, 2010; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009). These studies apply to various dimensions of LL research, demonstrating that multilingual and multimodal texts in linguistic and semiotic

<sup>1</sup>Note, the data for this chapter were collected and analyzed prior to the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian confict that started in February 2022.

landscapes provide a broad range of learning and teaching opportunities, contribute to the development of linguistic, communicative, and symbolic competence, and reveal a complex relationship between the learners, the text, and the social world. Bever (2012), drawing on new literacies, biliteracy, and environmental print studies (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Goodman, 1980; Hornberger, 1989, 2000; Hull & Schultz, 2001), explores the importance of multimodal textual forms, languages, and prints outside of the formal schooling domain, and the resourcefulness of the immediate surrounding contexts for language and literacy education. These multimodal and multilingual texts contribute to a better understanding of the "cultural, symbolic, informational and communicative aspects of texts" and strengthen the "connectedness between a learner, community and everyday context" (Bever, 2012, pp. 336–337).

Cenoz and Gorter (2008) have suggested the careful selection and contextualization of authentic textual representations from the linguistic landscape for foreign language learning settings where an immersive approach to the linguistic landscape is not possible. This could be accomplished by curriculum developers, instructors, or learners themselves and can include examples collected by study abroad participants and brought back to the home university or school (see, e.g., Richardson, 2020; Ritchey, "Building the Politeness Repertoire Through the Linguistic Landscape", this volume). Some studies (e.g., Sayer, 2010) have investigated the potential of linguistic landscapes in language learning, particularly in the feld of English as a Foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESL). Rowland's (2013) study on engagements with the linguistic landscape strengthens the idea that visual input from the linguistic landscape benefts critical thinking and critical literacy development in language learners. Those studies show how linguistic landscape activities can be better integrated in the FL curriculum in order to encourage the learners to interact not only with the target language and culture, but with the various other languages used in the linguistic landscape in their classrooms, daily lives, and virtual realm.

Bever and Richardson (2020) argue that in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts—both local and global—it is helpful to use linguistic landscapes for language, culture, and literacy education. They present a case of literacy-based language teaching and learning in relation to the German language as a foreign, study abroad, and community and minority language. In their instructor-guided classroom- and community-based research study, they use examples of linguistic landscapes collected by university students to show how the incorporation of linguistic landscapes into a foreign language curriculum reinforces pedagogical activities and educational practices, and provides a critical link between the learner, the space and place as a social, ideological and discursive process. This involves applying creative, analytical, and critical thinking about language use, and raising awareness about the multilingual and multicultural world as an essential component of learning and teaching.

While specifcally focusing on the German linguistic landscapes in Tucson, Arizona, Bever and Richardson (2020) note that the local linguistic landscape in general is a tool and a resource for literacy-based language education. They reaffrm the view that "visual literacy environment is a useful starting-point as it provides evidence of a range of literacies": the visual "traces of literacy practices" point to various kinds of social activities and social relations (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, pp. 42–43). These involve the notion of 'literacy as social practice' (Barton & Hamilton, 1998), critical, refective, and multilingual awareness, and engagement and participation in community social, cultural and economic life. The social and cultural accounts of language and literacy learning point to linguistic landscapes as a valuable source of "socially-, historically-, and culturally-situated" texts (Kern, 2000, p.16), and address the linguistic landscape as a communicative, cultural and discursive space (Bever, 2012, 2015).

The fusion of the linguistic landscape with language and literacy studies can be viewed also through Kern's (2000) infuential seven principles of literacy: interpretation, collaboration, conventions, cultural knowledge, problem solving strategies, refection and self-refection, and language use. This is in line with what Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) call "the ability to shape the multilingual game in which one invests […] to reframe human thought and action" (p. 667), meaning that language learning involves navigating and reshaping the complex, multifaceted multilingual spaces in and out of the classroom.

The following discussion explores how engagements with the local linguistic landscape through daily interactions with multilingual and multimodal signs navigate, facilitate, stimulate, and enrich the opportunities for linguistic and cultural learning (Bever, 2012, 2015; Bever & Richardson, 2020; Blommaert, 2013, 2014; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010; O'Connor & Zentz, 2016). It offers a perspective on the links between learners, texts, social practices, and social context through the lens of communitybased language learning (Clifford & Reisinger, 2019), suggesting that the local linguistic landscape serves as a solid teaching and learning tool, based on the authenticity of the relationship and engagements with the local language communities.

# **3 The Current Project**

The present study emphasizes that in informal learning contexts the linguistic landscape is a valuable tool for multilingual and multicultural learning and development in minority and community languages, where the demographic, sociolinguistic, and sociocultural composition of the community resembles those in a particular sign. In addition to the linguistic and cultural inputs such as those presented in this study, the linguistic landscape provides language learners with an opportunity to express their insights and their vision of the target communities. In Bourdieu's (1989) sense, the space "is the system of relations," spatial, linguistic, ideological, and discursive, where perception of the social world should be viewed as "the construction of visions of the world which themselves contribute to the construction of this world," and "the vision that every agent has of the space depends on his or her position in that space" (p. 18). The concept of the "habitus, as a system of schemes of perception and appreciation of practices, cognitive and evaluative structures" captures the interrelations between the person, the action, the social position, and the social world (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 19). On this view, signs refect social positioning and stimulate the sign makers and a business owners' role as social actors. Hence, this involves a production of social spaces that enable social relations spatially, temporally, materially, and linguistically. This social positioning is facilitated by the multimodal representation of a sign and the social actors acting on it.

Our discussion below on engagement with the linguistic landscape offers perspectives on the relationship between language learning, literacy practices, text, space, and place. It unpacks the complex relationship between "verbal and material ingredients in the multilingual object" (Aronin & O'Laoire, 2012, p. 310), brings attention to bivalency as a point of convergence of languages and scripts (Bever, 2012), and expands the research on community languages, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes (Blommaert, 2013). It stresses that the exploration and negotiation of textual forms, semiotic, linguistic and material resources, discursive practices, and human activities (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) stimulates learners' creative and analytical thinking, and emphasizes learning as a living process across languages, texts and contexts.

# **4 Geographical and Cultural Context**

Tucson, Arizona is a borderland city in the US Southwest with around one million inhabitants historically dominated by Spanish, English, and English-Spanish bilingualism. Along with ongoing immigration from Mexico and South America, in the 1980s–2000s, a wave of new immigrants and refugees from Middle Eastern, Asian, African, Post-Soviet and East European countries settled in Tucson, resulting in a noticeable diversifcation of the sociolinguistic composition of the city ethnically, linguistically, and culturally (http://www.rispnet.com/). Formerly known as a predominantly Mexican-American city, today Tucson is a multilingual and multicultural community, with historically established dominance of English, Spanish, and indigenous languages, and diverse populations represented by much smaller groups of linguistic and cultural minorities (https://statisticalatlas.com/metro-area/Arizona/ Tucson/Languages). As if to illustrate this diversity, a sign (Fig. 1) welcomes Mexican and Arabic-speaking immigrants to Tucson in three languages: Spanish, English and Arabic, raising awareness in the local population about the respective community dominant and/or minority language - speaking population. The message in English is in the central position in this sign (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), serving as a dominant and a unifying language of the community, and providing an English translation of the other two community languages.

Another example refecting multilingual and multicultural Tucson is a sign (Fig. 2) with the name of the Holocaust History Center at the Jewish History Museum (https://www.jewishhistorymuseum.org/). The word "Holocaust" here appears in fve languages: from top down – Hebrew – line1, Yiddish – line 2, English – line 3, Russian – line 4, and Spanish – line 5; and two scripts – Cyrillic (for Russian) and Roman (for four other languages). It uses the Hebrew and Yiddish **Fig. 1** A trilingual sign welcoming immigrants and refugees to Tucson community

**Fig. 2** A multilingual sign of the Holocaust History Center at the Jewish History Museum in Tucson, AZ

words for 'Holocaust' written in the Roman alphabet, and keeps its original form for two other languages, Russian and Spanish. This sign contains both informational and symbolic values: it acknowledges the local languages and the international multilingual community of Holocaust victims and survivors in the World War II. Similar to the sign in Fig. 1, "Holocaust" in English is in the central position and in a larger font, serving as a unifying language and raising awareness about the Holocaust locally, nationally and internationally.

Among relatively recent ethnic and linguistic minorities in Tucson are the Arabic and Russian-speaking populations. It is important to stress that both Russian- and Arabic-speaking language communities are not monolithic, but rather heterogeneous with complex linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This heterogeneity is conditioned by geographical regions and geopolitical divisions, languages and dialects of their former countries. The critical factors of these sociolinguistic complexities also include race, ethnicity, mother-tongues, language policies, languages of education, political and religious affliation (e.g., secular, Muslims, Russian orthodox, Jews), socioeconomic status, and educational levels. Further critical forces affecting the sociolinguistic profles of groups and individuals are the lengths of stay in the US and other countries before their fnal arrival in the US; family and individual strategies in relation to language maintenance and language use; language transmission across generations; and language shift (Hornberger, 1989, 2000; Aronin & O'Laoire, 2003).

In Tucson, it is possible to meet a person from Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic and later an independent post-Soviet country, speaking Russian, Uzbek, Tatar, and English. One can also meet a person from Egypt, Libya and other North African countries, speaking respective local languages and dialects, modern and classic Arabic, French and English. These multilingual speakers are not equally profcient in all of the languages of their linguistic repertoire: code switching and translanguaging practices are common in their everyday language use (Abourehab & Azaz, 2020). In this local US context, Russian and Arabic have become markers of unifed sociolinguistic identities for those who represent the Russian- and Arabicspeaking worlds, or have cultural, linguistic, or ethnic affliation with those languages and cultures.

Therefore, along with English and Spanish as dominant languages in the Tucson linguistic landscape (Przymus & Kohler, 2018; Ruvalcaba & Aguilera, "A Collaborative Asset Mapping Approach to the Linguistic Landscape: Learning from the Community's Linguistic Capital in an L2 College-Writing Course", this volume), some other minority languages (e.g., German) have also been historically integrated in the local linguistic landscape (Bever & Richardson, 2020; Richardson, 2020). Russian and Arabic, relatively recent immigrant community languages, also appear in the local linguistic landscape, but more uniquely linked to the community and religious services, particular businesses, educational and social programs, and are especially prominent in ethnic restaurants and ethnic stores.

# **5 Community Languages, Linguistic Landscape, and Social Practices**

# *5.1 The European Market and Deli*

Community languages such as Russian and Arabic are visible mainly in signs associated with private businesses, social services, and educational settings. Traditionally, private ethnic stores and restaurants serve as prominent spaces for exhibiting multilingual and multimodal signs, promoting not just their products and goods, but linking customers to the community languages and cultures. While the linguistic landscape of an individual store can be viewed as "a synchronically observable space" (Blommaert, 2013, p. 69) at frst, its multilayered linguistic landscape shows arrangements and confguration of signs and cultural artifacts signaling historicity, visible and invisible traces of activities, ideologies and discourses. It requires "deep ethnographic immersion" (Blommaert, 2013, p. 108) to unpack and interpret complexities of representations of multimodal textual forms of the linguistic landscape by addressing linguistic, cultural, material and semiotic nature of signs.

The European Market & Deli (http://europeanmarketandeli.com/) was opened in 1999 and is owned by an English-Ukrainian-Russian-speaking family who emigrated to the US in the 1980s from Ukraine. The store serves a diverse population from all over Tucson, specializing in Ukrainian, Russian, Slavic and East European cuisine. It offers foods and a variety of gifts and souvenirs associated with Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Serbian, and many other European-American cultures and heritages. The store sells a wide assortment of cookies, chocolate, buckwheat, farmer cheese, herrings, and other food items popular among those communities. It provides a welcoming, friendly, and casual atmosphere, serving as a cultural and linguistic anchor to many Russian and non-Russian speaking customers.

The store's name above the front door, appears as a monolingual sign in English (Fig. 3), identifying the nature of the store, and addressing the diverse local

**Fig. 3** A monolingual front door sign of the European Market store

**Fig. 4** The lunch menus

community. There are other signs inside the store appearing in English. Figure 4 exhibits two handwritten signs in English with the daily lunch menus from the deli inside the store, offering traditional ethnic Russian and East European food. The names of the Russian dishes translated into English are on the left side, and the Greek menu, also in English, is on the right. Beside the lists of the dishes and prices, these daily menus contain personal notes with clarifcations "Borsch (Russian red soup)", instructions and greetings: "Don't forget to check out our menu", and "Enjoy a cold beer with your lunch!". These menus appeal to the diverse clientele and signal the local, international, and ethno-cultural traditions and cooking practices.

The overall multimodal LL of the store exhibits a constellation of languages and scripts with Russian and Slavic dominance (Fig. 5). Inside the store, the food items, their labels and logos, images, languages, scripts, and cultural artifacts show the convergence of East European and US cultures and consumer atmosphere. The store sells many Russian posters and folk cultural artifacts, such as traditional handcrafted multicolored Matryoshka nesting dolls, Khokhloma wood boards, trays, and spoons with traditional Russian hand painted red, black, green and gold fower patterns, Russian samovars (tea kettle), and other items historically and linguistically associated with Russian, Slavic, Soviet and post-Soviet cultures. This complex environment offers what Aronin and O'Laoire (2012) call "an additional avenue in multilingualism studies, that of material culture" (p. 315), suggesting that materiality of cultural artifacts offers an authentic source for multilingual development. The dominance of Russian and Slavic linguistic and semiotic properties in the linguistic landscape allows the construction of an imaginary Slavic world for Russian language learners (Bever & Richardson, 2020), an imaginary homeland for the Russianspeaking immigrant community (Woldemariam & Lanza, 2015), while maintaining connections to the local and global cultures (Blommaert, 2013). Along with giving a visibility and a voice to the minority language community, this unique local place can stimulate and serve both incidental and instructor-guided learning by providing associations with and representations of material, cultural, linguistic and semiotic

**Fig. 5** The Russian and Slavic cultural artifacts

forms of the target language and culture. While the store's linguistic landscape is a complex, multilayered and multidimensional space with ongoing negotiation of linguistic and semiotic properties of the ethnic, national and global cultures, services and goods, it provides exposure to the imaginary yet authentic Russian and Slavic world through presented complexities of relevant authenticity and diversities.

# *5.2 The Caravan Market*

Arabic language and culture in Tucson are especially prominent in the signage of ethnic stores and restaurants offering traditional cuisine and services. A representative example of this linguistic landscape is displayed in an ethnic store owned by a local immigrant Arabic-speaking family for three decades (Fig. 6). This store is well known by the local community for selling Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ethnic food, produce and cultural artifacts, "centered around Mediterranean food, which includes cuisines from Libya, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and North Africa" (https://tucsonfoodie.com/2018/02/07/caravan-market-caravan-grill/). It offers a wide variety of items from cuisines from all over the world, attracting customers from diverse local ethnic communities and speakers of dominant and

**Fig. 6** A front sign of the Caravan store

minority languages, including English, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian, among others. On a daily basis, the store environment and its linguistic landscape represent a vibrant multilingual and multicultural space, where spoken and written languages, cultures and various modes of communication are interwoven in business transactions with diverse customers.

Multilingual and multimodal linguistic landscapes inside and outside the store present a constellation of signs containing many languages, images and scripts, which provide a rich array of products associated with the brands, producers, and distributors from all over the world, and indexing a complexity of the sociolinguistic composition of the local and global communities. The signs include the store name, hours of operation, information about particular products, price tags, logos, labels, and advertisement posters. The store's name (Fig. 6) appears in a multimodal bilingual sign in English and Arabic and with Roman and Arabic scripts, artistically arranged above the front door, and signaling multiculturally assorted products.

# **6 Discussion of a Particular Sign with an Array of Russian, English, and Arabic**

Among the many signs in this store, a particular private sign (Fig. 7) stresses the signifcance of this study from LL, literacy, and educational perspectives. This sign shows the juxtaposition of three languages (English, Arabic, and Russian), and corresponding scripts (Roman, Arabic, and Cyrillic). It is a 'bottom-up' sign that was frst observed inside this store in 2015. It has hand-written text on a standard letter

**Fig. 7** Array of Russian, English, and Arabic Orthographic Symbols. (© Copyright 2015 Olga Bever. All Rights Reserved)

size page of white paper attached to the window near a cashier. Unlike other signs in this store that contain business-related information (e.g., the hours of operation, close/open signs, price tags, etc.), this particular sign contains Cyrillic alphabet organized in two columns and Roman and Arabic individual letters or sequences of letters next to it. It also has a few words written in Russian sporadically on the page.

This self-made sign (Fig. 7) uses three languages and scripts and highlights how the multilingual and multicultural resources of individuals are interwoven with the multilingual and multicultural composition of the local and global communities linguistically, socially, and culturally. It shows how a sign maker creates interconnected social, economic, interpersonal, and linguistic spaces by employing orthographic representations of particular languages to deliver the pronunciation in a target language. The sign maker uses his lifespan skills and experiences with the local and global communities and employs available multilingual resources to create a sign that facilitates and mediates his own learning how to read signage in a target language. Thus, the sign maker becomes a language learner himself. In this example the sign maker and the learner are the same person, who was interviewed informally.

Not only does this sign signal a complexity within ethnic, linguistic and cultural settings such as this one, but it also suggests a path to literacy in a target language through creating an array of symbols in order to learn how to read another array of

symbols. It displays how an adult learner, who is also a business owner and a sign maker, uses the LL to develop and display his reading/decoding skills in a target language and to express his attitude towards the target language and its speakers. The juxtaposition of three languages, English, Arabic and Russian, and corresponding scripts, Roman, Arabic and Cyrillic, serves as a learning tool, a cultural and linguistic mediator, and refects the coexistence and cultural and linguistic inclusion of diverse language groups in the local community.

To explore the forces behind this sign, we apply Sebba's (2007) view that writers may deviate from established conventions of spelling and create their own unconventional forms that "have, or may have, a symbolic signifcance which the conventional forms do not" (p. 4). Sebba (2007) raises questions about what lies behind the writer/author's choice, what the symbolic power of a given context is, and what stimulates the sign maker socially and culturally towards making a particular language choice. This resonates with Ben-Rafael et al.'s (2006) discussion of code choice in signs, and Malinowski's (2009) issue of "authorship", which involves the question of who, why, and what forces, intentions, and motivations are involved in designing and producing a particular sign.

The sign displays the Russian orthographic symbols at the left side of each column. To decode these symbols, the sign maker yielded to a complementary distribution of English and Arabic symbols to better understand the system underlying these symbols. In some situations, he selected a different symbol in what seems to be a trial-and-error strategy. Importantly, when the Roman selection did not seem to be a good candidate, he resorted to Arabic, the language he reads and speaks fuently. In situations in which the Russian sound was hard to render in a single equivalent in English, Arabic sound combinations were used instead (e.g., /*ya/* and /*yi*/). Also, to better represent the fne-tuned features of certain sounds (e.g., front /a/ versus deep /a/ and long versus short vowels), the learner exploited the possibilities available in his frst language, Arabic. For example, the *alif* and the *alif maddah* were candidates for the Russian /A/. The choices the sign maker made refect a reasonable degree of linguistic awareness of Arabic and English, which represent the linguistic sources he uses to learn the Russian sounds.

An informal interview with the store owner illuminated the purpose and process of creating the sign. The store owner explained that the sign was created and placed here for his own learning of how to pronounce the Russian letters and "how to read" the product labels written in Russian (Fig. 8) and to enhance his communication with Russian-speaking customers. He acknowledged his multilingual background that involves four languages: Amazigh (North African Language), Arabic, French and English, and the Arabic and Roman scripts that are part of his everyday life. He thus knows how to read labels in other languages, but Russian labels are the most diffcult for him, because they appear in a Cyrillic script that is both unfamiliar and very different from other scripts.

He developed and applied his own strategies of how to learn to read those labels. First, he used the Google translator on his iPhone to listen to a pronunciation of each letter of the Russian alphabet. Then, based on what he heard, he created and assigned the pronunciation of each Russian letter by using the Roman and Arabic letters to

**Fig. 8** Products with Russian names in Cyrillic (*tvorog* – farmer cheese; *grechka* – buckwheat)

deliver a corresponding sound. As a result, he created a sign containing the Cyrillic alphabet with the corresponding phonetic representation of the Russian letters by using English and Arabic, thus matching the pronunciation of the Russian sound with the corresponding sounds in the other two languages. The juxtaposition of three alphabetic languages (Russian, English, and Arabic) and three corresponding scripts (Cyrillic, Roman, and Arabic) in the sign facilitates learning the pronunciation of the products with Russian labels and enhances the possibility for verbal interaction between store employees and Russian-speaking customers.

In order to learn how to read in Russian, the store owner had to attend closely as a learner to the appearance of the Russian letters and words on the labels and logos of the products in the store (e.g., chocolate, canned fsh, buckwheat, herrings, etc.). In order to decode those texts, he had to draw on his reading strategies and creativity from his existing knowledge of English and Arabic phonetic and writing systems and then apply this knowledge in order to better understand the alphabetic principle and phonetic representations of the Russian language. Here, the learning process has become a creative process of designing a learning interface embedded in the linguistic landscape text on the window. Thus, the linguistic landscape has created the space for motivating, mediating, and facilitating the learning process of writing and pronouncing the equivalents of the phonological systems of Russian using English and Arabic.

This discussion shows how a particular sign observed inside the store displays the traces of individual steps to literacy, empowers multilingual and multicultural awareness, and enriches the linguistic and cultural repertoire of the sign maker. Following Sebba's (2007) perspective on the role of orthography in society, we argue that the linguistic landscape as a social practice "is bound up with other practices to do with literacy, which are themselves embedded in the social and cultural practices of a society or group" (p. 24). Thus, the multifaceted character of the linguistic landscape might be determined by the kinds of social practices it is embedded in and is a part of as well as the literacy practices for which it is designed.

During our regular visits to the store as customers, we observed a mutual understanding between the owner and the Russian-speaking customers asking about traditional Russian products like *tvorog* (Russian version of the farmer cheese), *seledka* (herrings) or *grechka* (buckwheat). Although they were conversing in English, the Russian lexemes were inserted in sentences like: "Do you have fresh *seledka*?" or "Where is *grechka*?" This code-switching on a lexical level addresses symbolic, social, and informational values of a given interaction, fulflling the communicative, social and economic needs of the interlocutors.

While serving as a learning tool, this sign emphasizes a space for interpersonal communication, and facilitates the link between the speakers of Russian (customers) and Arabic (the store owner and employees). It also defnes the social relations between sign makers and customers, using the learning of Russian pronunciation as a means for the local and international market and consumers to adapt and integrate. It indexes linguistic and cultural capital, the co-existence of particular linguistic and cultural groups in the local community, and reinforces linguistic and cultural awareness of the store employees and their clientele.

As an experienced multilingual, the store owner employs his multilingual competence and makes his own orthographic choice of what language and script to use for each letter. He develops his own pathway to literacy in a target language using multiple literacies: economic, digital, communicative, and linguistic. He demonstrates consistency and creativity in transforming one kind of literacy into another and makes literacy transactions by shaping and reshaping the sign and his skills. In learning the Russian alphabet, he was focused specifcally on the phonetics of Russian, English and Arabic, and the way their letters or the sequences of the letters stand for the corresponding sounds. As a sign maker, he exhibited his prior knowledge about how the languages work in relation to the writing systems and sound correspondence. He applied his metalinguistic and phonemic awareness and multilingual competence to learn how to decode and read the text. The sign on the store window was used as a basic strategy toward literacy in a new language, i.e., the strategic approach of producing a sign in the linguistic landscape in order to read the linguistic landscape.

One of the critical issues in LL studies that is relevant to this case is the "authorship" of a sign, that is, the question of who, why, and what forces, intentions, and motivations are involved in designing and producing a particular sign. Malinowski (2009) views authorship in the linguistic landscape as complex, from both a discursive and agentive perspective with a sign being a product of human activity, producing meanings for a reader, and being a part of contextual and discursive practices. The social forces behind the linguistic code choice in the linguistic landscape are typically characterized in LL literature as "top-down" or "bottom-up," i.e., whether sign production can be attributed to offcial institutions or non-offcial, privately owned businesses (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006; Gorter, 2006). Parallel to Malinowski (2009), in our case, the multilingual and multimodal signage inside and outside of the store unpacks the symbolic and indexical meaning for the readers to support the business and maintain the relationship with the customers. However, the sign has multiple roles: it serves as an educational device helping the store owner to learn an additional language and additional script, thereby furthering his multilingual competence; it also mediates the owner's multilingual language profciency, and as an outcome it facilitates the relationship between the owner and the customers.

# **7 Conclusions and Pedagogical Implications**

Engaging with diverse multimodal and multilingual environments represented in the linguistic landscape provides a wide range of opportunities for a learner to connect to, affliate with, and navigate numerous social, cultural, linguistic, and economic spaces. Analyzing linguistic landscapes through the community-based language and literacy learning lenses, demonstrates how local ethnic communities offer multiple linguistic and semiotic representations incorporated in the local linguistic landscape. It shows how the engagements and interactions with both the linguistic landscape and the representatives of those communities as sign makers and sign users reinforce negotiation of linguistic and cultural meaning of the linguistic landscapes. This kind of analysis of the linguistic landscape of the Russian and Arabic stores illustrates that there are various trajectories and outcomes of engagements with the linguistic landscape that provide social and discursive spaces and serve as a learning tool that evokes various learning strategies to negotiate linguistic and cultural meanings. They enable incidental, self-guided, and instructorguided learning activities informally with authentic learning environments, where language and culture immersions occur naturally: this learning can occur through self- or instructor-guided observation, exploration, and analysis of the surrounding linguistic landscape, applying various learning strategies for navigating educational and social spaces.

Our analysis supports the views that "learning occurs … in nonformal or informal settings every day" and that "learning is seen as being essentially driven by learners" (Quigley, 2005, pp. 324–325). The examples emphasize the linguistic landscape as a forceful learning environment and a learning tool. They show a sign maker as a particular learner and a social actor, who embodies the process of creating, reshaping, and facilitating the learning environment and empowering learning using his own linguistic resources. By establishing and exploring relationships between the linguistic landscape, learners gain exposure to experiences and contexts of learning that become powerful tools in multilingual language and literacy development (Bever, 2012, 2015; Bever & Richardson, 2020).

Our example makes a case that confrms the perspective that the linguistic landscape is a useful factor and a powerful force in developing linguistic and cultural awareness, multilingual competence, and multilingual and multicultural awareness. Immersion in an everyday social context stimulates the learner/sign maker to create a text which mediates the learning process by drawing on linguistic and cultural awareness and employing alphabetic, phonetic, graphemic and lexical elements. The learner capitalizes on available resources to produce, display, and use the sign while attaining new skills. Both the target language (Russian) appearing in the labels and logos and the self-produced text in Fig. 7 are essential resources for observation, internalization, and re/construction of the phonological representation of the target language. To achieve an applicable letter-sound correspondence, as a sign-maker he employs creative ideas and theories of how to read the written language.

This process refects how written and auditory modes of representation of one language are used to convey the sound of another language. The sign maker employs intrinsic bivalency to match the corresponding sounds between the Cyrillic, Roman, and Arabic scripts, and uses it strategically by employing multilingual awareness, phonological awareness, and multilingual competence (Bever, 2012, 2015). In this case, the ultimate result of the whole process is not necessarily learning the language, but the ability to navigate another writing system and achieve a desired level of phonological awareness in a target language (Russian). As the sign maker acknowledged: "I did it for myself, so that I will be able to read what is on those labels. I don't know the Russian language, but I know now how to read [labels] in Russian." The critical point here is that the sign maker produced a multilingual and multiscriptual sign and employed it as a literacy tool to learn how to read another sign in a target language. Here, his role as a sign observer and a sign explorer shifts towards the role of a sign maker, a learner, and a reader in order to achieve phonological awareness in reading/decoding the signs in a target language, making the engagements with the signs transactional. He capitalizes on his cultural and linguistic experiences, and refects, hypothesizes, and applies his metalinguistic awareness and multilingual competence to explore the relationship between the multilingual texts and writing systems across languages.

Blommaert's (2014) methodological effects are relevant here for the implications of mobility in the sociolinguistics of globalization, emphasizing a degree of unpredictability in what we observe, and stressing that this unpredictability can only be resolved by ethnographic research on the intricacies of communication. Blommaert's (2014) view that in 'superdiverse' environments, the learners take all linguistic resources available (home dialects and English in the context of this study) and blend them into complex linguistic and semiotic forms. This is consistent with our investigation, where unpredictability and confguration of the signage we observe is explained by the analysis of linguistic and semiotic properties of the sign and the sign maker's own perspective. The sign maker, on his own, applied the same principles in creating the sign: he used linguistic and semiotic resources to learn how to read in a new language and to apply it for further communication. Thus, the linguistic landscape can offer an informal learning environment for learning through the sign and about the sign, while enhancing communication mediated by the sign.

Examining multilingual spaces and multilingual and multimodal texts in the linguistic landscape reveals how languages, texts, literacy, and learning are interconnected in surrounding contexts. Community languages and cultures are invaluable resources bearing literacies and experiences within and across groups and individuals. Analyzing texts available through individual and communities' resources and practices provides a further opportunity to learn about literacy development in adults and children. These texts construct and negotiate multiple discourses of language use, and address the relations between the sign, the learner, and the community.

This brings a fresh view to linguistic landscapes as an integrated resource for investigating the interactions of text, discourse, practice and activity. Multiple resources of language and literacy learning and development 'outside' of formal schooling contribute to better understanding of complexity, heterogeneity, and multiplicity of the trajectories of learners' skills development and learners' ability to navigate across multiple cultural and linguistic spaces. The linguistic landscape as a multifaceted literacy environment with its multimodal and multilingual textual forms, both written texts and images, can be utilized in the classrooms as part of the curriculum (Bever & Richardson, 2020). At a broader level, educators can take advantage of community-based language learning (Clifford & Reisinger, 2019), and the 'funds of knowledge' (Gonzalez et al., 2005) that learners develop and apply outside their school setting. At a more conceptual level, perspective on community languages in linguistic landscapes considers individual, family, and community resources across various domains of the learner's life: this embraces linguistic, cognitive, psychological, communicative, and sociocultural processes and practices (Sanz & Igoa, 2012), and acknowledges that learning goes beyond the formal educational setting.

**Acknowledgements** Our special thanks to the editors of this volume for their encouragement, and very special thanks to the owner of the Caravan store Mr. Khalifa Solieman, and the owners of the European Market and Deli, Olga and Alex, for their roles in sustaining multilingual and multicultural Tucson.

# **References**


Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (1998). *Local literacies*. Routledge.

Ben-Rafael, E., Amara, M. H., Trumper-Hecht, N., & Shohamy, E. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. *International Journal of Multilingualism, 3*(1), 7–30.


Refugee and Immigrant Service Provider Network (RISP-Net). www.rispnet.com


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Multilingual Linguistic Landscapes of New York City as a Pedagogical Tool in a Psychology Classroom**

**Irina A. Sekerina and Patricia J. Brooks**

**Abstract** The chapter describes the utilization of Linguistic Landscapes (LL) as a pedagogical tool in an undergraduate research methods course in psychology and demonstrates how studying urban multilingualism can be harnessed in the service of fve comprehensive learning goals of the *American Psychological Association Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major* (American Psychological Association, APA guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major*.* Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/about/undergraduate-major.aspx, 2013). Fourteen students in their second year of college took a seminar titled *Science and Technology in New York City* with the theme of urban multilingualism, where they investigated how and why languages other than English are used in public signage in ethnic neighborhoods of New York City. Students were assigned to fve groups; three groups had members with prior exposure to a second language (Spanish, Russian, Hebrew) to conduct the project, whereas the other two groups recruited bilingual friends to assist them (Greek, Chinese). The groups visited fve ethnic neighborhoods in New York City and took photographs of 267 bilingual public signs. They collected responses to a small-scale survey (6–10 questions) or interviewed local bilingual residents. Students categorized signs, analyzed survey and interview responses, contributed to a class poster, and wrote a group research report in APA-format and an individual refections essay. This course is an example of how LL can be used to promote an international perspective on psychology by exploring immigration and cultural diversity.

**Keywords** New York City · Pedagogy · Sociocultural awareness · Cross-cultural competence · Urban multilingualism · Psychology

College of Staten Island, CUNY, New York, NY, USA e-mail: irina.sekerina@csi.cuny.edu; patricia.brooks@csi.cuny.edu

© The Author(s) 2023

I. A. Sekerina (\*) · P. J. Brooks

S. Dubreil et al. (eds.), *Spatializing Language Studies*, Educational Linguistics 62, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39578-9\_9

# **1 Introduction**

*Linguistic Landscapes* (LL) was frst introduced as a research methodology in applied linguistics in the mid-1990s in a pioneering series of studies of language usage apparent in public signage on the streets of Québec, Canada (Bourhis, 1992; Landry & Bourhis, 1997). This methodology, serving as a means of investigating multilingualism in contemporary society, has been adapted to provide a pedagogical tool for classes in second language (L2) learning, applied language studies (Shohamy et al., 2010), and other social sciences. LL extends language learning beyond the classroom by inviting students to explore language usage in the natural environment of the street and has become especially popular in teaching English as a second language (ESL) abroad, both in secondary schools and universities. Sayer (2010) and Rowland (2013, 2016) successfully carried out LL projects with ESL students in Mexico and Japan, respectively, that investigated the function of public signage in English. Malinowski (2013, 2016) extended the LL pedagogy into an American university classroom by implementing a LL project with students at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on the role of East Asian languages in the dominant English context of San Francisco. L2 learners and bilingual speakers have found LL projects to be benefcial in allowing them to study the functions of English as a global language (Rowland, 2013) and the role of minority heritage languages in their local communities (Malinowski, 2016).

Although pedagogical LL projects may be particularly effective in language learning and applied language courses (e.g., Aladjem & Jou, 2016; Burwell & Lenters, 2015; Chern & Dooley, 2014; Malinowski et al., 2020), there is no reason why they should be restricted to these disciplines. In fact, LL projects have been used in a variety of felds including economics, geography, teacher education, and sociology (e.g., Hoffman, 2017; Sterzuk, 2020; Trinch & Snajdr, 2017; Weyers, 2016). LL projects provide myriad opportunities to internationalize the undergraduate curriculum. These include having students observe how people negotiate multilingual identities and, thus, provide ideal contexts for discussions about immigration, globalization, and the cultural diversity of contemporary society—all topics of interest to students in psychology. It has been argued that internationalizing the content of psychology courses might help students gain awareness about their own place in the global community (Simon & Nolan, 2017). Similarly, Mak (2012) emphasized the need for psychology students to develop empathy and awareness of the stress associated with immigration and the strategies used to help newcomers adapt to new cultures and cope with changing circumstances.

Recognizing the importance of helping students develop cultural awareness, intercultural competence, and empathy in order to adapt to the impact of globalization, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a call for action for educators to internationalize the psychology curriculum (American Psychological Association Task Force on Internationalizing the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum, 2005). Subsequently, in a related effort, the APA put forth a set of guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major that encompassed fve comprehensive learning goals to be addressed in all psychology coursework (American

Psychological Association, 2013). These pertained to developing an adequate knowledge base, scientifc inquiry and critical thinking skills, ethical and social responsibility in a diverse world, communication and professional skills. This chapter describes a LL project, implemented in a psychology research methods course, that engaged college students in exploring ethnic communities of New York City (NYC) where minority languages are visibly in use. To the best of our knowledge, this is the frst implementation of LL pedagogy specifcally designed to align with APA guidelines for undergraduate coursework.

# **2 New York City as a Location for the LL Framework**

Innovative LL research and pedagogical studies have been conducted in a variety of multilingual settings. For example, for the edited volume by Shohamy and colleagues (Shohamy et al., 2010), data were collected in Tel-Aviv (Israel), Kiev (Ukraine), Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, and other major cities. Pedagogical LL studies have also been based in Oaxaca, Mexico (Sayer, 2010), Calgary, Canada (Burwell & Lenters, 2015), San Francisco (Malinowski, 2013, 2016), Chiba, Japan (Rowland, 2013, 2016), Taiwan (Chern & Dooley, 2014), and numerous other locales (see chapter "Introduction: Spatializing Language Studies in the Linguistic Landscape", this volume). For our LL project, we took advantage of the linguistic diversity of NYC where multilingual ethnic communities offer ample opportunities to observe public signage in a language other than English (LOTE).

NYC has been referred to as "the most multilingual city in the world" (García, 2001, p. 3) and provides an ideal venue for teaching with the linguistic landscape. According to demographic data from the offcial website of New York City, as of 2017, 38% of New Yorkers (i.e., 3.1 million out of 8.4 million) were immigrants. Among them, approximately one-third (32%) were from Latin American countries, another third (29%) from China, India and other Asian countries, followed by immigrants from non-Hispanic Caribbean countries (18%), Europe (15%), and Africa (5%). Half of New Yorkers speak a LOTE at home, with more than 150 different languages documented (NYC Population, 2015).

New immigrants to NYC tend to settle in ethnic neighborhoods where prior generations of immigrants from the same country already live. By settling together, immigrants enjoy the benefts of a safety net and the comforts of living among neighbors who share language, food, and social connections. Immigrants to NYC have established ethnic neighborhoods in all fve boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island). Although gentrifcation in Manhattan is rapidly erasing the ethnic composition of many of its old neighborhoods, such as in the Lower East Side (formerly Jewish), East Village (formerly Polish and Ukrainian), and Little Italy, several locations continue to host concentrated ethnic enclaves, such as in Chinatown, Spanish Harlem (Puerto Rican), and Washington Heights (Dominican). In the outer boroughs, large ethnic populations remain in Brooklyn (e.g., the Russian community in Brighton Beach and the Hasidic Jewish communities in Borough Park and South Williamsburg), Queens (e.g., the Greek community in Astoria, the Taiwanese community in Flushing, and the Korean community in Sunnyside), and the Bronx (e.g., Spanish Bronx, Irish community in Woodlawn, Jamaican community of Wakefeld, Dominican and Puerto Rican communities of Soundview). Meanwhile, new ethnic micro-enclaves that represent more recent waves of immigration have appeared: French-speaking Little Senegal in Harlem, the Guyana community in Richmond Hill and Little India in Jackson Heights (Queens), Little Pakistan in Coney Island (Brooklyn), and Little Sri Lanka in Tompkinsville (Staten Island) (Geier, 2015).

To date, only a few LL research studies have targeted NYC, most of which have focused on the sociolinguistic practices of Russian and Spanish-speaking ethnic communities (Angermeyer, 2005; Hassa & Krajcik, 2016; Litvinskaya, 2010; Trinch & Snajdr, 2017). Some multilingual ethnic communities of NYC have served as contexts for classroom projects in secondary schools and universities, such as the *Introduction to Sociolinguistics* course taught by Michael Newman at Queens College in 2009 (Newman, 2009); see also the chapters by Jiménez-Caicedo "Uncovering Spanish Harlem: Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Projects in an Advanced Content-based Spanish Course" and Vinagre & Llopis-García "Multilingual Landscapes in Telecollaboration: A Spanish-American Exchange" in this volume. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no published implementations of LL pedagogy based in NYC to enhance learning of research methods in a psychology classroom.

# **3 Developing a LL Project for a Psychology Course in Research Methods**

Course Description. The LL project was implemented in Macaulay Honors College (MHC, https://macaulay.cuny.edu/) Seminar 3: *Science and Technology in New York City*, taught by the frst author in Fall 2016. This course is the third course in a foursemester sequence of required seminars for students enrolled in the MHC at the various City University of New York (CUNY) campuses. MHC Seminar 3 is taken by sophomores in the fall semester and has the following generic description (1):

(1) The third seminar introduces students to scientifc and technological topics that have had an impact on contemporary New York. These may include technology and the computer, urban health issues, the environment, and energy. Students read scientifc literature related to their topic and learn the fundamentals of science necessary to understand their readings. The seminar also engages students in the process of scientifc inquiry, while giving attention to the historical, ethical, legal, social, and economic ramifcations of the topic. […] The culminating event of this seminar is the exhibit of collaborative scientifc posters.

Faculty members who teach sections of MHC Seminar 3 have considerable fexibility in selecting its theme. Often it is taught as a discipline-specifc research methods course with connections drawn to the faculty members' areas of research expertise, e.g., bilingualism (Sekerina) and language acquisition (Brooks). To align our LL project with the APA call to internationalize the psychology curriculum (APA, 2005), we added one additional sentence to the original course description: "*We will approach these issues from the interdisciplinary point of view, e.g., that of psychological science and linguistics, with an emphasis on linguistic diversity and linguistic landscapes of New York City.*" The seminar culminates in the presentation of scientifc posters at a CUNY-wide MHC exhibition, attended by over 400 students enrolled in 30 sections of MHC Seminar 3 at eight CUNY campuses.

As taught by the frst author, MHC Seminar 3 emphasized mastery of basic concepts critical for conducting research in psychology, i.e., research ethics, hypothesis testing, variables and their relationships, methods (observation, survey, interview, and experimental), and APA format for research papers. The LL project was the second group project of a 15-week semester; it was introduced in Week 7, spanned eight weeks, and accounted for 50% of the course grade. In developing the LL project, we aligned it with the fve following comprehensive APA learning goals (APA, 2013) that our students had to meet. For each goal, we describe how it was addressed through our LL project.


# **4 Method**

# *4.1 Students*

Fourteen sophomores (12 female, 2 male; mean age: 19 years), representing different majors (nursing, computer science, education, business, and psychology), were enrolled in the course. Students provided demographic information at the start of the semester via a short questionnaire. All of the students were born and raised on Staten Island. None were immigrants or identifed as bilingual speakers, which stands in contrast to the diversity evident in the CUNY undergraduate population as a whole in which 44% speak a LOTE at home (Offce of Institutional Research, 2016). Most students studied Spanish as L2 in high school, although none indicated that they had achieved intermediate or advanced competence in the language. Only two students stated that they had developed intermediate-level knowledge of a LOTE (one studied Russian for 4 years at a selective high school and another learned Hebrew while attending a religious school). Students were randomly arranged into fve language-based groups for the LL project.

# *4.2 Preparation for the LL Project*

To orient students to LL research, we provided them with two required readings: an overview article on the application of the LL framework in multilingual settings (Gorter, 2013) and an article about multilingualism in NYC (García, 2001), along with a general description of the LL Project as follows (2):

(2) The *LL Project* is designed to give you hands-on experience in conducting an interdisciplinary study of urban linguistic diversity. By completing this assignment, you should gain some understanding of the procedures associated with collecting, analyzing and writing about real data in the context of multilingual NYC.

# *4.3 Data Collection*

Data collection for the LL project had two main components: Students were required to take digital photos to create a small database of public signs in a NYC neighborhood where a sizeable ethnic community uses another language in addition to English on a daily basis. They also had to conduct a short structured interview or a survey to explore residents' attitudes toward multilingual public signs.

The LL project was introduced in Week 7 of a 15-week semester, after students had already learned the basics of survey and interview research methods. Students were told that the purpose of the LL project was to fnd out how and why a LOTE is used on signs in ethnic neighborhoods of NYC. They received a set of guiding questions (3), loosely modeled after Rowland (2013, p. 498), for their self-guided exploration. Other than these questions, students were given considerable latitude in selecting a site for the LL project, and in deciding which signage to photograph and what members of the community to interview or survey.

(3) Consider the following:


you should not invade the privacy of your participants. The signs should be public and clearly visible.)


# *4.4 Developing a Course Website*

Collecting digital photographs of public signage for the fve LL projects required considerable online storage. With the assistance of a graduate technology fellow with expertise in digital technology, we created a course website using WordPress (Sekerina, 2016), where students in each group archived materials for their project (i.e., digital photos of public signage in a LOTE, transcribed interviews, answers to survey questions). The technology fellow conducted a one-hour in-class workshop (Week 7 of the semester) to teach students how to upload materials onto the course website, and was available throughout the semester to answer questions and provide technical support as students created their digital galleries.

Procedure. Table 1 presents steps required to complete the LL Project, as listed in the course syllabus.

During Week 7, the fve groups engaged in a brainstorming session using the website *18 Ethnic Micro Neighborhoods in the 5 Boroughs of NYC* (Geier, 2015) posted to untappedcities.com. Students were asked to browse the 18 neighborhoods to identify possible sites for their LL project. The two students with some knowledge of Russian or Hebrew felt confdent to lead groups focusing on the Russian and Hebrew-speaking communities in Brooklyn. Using self-assessment, the Spanish group felt that they could comfortably read signs in Spanish and subsequently chose a Spanish-speaking community in Staten Island. The remaining two groups (i.e., Greek and Chinese) did not feel confdent enough to pursue any language-related data collection on their own; after a classroom discussion about the requisite knowledge needed to collect and analyze language data, both groups elected to recruit


**Table 1** Breakdown of steps for the LL project starting in Week 7 of the 15-week semester

another MHC student to serve as a language consultant, and focused their investigations on a Greek-speaking community in Queens and a Chinese-speaking community in Brooklyn. Having identifed an ethnic community where residents spoke one of the fve languages for their projects, students were instructed to search the Internet for articles written from the LL perspective for use in the introduction section of their research reports. Students found suitable articles for Chinese (Leung & Wu, 2012), Russian (Litvinskaya, 2010), and Spanish (Hult, 2014). The Greek and Hebrew groups did not fnd any LL articles on their languages and were advised to use LL articles on unrelated languages (Levine, 2016; Troyer et al., 2015).

During Week 8, the groups conducted a pilot visit to their neighborhoods selected during the brainstorming session to identify a commercial district with suffcient bilingual public signage for their LL project. While visiting the neighborhood, students were also asked to decide whether they would conduct an interview or a survey. Students then focused on an area within the neighborhood, estimated the time and effort it would require to take photos, and divided labor among the members. Students were told that each group had to photograph a minimum of 30 signs and not spend more than 1 h doing so. Figure 1 shows the location of the fve neighborhoods.

Table 2 lists the language, neighborhood, borough, and area selected by each group.

During Weeks 9 and 10, the students were instructed to take photos of public signs with their mobile devices, to put the location of each sign on a Google map, and write a one-sentence description of it. Public signs were defned as any signage in a LOTE, including text on buses, fyers, billboards, shops, schools, or restaurants. In addition to collecting the photos, the groups were required to conduct an interview or survey. Each group made one or two visits to the neighborhoods on their own free time. It was not feasible to collect data during the class time due to the remote location of the College of Staten Island (where the class took place) in relation to LL project sites in Brooklyn and Queens.

**Fig. 1** Five ethnic neighborhoods (Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish) selected for the project


**Table 2** Language, neighborhoods, boroughs, and geographical location


**Table 3** Procedures employed by the students for data collection

# **5 Results**

Altogether the fve groups took 267 digital photos of public signs and conducted three short paper-and-pencil surveys and two structured interviews. The surveys were written in English, and respondents wrote their answers to the questions on the paper copies of the survey. The two interviews were conducted in English and recorded on smartphones. Table 3 summarizes the specifcs of each group's LL project.

In four groups, the public signs were written in languages (Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, and Russian) that use an unfamiliar (non-Roman) orthography. Students did additional readings to familiarize themselves with basic features of the respective writing systems (Chinese: Perfetti & Liu, 2006; Russian: website *Everyday Russian Language*, https://everydayrussianlanguage.com/en/home/; Greek: Lo, http://www.ancientscripts.com/greek.htm; Hebrew: Ravid, 2014). The Hebrew, Russian, and Spanish groups managed the translations on their own whereas the Chinese and Greek groups relied on their bilingual language consultants to translate the signs.

# *5.1 Data Analysis: Public Signs*

During class time, the instructor taught students how to organize their photos into broad categories based on Hult (2014), who developed a simple-to-implement coding scheme with signs grouped according to the language used (see Table 4) and function (Table 5).

Overall, 54.3% of the signs were bilingual, 31.1% were written in a LOTE, 4.5% were transliterated (i.e., LOTE letters were represented by Roman letters), and 10.1% were in English only. Students practiced calculating descriptive statistics and learned how to conduct a simplifed Chi-Square non-parametric statistical analysis to compare the frequency of signs written in the LOTE with signs written in English. With regard to function, signs were classifed as advertising services


**Table 4** Classifcation of the signs (N = 267) according to the language used


**Table 5** Classifcation of the signs (N = 267) according to the function

(39.8%), food (26.5%), religion/education (12.1%), or other (21.6%), which is a simplifcation of Hult's (2014) scheme. Across the different language communities, students observed some divergent patterns; for example, religion and education signs in Hebrew were prevalent in the Jewish community in Borough Park, whereas Russian signage for services was the most frequent category observed in Brighton Beach (see Table 5). The full set of the public signs photographed by each language group is available at the Open Science Framework project page: https://osf.io/7zgxt/.

# *5.2 Data Analysis: Interview/Survey*

In addition to creating online photo galleries of public signs, the students conducted a structured 10–15 min interview or administered a simple 10-question survey of 10 randomly selected local residents. Our goal was to provide students with hands-on experience in collecting and working with their own data (a requirement for our undergraduate research methods courses). The Institutional Review Board reviewed the project and granted exemption because it constituted part of a classroom practicum and data were fully de-identifed. As indicated in Table 3, two groups opted to conduct an interview while the other three groups conducted pencil-and-paper surveys.

The Greek group conducted an interview with a bilingual butcher, a man in his 60s who came to the United States when he was 23. He owns a meat shop in Astoria, which relies heavily on business from local Greek residents. Interestingly, as all of his employees are Hispanic he has taught them some rudimentary Greek for use with customers. Although his store sign was in English only, in the window, there were several fyers advertising Greek music festivals, the signs for various meats inside were written in Greek, and Greek fags hung from the ceiling. The owner stressed the importance of Greek in his community because the majority of his customers speak only Greek, but he also acknowledged the importance of knowing English in the United States. He strongly believed that the Greek language would continue to dominate in Astoria, as locals pass down the Greek language and culture to their children.

The Hebrew group interviewed an elderly female Borough Park resident ("Mrs. M.") who served as the treasurer of an Orthodox synagogue. The group prepared eight general questions for the interview, such as *So if all these signs in Hebrew are for the Jewish people, are there people who aren't Hebrew that ask questions about the signs in Hebrew?* and *In shul, do you see that people speak Hebrew, English, or Yiddish?* Mrs. M. reported that she was born in Belgium and emigrated with her family to the United States in 1940. She had lived in Borough Park for more than 70 years and had seen the progression of the community from frst- to second- to third-generation immigrants. During the interview, she remarked on community development and population shifts that had occurred over the years. According to Mrs. M., English was becoming the primary language for Borough Park, but Hebrew continued to play a vital role in the religious life of the Jewish residents. The students also learned about an interesting diglossia in Borough Park: Hebrew was used as the written language on the public signs, but Yiddish was also alive as a language of spoken communication, especially among older residents. Over the years, the linguistic landscape of Borough Park had transitioned from primarily Yiddish to a mixture of Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, with each having its own unique purpose and reason for continued use. The audio recording of the interview (15 min) and its transcript are available at the Open Science Framework project page: https://osf.io/7zgxt/.

The Russian group surveyed 10 passersby in front of a subway station on Brighton Beach Avenue. Half of the participants mentioned coming to the Brighton Beach area for a particular service, e.g., Russian pharmacy and specialty foods. Although none of the participants self-reported discomfort in patronizing businesses with monolingual English-speaking staff, 60% of them expressed feelings of convenience towards stores with Russian-speaking staff, and 50% acknowledged that Russian signage served as an indication of the staff's ability to accommodate monolingual Russian speakers. The Chinese group conducted a 9-question survey with four women who worked at a Chinese nail salon in Bensonhurst. This location was chosen because a group member knew a bilingual Chinese speaker who worked there. When asked about their perception of the bilingual Chinese-English signs in the neighborhood, participants indicated that the presence of the two languages promoted business and also shared with the neighborhood the Chinese language and culture. The Spanish group administered a 12-question survey to 10 bilingual residents of Port Richmond. The respondents indicated that bilingual store signs served to accommodate Spanish speakers and allowed people to get around Port Richmond without knowing English. They reported that bilingualism was benefcial for businesses; it served to preserve cultural identities while promoting diversity. An example survey from the Spanish group is provided in Appendix A.

# *5.3 Research Reports, Refections Essays, and Poster Presentation*

As a group, students worked collaboratively in preparing APA-style research reports summarizing their LL projects. Students learned the intricacies of APA style through in-class, low-stakes writing exercises. The APA-style research reports had six required sections: *Introduction, Linguistic Landscapes Methodology, Study 1: Public Signs, Study 2: Interview/Survey, Discussion, References*, with an optional *Appendix* for supplementary materials (e.g., the interview transcript or a copy of their survey instrument). In the *Study 1* section, students were required to include a Google map of the area on which the locations of the photographed signs were marked; images of the submitted Google maps are provided in Appendix B. The research reports contained fgures illustrating the various types and functions of the signs, with each report ranging from 12 to 17 pages (double-spaced). The reports were submitted electronically prior to Week 14.

After submitting their reports, students were asked to write individual essays refecting on their experiences conducting LL research. Essays were approximately 1000 words in length and emphasized themes such as the value of multilingual signage in creating a sense of community, bilingualism as an aspect of one's identity, immigration patterns in NYC, and community strategies for helping newcomers adjust and cope with potential discrimination. The refections essay prompts and essays written by 12 students in response to the prompts are available at the Open Science Framework project page: https://osf.io/7zgxt/.

Students then worked collaboratively as a class to convert the content of their group reports into scientifc posters for the CUNY-wide MHC Seminar 3 poster session. The students created two posters (36″ x 48″ dimensions), with Poster 1 exhibiting photographs and Poster 2 summarizing information from the APA-style research reports (see Fig. 2). Both posters are available at the Open Science Framework project page: https://osf.io/7zgxt/. The CUNY-wide MHC Seminar 3 poster session lasted for 2 h with 300 people in attendance. Each group manned the

**Fig. 2** Class poster on linguistic landscapes of New York City

posters for 20 min, and members took turns presenting the posters, explaining the methods, fndings, and conclusions drawn from the LL research to the interested audience.

# **6 Discussion**

This chapter has described a LL project implemented in a semester-long research methods course with an enrollment of 14 sophomore students from various majors. The LL project was organically integrated with the content of psychology that relied on naturalistic observation, surveys, and interviews as the most accessible data collection methods for undergraduate students. Although we had only 14 students, the LL project could be scaled up for a medium-size class (e.g., 40–50 students) and adapted for research methods courses in other social sciences besides psychology, such as anthropology, sociology, and social work. Practical modifcations made the LL project fexible enough to accommodate monolingual students, while acknowledging the valuable contributions of minority language speakers to its success.

Our implementation of LL pedagogy aligned with fve comprehensive learning goals outlined in the *Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major* (APA, 2013). We will discuss students' achievements in relation to each of the fve goals through representative excerpts of their research reports (collaborative group work) and comments from their essays (individual refections), as presented below in their original written form.

# *6.1 Goal 1: Knowledge Base in Psychology*

The LL project fostered discussions of immigration patterns within NYC and strategies immigrants utilize to preserve their cultural and social identities through language usage. In the process of collecting and analyzing digital photographs of public signage and data on local residents' attitudes towards multilingualism, students focused on examining sociocultural contexts that infuence language usage, with the aim of strengthening their recognition of the power of context in shaping conclusions about human behavior.

In their research reports, students discussed how bilingual neighborhood signage served to attract people from different ethnic groups—including English speakers who do not speak the minority language, but believe that its presence attests to authenticity of the food, imported products, and/or services offered inside the store. Students emphasized that the extensive use of bilingual public signs was a refection of how local residents valued their cultural identities. For example, the Chinese group wrote:

The bilingual signs are found outside of businesses as well as restaurants in order to increase the different kinds of customers the storefront will attract. If a sign is in two languages, rather than one, it will attract people amongst different ethnic groups. Because one of the two languages was Chinese, it also shows the need and want to preserve the large Chinese culture within the neighborhood. Chinese immigrants have adapted from prejudice due to racial markers and have developed successful socio-economical businesses that preserve both their culture and proft.

The Russian group remarked on how the pervasive use of Russian in Brighton Beach resonated with perceived strength of the community:

The bilingual public signage is used for a variety of reasons, but mostly to accommodate the large Russian-speaking population of Brighton. Businesses may feel that incorporating Russian signage is vital because of how strongly Brighton Beach residents identify with their culture.

The Spanish group discerned the deep cultural roots of Spanish merely by looking at a small slice of a very large Spanish-speaking community in NYC:

Having Spanish signs in this neighborhood allows those who are of Hispanic descent to feel a sense of belonging within the community and that their culture is accepted. It may even create a sense of nostalgia for Spanish speakers who immigrated to New York and reminds them of their home country.

The Greek group mentioned that the minority usage was especially important for older residents:

Inclusion of the minority (i.e., Greek) language is important to target local seniors who live in the community in large numbers and who prefer to shop in the stores close to where they live and where their language is spoken because of limited profciency in English.

In their refections essays, students stated that the LL project increased their appreciation of how languages can provide unique insight into cultural values and traditions. For example, a student remarked on how the Hebrew language serves to promote religious affliation:

Languages can be a vehicle for more than social and literal meanings because some languages, such as Hebrew, have a large association to religion. Languages can be used to connect other cultures to one another as well and possibly attract newcomers into certain religions.

Another student emphasized how multilingualism is essential to the diversity that makes America unique:

I believe that the languages other than English are an important part to our society. They promote cultural identity and diversity. Diversity is an essential aspect to American society; it is what makes America so unique. They help immigrants assimilate to America and accommodate those speakers who speak a language other than English.

After learning to decipher Cyrillic script, a student from the Russian group described how the LL project contributed to her own identity development:

The Linguistic Landscape assignment made me feel like a more cultured New Yorker. I learned so much about the Russian language and the Russian immigrants of Brighton Beach. The feeling of being able to identify certain words after being in the neighborhood for only an hour was extremely gratifying because it involved studying a lively landscape and obtaining relevant information at the same time.

# *6.2 Goal 2: Scientifc Inquiry and Critical Thinking*

We required students to conduct feldwork in fve ethnic neighborhoods of NYC using staple methods from the social sciences, i.e., naturalistic observation, interviews, and surveys. In guiding their research, we encouraged students to incorporate several appropriate levels of complexity (e.g., individual, group, societal/cultural) in interpreting local residents' attitudes about multilingualism within their communities. Students appreciated designing and conducting their own interviews and surveys, as emphasized in the following excerpt from a student refection:

Another pro is that the data collection is actually done by us: we're the ones making the trips to the areas, taking pictures and talking to the residents. These trips to other parts of the city could be time-consuming, but they're worth it in the end, as we get a much better feel for the area by spending those hours familiarizing ourselves with it. Designing our own experimental procedures and collecting our own data made us care more and feel more connected with our research.

Given that the students were sophomores, their surveys were limited in scope. As expected, there were gaps in their fndings, which provided opportunities for the instructor and students to critique the methodology.

In writing the discussion section of their APA reports, students were asked to relate their fndings to other LL studies in the published literature. For example, the Chinese group reasoned that the numerical difference in bilingual public signs reported in a previous study by Leung and Wu (2012), when compared with their fndings, had to do with the greater ethnic diversity evident within the Bensonhurst community of Brooklyn in comparison to the Chinatown community of Philadelphia:

The setting for Leung and Wu was a six-block radius in Chinatown in Philadelphia, collecting 330 photos of public signs. Our group had a similar size radius stretching out a little farther, but collecting less photos (39). A reason for the large difference of the number of signs is that Bensonhurst's diversity is apparent on the streets, with not as many Chinese signs as other Chinatowns due to the many different ethnic groups in the neighborhood.

The Russian group compared their investigation of the LL of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn—a neighborhood often referred to as Little Odessa (Miyares, 1998)—to those from Litvinskaya (2010) and noted that:

Litvinskaya (2010) examined the linguistic landscape of Brighton Beach within the same boundaries that our study focused on as well. However, Litvinskaya's quantitative study measured the number of signs in the area other than Russian […] English-Japanese, English-Urdu, English-Spanish, and various trilingual signs as well. Litvinskaya also conducted a qualitative analysis in a Russian restaurant, examining forms of signage including menu items. Although we were unable to examine the Russian menus, the results from both studies highlighted the prominence of the Russian language in Brighton through the utilization of public signage.

# *6.3 Goal 3: Ethical and Social Responsibility in a Diverse World*

The LL project required students to interact directly with bilingual members of each community. By including this component of the project, we were focusing on students' ability to develop and exhibit respect for members of diverse groups and to identify interpersonal challenges that often result from diversity and context (on ethics and language learning in the LL, see the chapter by Zimmerman, Noodin, Mayes, and Perley "Indigenous Conceptual Cartographies and Landscape Pedagogy: Vibrant Modalities Across Semiotic Domains", this volume). Although initially apprehensive about the assignment and the requirement to travel outside of Staten Island, students overcame their own personal barriers and remarked on the benefts of this experience. One student from the Greek group remarked:

Prior to doing this project I did not realize the prevalence of LOTEs on public signs. The project opened my eyes to the multilingualism that characterizes New York as a melting pot, which is not as common on Staten Island. Conducting an interview with a business owner in the area gave great insight.

# *6.4 Goal 4: Communication*

The LL project was especially well-suited for developing students' written and oral communication skills. They submitted research reports in APA style and prepared and orally presented their scientifc posters for the CUNY-wide MHC conference.

APA formatting has been described as a story schema for empirical research reports (Madigan et al., 1995); as such it provides an organizational template that guides reading as well as reporting research fndings. APA format requires the use of citations to draw connections to relevant prior work. In referencing ideas taken from sources, authors paraphrase information and minimize the use of direct quotes. Teaching APA format effectively introduces students to psychology as a discipline with its own conventions for conducting and disseminating empirical research on human behavior within larger framework of social sciences (Madigan et al., 1995). (Note also that APA format is used in a number of disciplines in addition to English, including applied linguistics.)

APA papers are often co-authored due to the collaborative nature of research within the feld of psychology. Hence, our students co-authored research reports rather than produced individual papers. Collaboration helped students complete their work in suffcient time to meet deadlines for presenting their LL projects at the MHC conference while offering opportunities for them to engage in peer review/ editing of classmates' writing.

# *6.5 Goal 5: Professional Development*

The LL project provided myriad opportunities for students to meet APA goal 5 by developing their capacity for teamwork as they supported each other in completing a complex project and preparing for the poster session of the CUNY-wide MHC conference. Students remarked on the advantages of collaborating with peers in making it feasible to complete their work within the time constraints. For example, students wrote:

We were able to contribute different ideas and opinions about different aspects of the project. And we were also able to get the project done faster and more effciently than we would have been able to do working on our own. We were also able to help each other understand certain aspects of the project if one of us did not understand something.

It taught time management, communication skills and understanding what each group member does best so the work can be divided up and accomplished to the best of everyone's ability. My group got lucky in that we had someone fuent in the language, but for other groups it was a little more challenging. The amount of work done and elaboration of the work led to everyone learning a lot.

Another student emphasized the social benefts of the LL project:

One of the main pros of this project was working with other students who I usually did not work with and making new friends along the way. I also took a step into the culture of another language that was completely new to me. I also believe a pro was the presentation, which helped me continue to face my public speaking anxieties.

# **7 Conclusions**

Incorporating LL pedagogy into our research methods course dovetailed with the fve comprehensive APA learning goals for the undergraduate psychology major (APA, 2013). Student work provided evidence of gains in knowledge (Goal 1), scientifc inquiry and critical thinking (Goal 2), ethical and social responsibility in a diverse world (Goal 3), communication skills (Goal 4), and professional development (Goal 5). In addition, the LL project directly addressed the APA mandate to internationalize the teaching of psychology by providing multiple opportunities for students to engage in substantive investigations of language use in relation to immigration in NYC. Class discussions around the project were of critical value in fostering students' understanding of migration and movement of people as a key aspect of globalization (Buskist et al., 2012). The LL project also created a context for students to engage with multilingual community members. For this aspect of the project, we emphasized the importance of developing sociocultural awareness and cross-cultural competence—two of the learning outcomes emphasized in the 2005 APA taskforce report (APA, 2005). Projects, such as LL research, that promote positive interactions with diverse groups of people, might serve as a frst step towards developing students' intellectual curiosity around global and international issues. Such interests might lead students to pursue capstone experiences such as study or work abroad, engagement in research on international issues, or participation in international conferences and organizations (Takooshian et al., 2016).

# **Appendices**

# *Appendix A: Survey*

### **Spanish: From Broadway to Willow Rd. West and from Forest Av. to Kill Van Kull (Staten Island)**


Spanish (Port Richmond, Staten Island). Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www. openstreetmap.org/copyright)

Greek (Astoria, Queens). Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/ copyright)

openstreetmap.org/copyright)

Russian (Brighton Beach, Brooklyn). Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www.

Hebrew (Borough Park, Brooklyn). Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap. org/copyright)

Chinese (Bensonhurst, Brooklyn). Map data from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap. org/copyright)

# **References**


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# **Indigenous Conceptual Cartographies and Landscape Pedagogy: Vibrant Modalities Across Semiotic Domains**

**Michael Zimmerman Jr, Margaret O'Donnell Noodin, Patricia Mayes, and Bernard C. Perley**

**Abstract** This chapter explores how aspects of the landscape can be incorporated in language teaching practices. Drawing on the area of research known as "linguistic landscape," language teachers have recently begun to see the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical resource. Jaworski and Thurlow's (2010) work broadens these ideas. They use the term *semiotic landscape*, which is "any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making" (p. 2). In addition, we link this approach to the notion of *indigenous conceptual cartographies*, which we use to describe the multiple ways that indigenous teachers conceptualize language, landscape, and cosmology. This includes physical artifacts of cartographic representation such as maps, signs, and the landscape itself, as well as metaphorical cartographies such as ideas of the landscape, concepts of sustainability, and the relationships between language, landscape, and cosmology. We apply these concepts to one lesson that was organized as a narrated walking tour on the grounds of an indigenous community school, arguing that indigenous ways of learning in the landscape offer a rich experience that promotes not only language learning but also other learning that may help create a sustainable future.

**Keywords** Indigenous · Education · TEK (traditional ecological knowledge) · Social geography · Anishinaabe language · Indigenous conceptual cartographies · Vibrant modalities

M. Zimmerman Jr (\*) · M. O'Donnell Noodin · P. Mayes University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA e-mail: zimmermm@uwm.edu; noodin@uwm.edu; mayes@uwm.edu

B. C. Perley University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada e-mail: bernard.perley@ubc.ca

# **1 Introduction**

American Indian teachers and students are returning to their local landscapes to learn their languages, cultural knowledge, and respectful and responsible ways of being in indigenous worlds. Many language and cultural revitalization curricula are emphasizing landscape pedagogies for integrating the multiple modes of learning across semiotic domains (Baldwin & Olds, 2007; Noodin, 2017; Jansen et al., 2013). In those cases, language learning requires immersion in language, landscape, and cosmology. Not only are linguistic, geographic/geological, and spiritual/religious knowledge systems being learned and shared but modalities of communication, such as gestures, prosody, proxemics, are being shared and learned as well. We, the authors of this chapter, interpret semiotic domains broadly to include conceptual domains along with physical domains, and we use the term *indigenous conceptual cartographies* to refer to this connection. This is a critical distinction allowing comparative analysis across indigenous and non-indigenous domains, and it incorporates non-linguistic knowledge in language teaching and learning. For example, where non-indigenous cartographies privilege maps and map-making from a detached bird's-eye view, indigenous conceptualization of their landscapes are kin-based relations and experientially shared places (Basso, 1996; Thornton, 2007; Nevins, 2017; Momaday, 1969). We introduce the conceptual stance *vibrant modalities* to highlight the importance of vibrant relations as kin-based relations to access the vitality of language, landscape, and cosmological relationships in the service of language, cultural, and spiritual learning. "The starting point for multimodality is to extend the social interpretation of language and its meanings to the whole range of representational and communicational modes or semiotic resources for making meaning that are employed in a culture – such as image, writing, gesture, gaze, speech, posture" (Jewitt, 2009, p. 1). We use the adjective *vibrant* to extend Jewitt's characterization to animate multimodality to capture the processual and experiential aspect of landscape pedagogy and to echo the traditional Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) stance toward knowledge production. A working defnition for vibrant modalities then, is: the kin-based social interpretation of meaningmaking as an emergent property at the intersection of human modes of communication in relation to the vibrant environment. The multiple conceptual cartographies reveal complexities that are united in the common goal of learning in the landscape.

The authors of this chapter, Michel Zimmerman Jr., Margaret Noodin, Patricia Mayes, and Bernard Perley, come from diverse perspectives, academic backgrounds, and indigenous language experiences. The principal investigator, Margaret Noodin, sought out researchers from linguistics and anthropology to provide crossdisciplinary perspectives. Mike Zimmerman is a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, and through a partnership with the Forest County Potawatomi Nation and the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education, teaches the Potawatomi language at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). For 7 years he was the Ojibwe language instructor at the Indian Community School in Franklin, Wisconsin. He is a specialist in historic preservation and traditional ethnobotany. Margaret Noodin is currently the Associate Dean for the Humanities and Professor in the college of Letters and Science who teaches Anishinaabe language, philosophy and Celtic literature also at UWM. She is a published poet in several of the languages of her ancestors, including Anishinaabemowin. She is also the co-editor of the annual Algonquian Papers (MSU Press) and editor of Ojibwe. net, a website dedicated to pedagogy, stories and songs in Anishinaabemowin. Patricia Mayes is non-native from California, a linguist who uses discourse analytic methods in her research, and a Professor in the English Department at UWM. Bernard Perley is Maliseet from Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick, Canada, a linguistic anthropologist and the Director and an Associate Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. All four of us came together in a research project exploring Anishinaabemowin concepts of sustainability in the Great Lakes watershed. We obtained many important insights regarding indigenous semiotic landscapes that are shared in this chapter. One of the key insights was realizing that the differences between the authors revealed not only gaps in each other's knowledge and expectations about their own learning outcomes but also commonalities that brought them together to explore indigenous landscape pedagogy. Together, we offer our collected insights regarding the strength and value of landscape pedagogies when coordinating diverse conceptual cartographies, which are mutually informative and benefcial for indigenous landscape language teaching as well as our respective academic and theoretical concerns. The integration of the systems of knowledge represented by language, landscape, and cosmology are indigenous conceptual cartographies that are "braided together" to refect traditional teachings (Atalay, 2012, p. x).

# **2 Semiotic Landscapes and Conceptual Cartographies**

Much of the work concerning Linguistic Landscapes (LL) has focused on urban environments (e.g., Shohamy et al., 2010; Shortell & Brown, 2014a). Although the setting for our study might be considered urban in a broad sense in that it is outside a major city, the site of the study, the campus of the Milwaukee Indian Community School, is self-contained and has a lot of open space. (See Strand One below for a more detailed description.) Thus, this setting differs from most urban environments. Another difference is that most existing LL research has focused on linguistic signs produced by human actors. Indeed, Ben-Rafael et al. (2006) argue that linguistic landscape objects are any language or communication produced and displayed by public or private institutions and individuals in public places. As they explain, the linguistic landscape of a place

constitutes the very scene—made of streets, corners, circuses, parks, buildings—where society's public life takes place. As such, this scene carries crucial sociosymbolic importance as it actually identifes—and thus serves as the emblem of societies, communities and regions (p. 8)

Given this defnition, it is not surprising that much of the LL research has focused on written signs and other human-made structures such as the monuments considered in Garvin's (2010) study of the Memphis landscape.

In this chapter, we attempt to go beyond these approaches. We concur with Jaworski and Thurlow (2010), who argue in favor of broadening the notion of the linguistic landscape beyond language to include other semiotic resources such as images and practices that involve "the use of space as a semiotic resource in its own right" (p. 1). In order to capture this broader concept, they use the term *semiotic landscape* to refer to "any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making" (p. 2). Because this defnition still seems to focus on objects that are produced by humans, we argue in favor of an even broader defnition of the semiotic landscape, which includes signs and objects produced by humans as well as entities and objects that exist in nature. We argue that natural entities such as plants, animal tracks, and birds function as "signs" in that they can become part of the situated social interaction, as participants notice them and incorporate them into their ongoing (semiotic/linguistic) actions.

As mentioned, this chapter also introduces the notion of *indigenous conceptual cartographies* to describe the multiple ways that indigenous teachers conceptualize language, landscape, and cosmology. There are the physical artifacts of cartographic representation such as maps, signs, and the landscape itself that seem self-evident, but we also include the intangible cartographies such as ideas of the landscape, concepts of sustainability, and the relationships between language, landscape, and cosmology. From the indigenous perspective, as will be illustrated below, these conceptual cartographies are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are integrated across semiotic domains. These integrations are always in a state of emergence as human subjects interact with all the relations in the landscape. We use the descriptor *vibrant modalities* to refect our observations of the dynamic processes that contribute to the maintenance of indigenous sustainability practices drawn from eons of experience in heritage landscapes (that has been glossed as traditional knowledge in current literature) as well as the understanding of sustainable relations across semiotic domains. The notion of *semiotic domain* highlights the many areas of knowledge that are intertwined in pedagogy in the landscape. Not only are there different biomes (wetlands, tall-grass prairie, oak savannas) and entities (animals, birds, plants, rocks, and humans), but there are different conceptual domains such as linguistic, geophysical, and spiritual. We illustrate the give-and-take of knowledge production through experience in the landscape. In order to accomplish this, we used a method variously referred to in the literature as a "walking tour" (Garvin, 2010), "narrated walking" (Stroud & Jegels, 2014), or in some cases, simply, "walking" (Pauknerová & Gibas, 2014).1 Although walking has been used as a research method for some time in sociology and anthropology (Shortell & Brown, 2014a;

<sup>1</sup>The next section contains four strands, each composed by an individual co-author of this chapter. Although the co-authors use several different terms, including "(walking) tour," "immersion walk," "walkabout," and simply "walk," all of these terms refer to the same event, a pedagogically motivated walk through the ICS landscape led by one of the language teachers.

Pauknerová & Gibas, 2014), we illustrate how it can also be a pedagogical strategy. Pointing out the advantages of using walking as a method to research cities, Shortell and Brown (2014b) draw on the work of sociologist Georg Simmel to explain the signifcance of the visual: "That we get involved in interactions at all depends on the fact that we have a sensory effect upon one another. Unlike auditory stimuli, visual interaction is more intimate and reciprocal" (Simmel, as quoted in Shortell & Brown, 2014b, p. 2). Simmel also pointed to the signifcance of space, noting such characteristics as "fxity, proximity, and mobility" (Shortell & Brown, 2014b, p. 2). Thus, we argue that walking through the landscape is a good way to teach language that is centered in semiotic and cultural meanings.

Of the studies, mentioned above, that use walking as a research method, our approach is perhaps most similar to that employed by Pauknerová and Gibas (2014), who allowed the Rokytka River in Prague to guide their research about the city, its neighborhoods, and semiotic landscape. Their phenomenological background led them to focus on the relation between walking and experiencing. In addition, they did not plan their route in advance, but rather allowed the path of the river to guide them, and we used a similar strategy in our walk around the grounds of the Indian Community School. As this passage illustrates, there is much to recommend walking, not only as a research method, but also as a way of teaching:

At many points the Rokytka is fenced off from the city visually but also aurally. The sight of greenery with no intruding signs of the surrounding city, combined with air full of birdsong with no traces of either urban cacophony or single urban noise such as traffc and the taste of freshly picked apples or pears resulted in a sudden realization of being lost. At frst we did not realize it, but all of a sudden we did, and it became one of the prevailing feelings. (p. 184)

Of course, the authors were not actually "lost," but rather "follow[ing] the stream also meant to lose connection to any of Prague's supposedly well-known topography due to the nature of the sensescape around the Rokytka" (p. 184). These points illustrate the power of the landscape to make connections between language, culture, and community, a power we hope to harness in our teaching.

We decided to use a traditional indigenous teaching methodology to weave together the diverse perspectives each author brings to the language and landscape pedagogy of the Milwaukee Indian Community School (ICS) at Franklin, Wisconsin. Indigenous language instruction at the ICS offers insights and critical challenges to LL pedagogies that have focused primarily on public signage (e.g., Chern & Dooley, 2014; Hancock, 2012; Gorter & Cenoz, 2015; Rowland, 2013; Sayer, 2010 and others). The school building itself is part of the pedagogy in its design, its landscape orientation, and the materials used in construction. The school is featured in *New Architecture in Indigenous Lands* (2013) and is celebrated for its design as a "living thing" (Malnar & Vodvarka, 2013, p. 95). Quoting architect Antoine Predock,

If you look at the building from the air it is almost like a serpent moving around, and exploring the landscape. It moves and twists and turns...where the building was almost given a kind of animation, where it took on an animal nature as it explored the different parts of the site, and then clicked into different points along the way with a particular classroom, or gathering area, or science lab. The views out from the building are really important; it is so fortunate there is so much land to look across. (Malnar & Vodvarka, 2013, p. 95)

One of the most important design parameters was to make the inside and the outside as seamless as possible. Another parameter was to make the building as culturally sensitive as possible. To that end, Chris Cornelius was hired to assist Predock with incorporating Indian culture and nature (Malnar & Vodvarka, 2013, p. 93). One feature that related the inside to the outside is the arrangement of beams in the ceiling and the brass banding on the foor to trace the migration patterns related to the site. Cornelius states,

We call this migration because the students are coming in and out all day. And it also has a connection to the site. The administrators of the school early in the process talked a lot about how the students who have graduated from the school actually came back after they leave eighth grade. So, my idea about migration is that they can come back. All of these bands on the foor actually refer to different creatures that migrate across the site, like ducks and geese, robins, cardinals, butterfies, and eagles: all sorts of things actually come across the site. So that is why the different brass banding occurs and that is translated into the ceiling. (Malnar & Vodvarka, 2013, p. 95)

Other features include the use of building materials such as mature pine trunks, provided by the Menominee, which were split to wrap around metal columns to remind people of the presence of trees. In turn, they support the beams that represent the branches holding the roof; or, canopy of leaves. Cornelius states,

The thing we tried to do here was to think about what the cultural values are and translate them into architecture. Not to represent them or to make an icon. Some people have a bit of a hard time when they look at this building; they ask why it is really Indian, until you start to talk about it. Our intention here is to make that stuff experiential, because ultimately it does not have any resonance with the culture unless it is experiential. (Malnar & Vodvarka, 2013, p. 98)

Tracing migration patterns of the various living beings that crisscross the site of the school and the immediate landscape also refects how the local is intertwined with global movements of species of plants, insects, animals, humans, as well as languages, cosmologies, and conceptual cartographies. The school's landscape pedagogy is an assertion of indigenous sovereignty against the long history of colonialism and the detrimental effects of colonial strategies of assimilation. Similarly, the growing infuence of globalization brings new pressures to indigenous peoples and their traditional languages, landscapes, and cosmologies. The Indian Community School serves as a reminder of the determination and resilience of indigenous peoples as they work to sustain their ways of being in their worlds.

The student population represents many of the American Indian communities in Wisconsin and a number of other nations in North America. The school offers language instruction in four of the languages native to the area which represent two language families. Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Menominee are Algonquian languages. Oneida is an Iroquoian language. All four of the languages are polysynthetic. Our chapter offers an implicit critique of approaches to language pedagogy that focus only on classroom experience, disregarding other contextual factors such as the ones we consider here. We offer a coordinated participant-observation of a typical "language in the landscape" instruction in the Ojibwe language class. This approach allows us to meet the same learning targets for fuency by combining lessons in vocabulary, grammar and culture. As the teacher and student share time in the ecosystem they continue the trajectory of Anishinaabemowin in the Great Lakes.

# **3 Our Perspectives on the Walk**

In this part of the chapter we present our respective perspectives to highlight the many strands of experience that are woven together in our common goal of understanding the connections between language instruction and the landscape of the ICS.2 In addition to the authors, several people participated in the walk, including Valerie Clark (the Ojibwe Language Apprentice and UWM alumna), two former ICS students (now attending high school in Milwaukee), Nathan Breu (a graduate student at UWM), and Kevin Abourezk (a journalist who was writing a story about ICS for indianz.com). As mentioned, the co-principal investigators came to the project with distinct academic backgrounds. Our research sought to answer questions regarding indigenous conceptions of sustainability, landscape pedagogy, and language instruction. The results were illuminating in several ways. What follows are the strands of different perspectives during one language and landscape walk on the grounds of the Indian Community School.

# *3.1 Strand One: Mike, the Teacher/Cosmologist*

In this section, as the language teacher and guide of the (approximately) one-mile walking tour, I will discuss the areas I took the group, as well as the plants, and some animals, that were observed there. The ICS grounds have a few distinct biomes present on their acreage. There are 180 acres, or so, of property of which much is prairie and open feld. There are wetlands present, some more ephemeral than others, as well as wooded areas and remnant native oak savannah. I have taught at ICS as the Ojibwe Language and Culture Instructor for 3 years and have previous experience teaching at the college level in both Ojibwe and Odawa/Eastern Ojibwe as well as serving as a language consultant in Potawatomi language for Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, of which I am an enrolled member.

On the day of the tour, we managed to gather a handful of people to come and observe the largely monolingual descriptions of the places we were walking to and the beings that grow there. The nine individuals who participated in the tour fell into four groups, each with different expectations and learning outcomes. Bernard Perley, Patricia Mayes, and Kevin Abourezk were all involved in recording video,

<sup>2</sup>This chapter is based on research the co-authors conducted at the school with the permission of the school administration, parents, and the teachers (IRB on fle).

audio, and feld notes because their interests concerned the way speakers of indigenous languages interact with the land while teaching. Nathon Breu and Valerie Clark were advanced students eager to take advantage of the opportunity to hear Anishinaabemowin for a full hour and wanted to test their own comprehension. The two ICS alumni were similarly interested in a brief immersion experience. As the tour guide and fuent speaker, I categorize myself in a group with Margaret Noodin who was also using Anishinaabemowin to support the experience and refect on ways the specifc landscape of the ICS works with us to teach students at all levels.

The frst place we stopped can be described as a microcosm of the entirety of the tour itself. I began to describe that we were standing in a prairie, and growing near to where I stood was a stand of goldenrod. In Ojibwe, a word for goldenrod is *wezaawanagek* or 'the one with yellow bark/coating.' As I was explaining what the word meant, I could tell that only a few in the group were following along with the description, and most were not as familiar with the further descriptor of *atisijigan*, meaning 'something used for coloring,' as goldenrod can be boiled down to make a yellow dye, among other things. Only Margaret and one of her students asked in Ojibwe about the plant and some of its other uses. The next plant we discussed was common milkweed, which was also growing nearby. I explained that *niniwish* is a word most commonly used for this plant and that it breaks down further to mean 'a common/regular plant' in reference to the fact that where it grows, it tends to take over and be the most prevalent in the area. I also explained that, in the early summer, the buds bloom and sport a cluster of small fowers at the top. Before the buds bloom, however, these can be harvested and boiled down to make a soup that has been traditionally eaten not only by the Anishinaabeg, but also by other tribes such as the Ho-Chunk. Milkweed is also a favored food item of monarch butterfies, called *memengenwaag*, which is a reference to their 'wings that move in a swinging motion.' Furthermore, I explained that with careful removal of the outer bark of the stalk, the fbers from the milkweed can be made into twine and thus, rope.

One of the main elements I try to bring across in my teaching as well as in my general language use is to try and articulate a clear connection between a given word and its etymology which can often provide a more accurate description. In Anishinaabemowin, the focus is not on nouns but on verbs. Even the nouns in Anishinaabemowin have a verb affliation with one or more morphemes related to action directly built into the structure of the root word. For example, there are ways in which to describe landforms as nouns, but to the obverse, there are ways to do the same but in verb form. If you take the word *ishpaagamig*, for instance, it can be translated as 'high hill' or any similar location. The morpheme *ishpaa*- refers to 'high' or 'up' while -*gamig* refers to 'place' with the more accurate literal description being 'high place.' Again, this is the noun form. In verb form, we have *ishpaagamigaa* which means 'it is a hill/high hill.' With the brief transformation of -*gamig* to -*gamigaa*, Anishinaabemowin accommodates a modality of change wherein there is a recognition of a process in motion. At the time of observation, there is a 'high place,' but this is not to say that it has always been, nor that it may always be so. Indeed, the "high place" at the back end of the ICS property, which is in full view of many of the classrooms and thus, the students, is completely

**Fig. 1** Explaining the meaning of the word *wezaawanagek*, 'the one with yellow bark/coating'

man-made, as it is composed primarily of the displaced earth from when the school was frst constructed. (See the background of Fig. 1.) Many of my students were more than surprised to learn this when I divulged this fact to them during class one day, and even more so when Google Earth corroborated this via a historical timeline feature which allows one to view a property back to a certain point in the past. In this case, an image from the year 2000 depicts no such hill where there is one clearly there now.

Another main element I try to bring across in my teaching is the necessity to observe systems and how those systems work in collaboration with each other. One of the other plants I mentioned on the tour was *pakwe* which is a more common word for 'cattail.' The name refers to 'bursting' because when they soak up too much water from their roots, the seed pod will burst and disperse seeds throughout the area. I explained on our walk that cattails grow in wetlands and that humans, muskrats, red-winged blackbirds, and a host of other animals use them in some form or fashion. Many animals use them as a food source. The Anishinaabeg have used cattails for food, for insulation, for making mats, and for starting fres, among a variety of other uses. Where cattails grow, so too do other useful plants, which are often used for medicine. A common word for medicine is *mashkiki*, which further breaks down to 'strength from the earth.' A bulk of medicinal plants known to the Anishinaabeg are in swamps and wetlands, so it should be no surprise then that *mashkiig* bears a similar morphemic origin referencing 'where strength/medicine is' and is a word commonly used for either a 'marsh' or 'swamp.'

In my view, the purpose of the tour was to document the indigenous knowledge of place which can lead to a better understanding of how our concept of space can be fuid. Much of what I mentioned on the walk required the use of specifc words, but I was careful to provide the caveat that any single word may simply be the

"common" or "commonly used" term so students would not be led to a static, hegemonic interpretation of any single noun or verb and be instead allowed to make their own fuid interpretation of a fuid landscape. In various areas that the Anishinaabeg inhabit, historically as well as contemporaneously, different speakers of the language may have a different fuid lexicon to accommodate their own interpretive idiolect. Ten individuals may be looking at the same object or space and describe it differently based on their own individual observation. I am in the middle of a unit currently with my middle school classes wherein we all go outside and conduct a scavenger hunt guided by Ojibwe words, their literal meanings, and a slight hint describing where or how it grows. Based on these clues, they must deduce which plant I am specifcally referencing. Once that activity concludes, we then go out another day and they sketch fve to seven different objects or beings and give brief descriptions of each. Back inside, we give that object or being a reference word in Ojibwe based on personal observations and descriptions. The point of all of this is to bring home the fact that the reason there are so many interpretations for any word or process is because Ojibwe is so broad in its morphemic accommodations. It should come as no surprise that speakers from different areas have different words for the same object or being.

Throughout the tour I focused much of my attention on the paths, biomes, and specifc plants we encountered. As I received questions, I addressed them and then moved on to something else. The students listened and made connections to knowledge learned on previous walks or during previous seasons. They did not talk to me or to each other as much as they might in the classroom, but the few sentences they shared were more complex perhaps as a result of the contextual experience. I did not spend much time engaging with any one person mainly because much of the time was spent locating plants and landscapes while trying to articulate how these things are described in our language, how to identify them, what might grow in relation to them, where they grow best, etc. Ultimately, I feel most everyone present came away with a sense of realization of just how much yet there is to learn and how much yet there is to teach.

# *3.2 Strand Two: Margaret in Conversation with Students and Guests*

In indigenous communities, the aim of this kind of "immersion walk" is to help everyone see themselves as a student in conversation with the living landscape. Plants, trees, animals, winds and the earth itself are continually teaching us how to move from one day to the next. The walk in *giganawendaamin akiing omaa* 'the space here where we care for the earth,' combined the views and experiences of students at all levels engaged in conversations with the environment and one another. As someone who knew all the humans on the walk that day, I was continually trying to connect conversations: across generations, across genders, across levels of fuency, across human and non-human spaces resonant with stories and lessons.

There are many ways to measure lifetimes. The most common means of categorization might be levels of physical and mental maturity, but lived experience also adds dimension to a person's perspective. This is why children who endure great diffculty or possess special gifts can seem older, while joyous elders can seem young. On this particular walk, some of the people were born before the pantribal American Indian Movement of the 1970s, which paved the way for tribally specifc language revitalization, as the era of assimilation came to an end. Others were born after the Native American Languages Act of 1990, which acknowledged the extremely fragile state of many languages and fnally validated the right of indigenous North Americans to use their heritage languages. The two youngest students were born in the twenty-frst century and have only ever known a world where Anishinaabemowin is taught in school, but also a world where it is not spoken as a frst language in any homes. Four of the adults learned Anishinaabemowin in their later years as a second language and only two of them use it daily with a high level of profciency. Everyone present shared the mutual desire to hear the language on the land as brightly as the birds and as constant as the changing weather. Everyone continued on the walk, listening and contributing if possible, with the hope of knowing more, if only a little, by the end of the walk. Through this shared experience, elders and youth were united in practice and their lives merged as they moved from one space to another together.

The walk also included a range of genders and learning styles. In Anishinaabemowin, the third person is not gender-specifc so all of the living plants and animals discussed simply exist as animate without an awkward need for the use of *he* or *she*. People, animals, plants and *manidoog* ('spirits') are defned by the way they interact unless there is a specifc need to reference life-cycles and reproduction. Several of the people on this trip were gathering and cataloguing information, focused on dissemination or collection of knowledge. Others were more focused on movements and the way individuals and the group moved across the landscape. In my case, I was keenly aware of gaps in knowledge and comprehension, often repeating and performing bits of information to include more members of the group in the conversation.

It is worth noting that the most obvious challenge was comprehension. Everyone agreed at the outset to use only Ojibwe during the walk. To encourage understanding and maximize speech production in the target language, English was not even allowed as a means of translation. Non-speakers were forced to rely on gesture and demonstration. Novice-level speakers had to focus intently, and the teachers present had to compare and combine dialects and personal pedagogies.

The human and non-human interactions were constant, which emphasized the power of teaching about the land while on the land. Plants were continually appearing, offering themselves as examples, leading the conversation through seasons and cycles. As Mike talked about several of the plants, he mentioned when they begin to grow each year, when they produce seeds, and how they fower or distribute seeds. He frequently mentioned the point at which people living near the plant would harvest seeds, stalks. or leaves. Because the name and use of each plant is so important, I found that to be the information I most often repeated. As a teacher of the

language, I enjoyed hearing the direct connections between a plant and its use. In contrast to classroom instruction, I found there was no need to mention the color or location which I might normally include as part of ethnobotanical instruction in a classroom.

As I reviewed the video recording of the walk, I found my contributions were heavily shaped by my connection to trees and experience as a teacher of Anishinaabemowin. Like other teachers, I tried to emphasize the defning features of the language which center on its agglutinative nature and four primary verb types. Perhaps unlike other teachers, I echoed many years with my father, incidentally also a teacher, who sang to me of trees, walked with me among trees and even developed his particular whistle, unlike any birds in our region, to call my sister and me to come down from the trees we climbed. At one point, all of my objectives were combined as I pointed to a large white pine that stands west of the school. When I began to learn Ojibwe in the 1980s, I learned only one word for all trees: *mitigoog*. As language revitalization efforts increased, more specifc words for trees began to be used. Of course, we all knew the most prominent: *wiigwaas*, 'the birch,' so important for *wiigwam* dwellings; *ninaatig*, 'the maple,' which is tapped each spring for sap; and *giizhig*, 'the cedar,' used for healing and ceremonies.

However, the white pine on the walk reminded me how important it is to share all the options, both in conjugation and vocabulary. I am heard in the video asking Mike to talk about the types of pines (see Fig. 6 below). I wanted him to let students know the difference between:


All of the trees in the pine family are known to thrive when exposed to fre, with some cones requiring fre to open. Their evergreen needles, when powdered and made into tea, provide antioxidants, vitamin C, vitamin A and have expectorant and antiseptic properties. Additionally, pine pitch can be used as a glue or sealant while the roots can be used as strong twine for binding. The ability to use pines depends on identifcation, so I wanted the students to be sure to understand the various names and their morphology. The *zhiingwaak* in particular leads to a good lesson in words for something spread out. At one point I note the similarity in the name for the tree and the name for a horned grebe, *zhiingwaak dibishkoo zhiingibis* meaning 'white pine is like grebe.' (See Figs. 6 and 7 below.) In Anishinaabemowin both begin with the morpheme *zhiing-* which can be used several different ways:


To make the point, I put the clump of needles over my head and said, *zhiingibis indaaw* ('I'm a grebe'). I do not think that all of the details came through, but the laughter might help them remember so that eventually, if this lesson is scaffolded among others, when they study the horned grebe, a freshwater diving bird, they will realize their ancestors cleverly emphasize its ability to spread its feathers to improve diving abilities and attract a mate.

As we walked, I continued to repeat and reshape Mike's comments for our various students as others recorded the experiences from their own perspectives. The refection on the walk from all dimensions demonstrates how often we were looking differently at the very same thing, combining our views, to create a small community with a shared relationship to the landscape.

# *3.3 Strand Three: Patricia, Co-principal Investigator*

In what follows, I discuss my observations about language, the landscape, and pedagogy, based on the video-recording of the walk. My training is in linguistics, and I use tools associated with discourse and conversation analysis in my discussion, but I also draw on my experience with TESOL pedagogy and teacher training. Because I do not speak Anishinaabemowin, I focus on the gestures and bodily movements of the participants as well as the objects and entities with which they interacted. I have also transcribed a few linguistic forms that were made particularly salient through participants' other actions such as repeating or pointing.

Two strands of current research on language teaching have informed this project: Classroom discourse as social interaction, based in conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, examines interactional patterns, including the sequencing of utterances and other actions (Gardner, 2013; Markee, 2015); and language learning in the semiotic landscape, which as discussed above, incorporates aspects of context beyond the classroom and has often focused on publicly displayed signs that index social spaces. Research on classroom discourse considers the embodied nature of interaction in the classroom and has focused on the sequential patterning of utterances, gestures, interaction with material objects, and the setting or space in which the interaction occurs. These patterns of action by the participants essentially constitute the activity of teaching (Goodwin, 1994; Lymer et al., 2011). Although research involving the semiotic landscape also focuses on material objects, spaces, and multimodality, generally it has not focused at the micro level of interaction. In addition, as mentioned previously, it has largely focused on urban environments and linguistic signs or other objects produced by human actors.

In this project, we examine how semiotic signs that exist in nature are incorporated into human interaction at the micro level, as the participants notice them. In our current example of the walk, such signs include plants, animal tracks, and birds. Close examination of the walk shows how focusing on social interaction among humans and other natural objects in the environment provides a rich context for language learning, and it also has implications for teacher training in that the teacher

is not just a language teacher, but also a teacher of culture, science, and the relation between humans and the natural environment. Indeed, our defnition of landscape furthers Jaworski and Thurlow's (2010) call to reframe this area as the study of the "semiotic landscape," which includes meaningful elements beyond linguistic signs such as visual and nonverbal auditory cues, which can either be produced by humans or may occur in nature. In our view, this is not the random inclusion of everything in the physical environment, but rather is warranted by the actions of the participants as they become aware of these objects and incorporate them in their ongoing social interaction.

My observations focus on how these nonhuman, nonlinguistic entities in the environment were instrumental in organizing the walk and on how the participants interacted with them and with each other in sequentially ordered ways (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007), as well as demonstrating the high level of coordination between gestures and utterances (Goodwin, 1986, 2003). Because space limitations do not allow for a description of the entire walk, I have selected several segments that demonstrate these points. Essentially, I focus on examples that show how Mike engages with the plants in his surroundings, bringing them to the attention of the other people in the group and using them to organize what he is saying. The other participants' responses, then, also become centered around these plants, and much of how this interaction is organized can be understood by examining the participants' embodied actions such as gestures, eye gaze, and the way their bodies are positioned. As Margaret mentioned in the previous section, "Plants were continually appearing, offering themselves as examples, leading the conversation through seasons and cycles." Here, I point to specifc details in order to illustrate how this was accomplished.

The frst segment begins with Mike standing next to a strand of goldenrod. He is holding the top of one of the stalks with his right hand, head bent down, looking at it. As the other participants gather around, he turns his head to face them, and says something, while feeling the texture of the grass with his fngers. (See Fig. 1 above.) He shifts his gaze frst to one of the students and says [ge giin]. She shakes her head in response, and Mike moves his gaze to the other student, again saying [ge gin]. Finally, his gaze moves toward Margaret as he repeats [ge gin] ('as for you?'). Margaret, who had followed Mike's gaze toward the students, turns back to him and responds in overlap with his next utterance. A few moments later, Mike takes the stalk of the plant (toward the top) with his right hand and, holding onto it with his left hand, moves his right hand up and down the stalk (Fig. 2), apparently demonstrating a process, as he explains. He has been looking down at the plant during this process and only returns his gaze to his recipients just before he releases the plant (Fig. 3). Margaret has been nodding during this explanation. At the beginning of this segment, a "sign" in the environment (the goldenrod) is oriented to by one of the participants (Mike) who subsequently draws the attention of the others to it. His frst gesture (manipulating the tip of the stalk with his fngers) draws the others' attention to the plant, and more specifcally to the part of the plant that will be relevant in the subsequent talk, which is accompanied by more specifc gestures. This example demonstrates Goodwin's (1986) contention that gestures are used to

**Fig. 2** Mike gazing down while demonstrating a process with a strand of goldenrod

**Fig. 3** Mike returns his gaze to the recipients just before releasing the plant

change spatial organization at specifc moments in time in a way that is relevant to the developing course of activities … In essence, gestures are one place where the temporal and sequential organization of conversation intersects with its spatial organization (p. 35).

This points not only to the importance of the participants' embodied actions, but also to the importance of the surrounding environment.

The next segment I focus on occurred about 15 minutes into the walk after we had crossed a boardwalk through a marshy area and were continuing on the path.

**Fig. 4** Organizing discourse through gestures at different heights

At one point, Mike stops on the side of the path and uses his foot to point to a small plant on the ground, saying [ad͡ʒɪtəmawano]. The recipients look at the plant and some repeat this word. Mike goes on to say more and leans over to touch the plant with his right hand. Margaret and another participant also talk. He then gestures to display different heights in the air with his right hand as he speaks (Fig. 4). He continues speaking, and Margaret responds and continues speaking and laughing with the two students. Once again, the plant is a sign that Mike uses to organize the discourse, beginning with the foot gesture and using other gestures to draw attention to the embodied and spatial attributes of the group's surroundings.

Toward the end of this segment, Mike stops again, leaning over to touch a plant on the ground, and speaking. After he moves on to continue the walk, Margaret gestures to the two students to follow her. They move over to the plant, where Margaret and one of the students bend down to look at it more closely (the other student and Valerie are looking on from a standing position). Margaret touches the plant and points to two different parts of it, frst manipulating one and saying [odemin] ('strawberry'). She then tosses that part aside and touches another part saying [ad͡ʒɪtəmo] (Fig. 5). Margaret has used sequentially organized gestures and bodily movements to direct the attention of the women in the group: frst toward herself (the beckoning gesture); then toward the plant (bending down and touching it); and fnally, to index how her ongoing talk about the plant is organized (tossing aside one part and touching the one that has become relevant at that moment). She explained to me later that strawberries are considered a women's plant and serve as semiotic signposts in lessons about puberty and love.

A little later in the walk, Margaret drew everyone's attention to a very tall pine further ahead just off the path, by speaking and pointing toward it. Mike responds with *oh* and walks over to the tree, as the rest of the group follows. He touches the

**Fig. 5** Margaret synchronizing gestures and movements with language to direct attention

branches and smells them. I have the impression they are doing a word search because Mike points to Margaret after she has said something, and then as everyone is gazing up at the tree's stature, Mike says [akikaandak] ('jack pine with red bark and short needles across branch'), which he then repeats twice. A few moments later, Mike draws the participants' attention to a sample he had taken from another pine, by holding it up to show how the needles are spread out. He is holding it in his left hand and brings his right palm toward the needles in a gesture that smashes them down (Fig. 6). Then, he moves his hand away, showing that they spring back to their original positions (Fig. 7). He twirls the twig in his hand and smashes it again. All of this is of course accompanied by verbal explanation and some responses from Margaret. A few moments later, Mike brings his right hand to his head and spreads out (three of) his fngers. He says [d͡ʒiiŋəbɪʃ] ('grebe'), which Margaret repeats. She reaches out her hand and walks toward Mike to take the sample and then holding it up to her head, says [d͡ʒiiŋəbɪʃ ɪndaʊ] ('I'm a grebe'), facing the two students and laughing.

As mentioned, entities in this landscape that are not necessarily products of human activity get noticed by the participants and are incorporated in and help organize their activities and talk. The next two examples show this point more explicitly. In the frst, as the group is walking along the path, Mike says *oh* and stops and bends down, to touch the leaves of a plant on the ground. He says [omakakiibək] ('plantain'). Margaret repeats this word, laughing. Margaret and Mike repeat it several times, and then Mike continues. He makes a gesture with both hands that suggests manipulating the plant in some way (Fig. 8), and then does a gesture with his right hand, as if rubbing something on his left arm (Fig. 9). (I later confrmed that this plant can be used to treat skin infammation.) This example shows quite explicitly the process of noticing this natural sign and using it to organize the ongoing

**Fig. 6** Mike drawing participants' attention to pine needles smashed against his palm

**Fig. 7** The pine needles are released, springing back to their original positions

interaction. Mike's initial *oh* is a "change of state" or "acknowledgment" token, which indexes a change in the speaker's state of knowledge (Heritage, 1984; Heritage & Clayman, 2010). In the previous example, Mike used *oh* to acknowledge that his state of knowledge has changed because Margaret drew his attention to a tree on the side of the path. In this example, the position of *oh* suggests that Mike has noticed the plant simply because it was there. He is responding to it rather than to something another participant has said or done, as was the case in the previous

**Fig. 8** Mike manipulating the leaves of a plantain plant

**Fig. 9** Mike gestures to indicate rubbing something on his left arm

example. He then organizes his subsequent utterances and gestures around it, frst telling his recipients the word for it and then talking more about its uses.

The fnal example occurred a few moments later. As the participants continued along the path, a number of small birds few overhead. Once again, Mike uses the *oh* acknowledgement token (followed by another utterance), as he looks upward. Several of the other participants turn their bodies and follow his gaze (Fig. 10).

**Fig. 10** Participants follow Mike's upward gaze at a number of small birds

Margaret looks in the opposite direction and says something, as she is beginning to point with her right hand to where two or three birds are landing on the branches at the top of a tree. Some of the participants turn their bodies back to look in the direction she is pointing (Fig. 11). She then says [gɪtʃ ͡gɪtʃ ͡gəneʃu] ('chickadees'). Mike laughs and she repeats this word, also laughing. Then, Mike begins speaking as he turns his body to face north, pointing off in the distance with his right hand. The other participants turn their bodies to face in the direction he is pointing. Margaret says something in response. The participants continue walking moments later.

As with the previous examples, the appearance of the birds was treated by the participants as a sign that was used to organize their subsequent interaction. However, this example is different and perhaps a bit clearer: In the previous examples, the participants entered the space occupied by the plants along the path, making it possible to attribute the agentive actions (i.e., responding to these inanimate entities) to the humans. On the other hand, in the last example, the birds are animate entities that unexpectedly entered the space occupied by the participants and in some way caused them to change their ongoing activity away from what might have occurred if the birds had not appeared.

I hope to have demonstrated with this brief discussion and a few examples how intimately involved the landscape is in organizing social interaction. Although the same argument might be made about cityscapes, the objects in such urban environments are human-made. In a more natural landscape, the objects and entities are less subject to human control, and in some cases, may present themselves to conversational participants through their own actions, thus seemingly creating a context in which a response is not surprising, even if it would not be seen as required or "conditionally relevant" (Schegloff, 1968).

**Fig. 11** Some participants turn to follow Margaret's pointing

An additional point that struck me as I was summarizing my perspective is how much I believed I could understand because of the embodied nature of the actions and interactions I observed. Of course, my hypotheses about the meanings of the various linguistic forms I tried to transcribe were fairly simple and sometimes incorrect. Still, guessing the meanings of linguistic displays can be important in the process of learning a language, at least for some learners. Thus, from a language learning perspective, this event, with its combination of contextual signs (gesture, language, and objects/entities in the landscape) reveals vibrant modalities, a powerful force that motivates the desire to understand and communicate.

# *3.4 Strand Four: Bernard, a Non-speaker and Event Videographer*

In this section, as the videographer, I present the perspective of the video camera as one that distances the videographer from the event in such a way that the eye of the observer balances the broad view of the scene and the landscape with the focused detailed view of particular objects, interactions, or gestures. I am a non-Anishinaabemowin speaker which allowed me to focus on the interactions between Mike and the other participants in the language/landscape walk. I discuss the advantage of "camera distance" recording the group's walk-about, their conversations, and occasional focus on gestures and explanatory moments all while keeping the landscape context as my framing guide.

### **3.4.1 Landscape Pedagogy as Context**

As we planned for the walk and recording of an ICS lesson in the landscape, our respective roles became clear. My lack of knowledge in Anishinaabemowin together with my anthropological ethnographic training made my role as videographer an easy decision. I also decided that the many modalities of communication in the landscape were some of the pedagogical strategies I wanted to highlight. (See the description of multimodal or embodied interaction in Strand Three above.) I was interested in the differences in gestures and postures of the teacher and the students between the classroom instruction and the landscape instruction. I found the project very compelling because I have a deep interest in the language teaching strategies when students are taken into the landscape.

My own experience with elementary school Native American language instruction was part of the Maliseet language program at Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick, Canada. The on-reservation school, Mah-Sos School, had about 100 students from grades K to grade 6. All students were required to take Maliseet language class at least two times a week and sometime three times a week. I observed language instruction in the classroom and the occasional in-the-landscape instruction and learned from those experiences that there is a difference between language instruction in the classroom and pedagogy in the landscape. The landscape at Mah-Sos School is the traditional lands of the Wolastukwiyok and the "signs" in the landscape recall oral traditions, lexicons, and lessons for being in the world, which together constitute indigenous conceptual cartographies. Lessons in a classroom simply are not able to capture and present these phenomena is the same way. For example, one day the students went on a feld trip to pick sweetgrass, and they learned where to fnd sweetgrass, identify sweetgrass from other grasses, and learned how to pick the grass from the soil. Among the end results were that the children loved being outside, they learned more about traditional knowledge in their immediate landscapes, and they learned processes and purposes for using sweetgrass braids for cleansing and blessing ceremonies. These were all important pedagogical lessons, but there was a critical component missing. All the instruction was done in English. This is why the experience of walking and learning in the landscape at the Indian Community School is so important. I looked forward to seeing similar student engagement with the added beneft of their heritage language being used as the language of instruction. As mentioned above, the signs in the landscape in the ICS walkabout include linguistic signs such as language, proxemics, kinesics, and prosody. Other signs in the landscape are represented by the fora and fauna, the terrain, the weather, and the most complex signs of all: the human participants in the walkabout. The greatest lesson I learned was observing the active integration of all the signs in the landscape into an experiential engagement of multiple sign systems. The multiple sign systems are not closed systems; rather, they are codependent relationships that build interspecies meaning. Crucially, this interspecies world-making is an ongoing process. There were moments when we stopped our respective roles during the walkabout and delighted in being together in that landscape.

### **3.4.2 The Camera View**

I followed Mike leading our small mixed group through the grounds of the Indian Community School with a video camera. I maintained my position at the back of the group and tried to keep the group in the frame with occasional broad feld of view shots of the landscape to provide context. There were many moments when Mike would stop to point to a particular spot in the landscape and everyone would look in the direction pointed. At these moments, I would point the camera lens to where Mike was pointing (see Fig. 1). Again, as a non-speaker of Anishinaabemowin, I was hoping that I would capture what Mike was pointing out in the landscape. Sometimes, Mike would point to a plant low to the ground. Everyone would gather around to observe the plant and I would have to shift around the group to also capture both, their attention to the plant as well as the plant itself (see Fig. 4).

The ICS walkabout was a complex event that presented all participants with an array of sign systems requiring integration through shared experience. That shared experience provided opportunities for multimodal pedagogy and learning. The authors shared their respective insights after the walkabout and through the process of coauthoring this essay. The attendance by university faculty in the walkabout was not typical of Mike's landscape pedagogy. Furthermore, we all recognized that we were not in the usual classroom context as there were too many adults not associated with the school taking part in the walkabout. All the potential distractions from so many outsiders to the ICS classroom did not seem to unsettle or prompt Mike to deviate from his language teacher role. He guided all of us through the landscape focusing on immersive Anishinaabemowin language pedagogy.

# **4 Conclusion**

The different strands of experiential landscape pedagogy that we participated in during the Indian Community School walkabout were instructive in many ways. In this conclusion, we highlight some of the most salient lessons regarding the way Mike expanded language pedagogy beyond the classroom and engaged the students (and guests) in an immersive language, landscape, and cosmology lesson in Ojibwe. Signifcantly, students were presented with relationships between material and ideational worlds. Among the modes of learning were the pointing, gesturing, and navigating in the landscape; the tactile holding of objects; hearing the sounds and feeling the wind and warmth of the sun; experiential immersion in the broader semiotic feld where the signs in the landscape include the school building, the diverse biome of the school grounds, the many entities (birds, animals, plants, insects, clouds, wind, etc.) that inhabit the complex semiotic landscape; and the multimodal ideational cartographies of language learning, indigenous identity, and Ojibwe cosmology. These vibrant modalities are woven together through each instructional event, thereby scaffolding traditional ecological knowledge through experiential language instruction.

We, the authors, keep using the phrase "language pedagogy" as an inadequate placeholder for the rich experience that goes into Ojibwe language class at the Indian Community School. A better descriptor would be "world making." The multimodal aspect of Mike's language instruction is cosmological as well as linguistic. Jewitt states "Multimodality is sometimes misunderstood as an attempt to 'sideline' language" (Jewitt, 2009, p. 2). Our participation and observation of the walkabout underscores the mutual dependence of language and other semiotic resources. "A key aspect of multimodality is indeed the analysis of language, but the language as it is nestled and embedded within a wider semiotic frame" (Jewitt, 2009, p. 2). We would add that the experiential dynamic animates multimodal communication to create vibrant modalities. This is a crucial distinction to make with regard to indigenous language instruction. After over 500 years of colonial pressures to assimilate to colonial languages and culture and the current impulse to acquiesce to the assimilative appeal of globalization, we see at the Indian Community School a mode of resistance that celebrates indigenous cosmologies. The vibrant modality of indigenous languages and cultures may offer localized paths to sustainable futures for global citizens.

# **References**


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