Linguistic Landscape and its Implications for Language Teaching

transcript

David MalinowskiYale University Center for Language Study

david.malinowski@yale.edu@tildensky

of language teaching and learning in & with the linguistic landscape

Linguistic landscape can be a powerful resource for spatializing L2 learning and teaching by showing language as “discourses in place”: situated, multiple, contingent, and ideologically charged

In particular, the performative nature of discourse in place begs us to consider how language learners can not just read but creatively and purposively act upon the linguistic landscape

…the Hebrew LL can be created in acts of reading, writing, performance and translation

whywhat

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

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

The 5 C’s in context of multilingual texts, neighborhoods: • Communication

• Cultures

• Connections

• Comparisons

• Communities - “Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting”

Communities as “The Lost C”?

“The most striking, and troublesome, feature emerging from this comparison [of student and educator rankings of the 5 Standards] is that for students the Communities Standards were first; for teachers they were last.”

- Magnan, Murphy, Sahakyan, & Kim, 2012, p. 177.

LinguisticDesign

AudioDesign

VisualDesign

GesturalDesign

SpatialDesign

“Language must be understood not as an abstract system, but rather as a local phenomenon, arising first from the utterances of speakers in tangible places, at particular historical and ideological moments” (Pennycook, 2010)

“the ongoing production of space-time is a rich process that draws upon multiple material and discursive resources, is imbued with relations of power, and is malleable through individual agency and imagination” (Leander & McKim, 2003)

Signs tell us where we are, how to behave, who we’re expected to be—or not

Hey, you.

Signs tell us where we are, how to behave, who we’re expected to be—or not

Signs tell us where we belong, and where we don’t

whywhat

whathow

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

Landry & Bourhis (1997)

definitions

consequences

“a far more dynamic account of space, text and interaction [is needed in linguistic landscape studies]: readers and writers are part of the fluid, urban semiotic space and produce meaning as they move, write, read and travel” (Pennycook 2009, 309)

“attention needs to be paid to how constructs of space are constrained by material conditions of production, and informed by associated phenomenological sensibilities of mobility and gaze.” (Stroud & Mpendukana 2009, 364-5 )

consequences

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

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

Linguistic landscape reveals much about the culture, history, and politics of people in places

Linguistic landscape is one way that people mark territory, actively including some people while excluding others

A sampling: Research in linguistic landscape

Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in SLA. Int’l Review of AL in Language Teaching, 46(3).

Rowland, L. (2012). The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan. Int’l Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 16(4).

Burwell, C. & Lenters, K. (2015). Word on the street: Investigating linguistic landscapes with urban Canadian youth. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 10(3).

• Chern, C. -l., & Dooley, K. (2014). Learning English by walking down the street.

• Chesnut, M., Lee, V. & Schulte, J. (2013). The language lessons around us: Undergraduate English pedagogy and linguistic landscape research

• Dagenais, D. et al. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness.

• Malinowski, D. (2015). Opening spaces of learning in the linguistic landscape.

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

• Walking, observation, note-taking

• Photography, street recordings

• Recorded interviews

• Neighborhood drawings

• Mapping

• Writing, blogging

• Digital stories, video projects

• Classroom and/or community-based art projects, exhibits, installations

• Civic events, protests

Competencies

linguistic

pragmatic

intercultural

multimodal, multiliterate

symbolic, critical,

participatory

National Foreign Language Resource Center

6 Tenets of Project-based learning

1. Organized around real-world activities

2. Learner-centered

3. Collaboration as integral part of learning

4. Use of assessment with dual purpose: guiding the process and measuring progress

5. Instructor as knowledgeable participant and facilitator

6. Creation of real-world product involving real audience

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

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

University of Southampton course documentation)

Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

An extra-credit, online forum exchange between UC Berkeley

students of beginning & intermediate Korean and students of

intermediate English from Suwon University (near Seoul, Korea)

to exchange, view and discuss photos of signs, advertisements,

billboards, and other elements of their linguistic landscapes

Students use English and Korean (the L1 and L2, or L2 and L1) to discuss their experiences, interpretations & misunderstandings of ‘normal’ uses of language in their partners’ neighborhoods

Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

Activity prompt to prep for 2-on-2 Skype conversation:

NEXT WEEK (11 March 2016):Street Signs and Linguistic Landscapes

By Wednesday, March 9th at 5:59 pm (Paris 23h59), each student should post a photograph of a sign from your neighborhood that you find culturally interesting and that will provoke discussion. You should post this onhttps://padlet.com/wall/oz6gmap5dmk . Padlet is very easy; no need to sign up. Just click on the screen and you can drag/import a picture. Put a caption on it, as well as your name.

Yale 3rd Year Heritage Spanish (S. Alexandrov, 2016)

1. Photosafari. Find and photograph something from each zone. Caption in Spanish and share on Facebook.

Objective: explore Yale and its surroundings.

2. Spanish seen and heard in New Haven vs. in student's hometown. Students reported and/or photographed examples and shared on FB. Captions in Spanish. Class discussion of similarities and differences.

Objective: to raise awareness of the presence / lack of Spanish in New Haven and in hometown.

3. Translating signs. Students discussed what information (street signs, post office, public health and safety) they thought should be available in Spanish. They attempted an initial translation with Google translate and then produced their own version.

Objective: consider what messages need to be conveyed and how to do so. Discussion of the "untranslatable”.

Yale 3rd Year Heritage Spanish (S. Alexandrov, 2016)

whathow

howof language teaching and learning in & with the linguistic landscape

“Literacy is fluid and relational and, because of this spatial property, people can [create] a complex co-presence of different understandings that sit in relations of power” (Alex Kostogriz, 2004, p. 2).

Space is not empty; it is a way of seeing heterogeneous perspectives, multiple possibilities, subject positions together

Seeing Diane Larsen Freeman’s “Grammaring” model spatially

“What’s up?”N V Adj

“What’s up?”Is there something

in the upwarddirection?

How are you? What’s

happeningwith you

recently?

“What’s up?” = friendly greeting,

calls for short response

“What’s up?” = friendly greeting,

calls for short response

“What’s up?”Is there something

in the upwarddirection?

How are you? What’s

happeningwith you

recently?

“What’s up?”N V Adj

Henri Lefebvre’s The production of space (1991)pushing innovation in LL methodologies

Through juxtaposition of conceived, perceived, and lived spaces, “[add] a third dimension to linguistic landscape studies” (Trumper-Hecht, 2010, p. 236).

Lefebvre Trumper-Hecht L2 teaching

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • contextualizing • historicizing• mapping• categorizing…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • observation • listening• sensing• recording …and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate drawing, imagining, interviewing, designing, storytelling, creating, protesting, enacting, etc……and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • observation • listening• sensing• recording …and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • contextualizing • historicizing• mapping• categorizing…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

my projects (II)2012-3 UC Berkeley Freshman/Sophomore Seminar

Reading the Multilingual City: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese in Bay Area Linguistic Landscapes

my projects (II)

Course schedule (15 weeks)

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

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

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

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

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

2012-3 UC Berkeley Freshman/Sophomore Seminar

Basic course structure: 3-week activity cycles X 4

1st week Intro new topic, geographic scale/site, and focal language LL theoretical & methodological sampler Mini-language lesson from East Asian Langs & Cultures

faculty2nd week Site visit with directed activity Blog response

3rd week Group reflections & analysis Student presentations & work toward final project

my projects (II)2012-3 UC Berkeley Freshman/Sophomore Seminar

Student blogs: Students report and reflect on their experiences

1. Design lessons around the LL as it is1. Neighborhood visits, field trips, observations,

interviews, etc.

2. Virtual tours, telecollaboration, archival research, etc.

2. Make your own LL1. Linguistic schoolscapes

2. Translation, performance, art projects, civic and community service

1. Design lessons around the LL as it is1. Neighborhood visits, field trips, observations,

interviews, etc.

2. Virtual tours, telecollaboration, archival research, etc.

2. Make your own LL1. Linguistic schoolscapes

2. Translation, performance, art projects, civic and community service

• is “…a living, moving activity, not a dead one to be pinned down in a museum. It is this dynamism which can make it so interesting and so stimulating, not only to linguists and translators, but to teachers and students too.” (Cook, 2010, p. xix)

• “A different translation produces a different original, by emphasizing different faultlines in the original” (H. Miller, 1992, p. 124)

• "A translated text should be the site where a different culture emerges, where a reader gets a glimpse of a cultural other” (Venuti, 1995, p. 306)

Translation in Language Teaching

Church Street, New Haven

Church Street, New Haven?

?גן עדן חדש

What German word belongs on the white sign?

Language class projects Middle/high school College/University Community organizations

Visualization Google Street View JuxtaposeJS

(example) VisualEyes

Mapping Siftr (example) Cityscape

Annotation & discussion

NowComment(example)

Mediathread

Annotorious

See the DiRT (Digital Research Tools) Directory for many more!

Linguistic landscape can be a powerful resource for spatializing L2 learning and teaching by showing language as “discourses in place”: situated, multiple, contingent, and ideologically charged

In particular, the performative nature of discourse in place begs us to consider how language learners can not just read but creatively and purposively act upon the linguistic landscape

…the Hebrew LL can be created in acts of reading, writing, performance and translation

David MalinowskiYale University Center for Language Study

david.malinowski@yale.edu@tildensky