Public space plays a pivotal role in translating language policy into real-world practice. This study is grounded in empirical data collected through ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews from the Beijing Subway Line 1, which is typical of the normativity of a public space. The findings indicate that the linguistic landscape (LL)…

Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a Canadian, minority sign language that originally stems from British Sign Language (BSL). Currently used by elderly Deaf people in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (and Labrador), it is a moribund language, having undergone language shift to American Sign Language (ASL). MSL is…

Zambia is home to a complex set of language practices, which involve languages being used in different ways across social contexts. Historically written communication has typically been associated with English with African languages mainly associated with used spoken contexts. Recently, however, there has been a shift in this pattern with African…

This article reports the findings of a study undertaken to document and explain the use of English in signage in Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking country. The linguistic landscape has emerged as an important, viable field of research. In order to investigate how, when, and why the use of English manifests itself, a corpus of 169 photographs of signs…

Not only does language practice in shop signs generate a sense of place with particular meanings to visitors, it also indicates the kind of economic activity performed in that place. By investigating and comparing the shop name signs in the two largest foreign migrant neighbourhoods in Guangzhou, specifically, Baohan Straight Street (African…

Because of the quickening pace of globalisation, recent years have witnessed a rise of bilingualism throughout the world. Prior research has documented a range of cognitive benefits and costs of being bilingual. The current work uncovers another potential positive side of being bilingual: the control of overconfidence in peer-comparison problems.…

This paper is an initial attempt to characterise the schoolscape of a four-century old higher education institution in the Philippines and the oldest existing university in Asia, The Royal, Catholic, and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST). Through a systematic inventory of 2,410 visual signs, the analysis of the functional sign…

This paper proposes a concept of "campus vitality" of languages: the ability of a language to maintain its prestige, visibility and continuity on university campuses. A seven-factor framework is developed for on-the-ground investigation of the relevant languages in a given campus context. These indexical factors are the number,…

During a 10-week classroom-based study in a school in western Canada, 17 Kindergarten children had multiple opportunities to learn about how elements of visual art, design and layout in picturebook artwork are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. Student application of learning about the concepts under…

To date, there has been no investigation into how metalinguistic terms, pertaining to English language teaching, are expressed in British Sign Language (BSL). This preliminary study explored how these terms are realised in BSL with the relevant professional community. The investigation was underpinned by translanguaging as a theoretical framework…

This cross-sectional study attempts to investigate the impacts of linguistic landscape (LL) tasks on EFL teacher candidates' understanding of English in local and global contexts. To this end, three cohorts of student teachers carried out LL fieldwork, uploaded images of English signage to an LL application, Lingscape, and submitted a mini…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Koh Lipe, Satun is a famous tourist destination along the Andaman Sea, Southern Thailand where linguistic landscape is structured mainly in English. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signage in this island displays distinctiveness of linguistic elements and linguistic diversity manifested in a variety of English lexicons. Thus, this study…

The main argument of this paper is that the Virtual Linguistic Landscape (VLL) of advertising allows the utilisation of persuasion strategies that transcend the traditional separation of named languages to produce the maximum effect on potential customers. The paper challenges the segregational view of language, which assumes that communication…

Linguistic landscape (LL) projects, an experiential learning approach, enhance students' intercultural communication (IC) skills by exposing them to linguistic and cultural diversity in their communities (Li et al., 2022. Developing beginning language learners' (meta-) cultural understanding via student-led Linguistic Landscape research.…