The field of linguistic landscapes (LL) contextualizes languages and its derivatives in the ecology of spaces and places, and hence constitutes what Scollon and Scollon (2003) call "discourses in place.” For language learners, the landscape extends from the institutionalized and formal language classroom to an outside world rich in multilingual discourses. We claim here that these contrasting environments add depth and complexity to language learning, as we examine the inter-relationship between the ecology and the classroom (Waksman and Shohamy 2013). The speaker’s encounter with language in public space is the moment when their knowledge is forced to move from the “perceived” to the “practiced” (Lefebvre 1991). Yet, such a move introduces a significant challenge for learners. Not only are they expected to navigate an assemblage of texts—written, spoken, and semiotic—but also unfamiliar political and social signification underlying these texts. Examining the landscape inside and outside of the classroom is an essential step for learners to achieve multilingual proficiency. How can we learn to read and interpret the deeper meanings of these LL texts that surround us, and how can multilingual spaces be made more supportive for learners, especially immigrants and other minority groups?
This session will present research that demonstrates how the complex relationships of the school and the ecology can serve one another in a number of cases. The three papers will discuss translanguaging in a New Zealand classroom, urban landscape as pedagogy in the Northeastern US, and education via the mediation and interpretation of tourist sites in Jaffa, Israel. We consider the LL approach as ‘the tip of an iceberg’ in a broader repertoire of knowledge, with the environment becoming a site for support, agreement and contestation. Public texts deliver diverse types of messages that serve as signifiers for different agendas about language, ethnicity, gender, consumerism, identities, and the cultural values they entail. The classroom, rather than being limited and formulaic, can in turn become instrumental through its own texts in supporting students communicating with and interpreting these texts so they can thrive in an unfamiliar space without their own identities being suppressed.
