The linguistic landscape as a bridge between cities and subjects: proposals for a co-signification of spaces

Abstract

In the context of a global world where migrations and movements of people are constant, cities are centers of encounters and, simultaneously, privileged places of interaction between individuals and the languages and cultures of the world. Thus, linguistic landscapes emerge as visual records of languages in urban spaces, prompted by the diverse origins of individuals and their dynamics within the community. As a didactic resource, linguistic landscapes can be used to identify the linguistic and cultural diversity of a space, understand power relations and possible conflicts, and reflect on the presence and absence of certain languages in cityscapes. This contributes to raising awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity. To identify suggested activities for using linguistic landscapes in educational settings, a narrative literature review was conducted. The resulting corpus was subjected to a content analysis to identify suggested activities involving linguistic landscapes across different subjects and educational levels. The results indicate that the articles commonly view the city as a symbolic space of power and a hierarchy among languages.