Acting on the Linguistic Landscape: Performativity, Translation, and other Possibilities for Language Classroom Intervention

David Malinowski
Yale University Center for Language Study
david.malinowski@yale.edu
@tildensky
Discuss: http://bit.ly/actingontheLL

the
why
what
how
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 to be (situated,
multiple, contingent, ideologically charged)
discourses-in-place.
In particular, the performative nature of
signs—written, spoken, and enacted in place—
begs us to consider how language learners can
not just read but creatively and purposively act
upon the linguistic landscape.

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.

Linguistic
Design
Audio
Design
Visual
Design
Gestural
Design
Spatial
Design

“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)

where we are, where to go, what to do—or not

where you belong, and where you don’t

“[T]he simultaneity of the production and delivery of the
expression communicates not merely what is said, but
the bearing of the body as the rhetorical instrument of
expression.This makes plain the incongruous
interrelatedness of body and speech . . . the excess in
speech that must be read along with, and often against,
the propositional content of what is said” (Butler, 1997, p.
152).

What German word belongs
on the white sign?

“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

 LL as 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)
consequences

"we argue for an approach to language from the
vantage point of the social circulation of
languages across spaces and different semiotic
artifacts"
“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)
definitions

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
6Tenets 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, andArea Studies,
University of Southampton course documentation)

Activity prompt to prep for 2-on-2 Skype conversation:
NEXT WEEK (11 March 2016):
Street Signs and Linguistic Landscapes
ByWednesday, 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 on
https://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.

Activity prompt to prep for 2-on-2 Skype conversation:
What to choose? It could be a street sign, a business sign, a
municipal sign, a billboard advertisement, an ad in a métro
station, a sign in a different language, etc. The assortment of
photos posted on the Padlet board will be the source of our
discussions during the March 11th webcam session.
In the second part of that session, each group will lead their
transatlantic friends on a walking tour of their school's
neighborhood using Google StreetView, with everyone looking out
for signs and other highlights in the linguistic landscape.

S. Alexandrov,Yale 3rdYear Heritage Spanish
1. Photosafari. Find and photograph something from each zone.
Caption in Spanish and share on Facebook.
Objective: exploreYale 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”.

Hsiu-hsien Chan
East Asian Languages and Literatures

 The Origins: Hometown andYou (use Social-Geomap)
 Yale Life and Chinese Landscapes in New Haven/Yale
Community (Language Practicum)
 A FieldTrip to MOCA/Chinatown: Museum of Chinese
Americans in NYC (FieldTrip)

1. Self introduction tracing family history of
homes and migrations
1. Write a 300-500 character essay about college
life. Find 3-5 Chinese-related landscapes in
New Haven/Yale Community that connect with
your local life. Conduct an interview or other
research on those landscapes. Sse social-
geomap.
1. A field trip to MOCA/Chinatown in NYC

UC Berkeley - Suwon U. Korean-English telecollaboration (2005)

“Space” is not empty; it is a way of seeing multiple perspectives,
possibilities, subject positions together
 “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).
A spatial approach to language learning requires all our senses
and faculties
 “An object or place achieves concrete reality when our
experience of it is total, that is, through all the senses as well
as with the active and reflective mind” (Doreen Massey,
2005, p. 18).

“layered simultaneities” (Blommaert, 2005)

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).

1.2.
3.
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
• 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
drawing, imagining, interviewing, designing,
storytelling, creating, protesting, enacting, etc…
…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these
Think of tools and
• observation
• listening
• sensing
• recording
…and discussing,
debating, representing,
sharing these
Think of tools and
• contextualizing
• historicizing
• mapping
• categorizing
…and discussing,
debating, representing,
sharing these

Learning from the LL on/near your campus…

Reading (e.g., demographic) boundaries in your city…

2012-3 UC Berkeley Freshman/Sophomore Seminar
Reading the Multilingual City: Chinese, Korean, and
Japanese in Bay Area Linguistic Landscapes
Course description
This seminar explores the power of visible languages in
the Bay Area—the “linguistic landscape” of storefronts,
street signs, billboards, and other spaces of public
display. Considering such realities as the nationwide
English Only movement and California’s ban against
bilingual education, we will ask how meanings that are
written into and read from bilingual signs relate to
controversial issues of societal multilingualism, in the
U.S. and beyond. Focusing on the history and present
state of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese in the landscape,
the seminar will balance in-class discussions with off-
campus field trips.

3-week unit cycles
1st week
• Intro new topic, geographic scale/site, and focal language
• Mini-language lesson from EALC faculty
• LL theoretical & methodological sampler
2nd week
• Site visit with directed activity
• Blog response
3rd week
• Group reflections & analysis
• Student presentations & work toward final project

UC Berkeley Fresh/Soph seminar: Reading the Multilingual City (2012-3)

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.”
Guy Cook, 2010, p. xix
Translation in LanguageTeaching

“A different translation produces a different
original, by emphasizing different faultlines
in the original, that is, by traducing the
original in one way rather than another.The
original is led out into the open where the
translator is obliged to see hitherto hidden
features.”
Joseph Hillis Miller, “Translation as the
double production of texts”, 1992, p. 124
Translation reveals cultural and
linguistic ‘faultlines’

"A translated text should be the site where a
different culture emerges, where a reader
gets a glimpse of a cultural other”
LawrenceVenuti, The translator’s invisibility,
1995, p. 306
Translation as a site of civic action

Translate New Haven classroom-neighborhood-city
sign-making project (Fall-Winter 2016)
Teams of students are “commissioned” by the city of New Haven to
enrich the multilingual identity and visible identity of the city
through translation of English signage, and creation of new Spanish
signs.The city has committed to creating 5 new signs that have been
produced, reviewed and approved by language students and
community stakeholders. Students must take into account
community histories and identities in New Haven, and debate the
linguistic, demographic, cultural, historical, and visual meanings and
‘appropriateness’ of various translation for the specific places where
they are to be located. At all stages, maximal participation is
designed with/solicited from community members. Final translations
are prepared for submission to the city, produced as actual material
signs, and prepared for public display as part of a virtual-visual-
mapping exhibit.

David Malinowski
Yale University Center for Language Study
david.malinowski@yale.edu
@tildensky

Acting on the Linguistic Landscape: Performativity, Translation, and other Possibilities for Language Classroom Intervention

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