Conflict and Exclusion: The Linguistic Landscape as an Arena of Contestation

Abstract

This book is anchored within current issues and debates in the field of linguistic landscape research (Backhaus, 2006; Gorter et al., 2012; Helot et al., 2012; Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010; Shohamy and Gorter, 2009; Shohamy et al., 2010) and focuses on the dynamics of the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion and dissent often arising from mechanisms of language policy, language politics, language hierarchies and the ethno-linguistic struggles engendered by them. In light of the increasing scholarly attention linguistic landscape research has been receiving at present, and its expansion into new areas of inquiry, it is our belief that the time is ripe for a book which tackles not only how linguistic landscape represents discursive and semiotic signage that is indexical of ethnolinguistic vitality (Landry and Bourhis, 1997), but also crucially, acts as a site of identity construction and representation (Ben Said and Shegar, 2013; Benwell and Stokoe, 2006; Curtin, 2009; Hanauer, 2010). The primary aim of the book is therefore to conceptualize the linguistic landscape as a site for the propagation and production of particular ideologies through textual/linguistic/semiotic artifacts (Lanza and Woldemariam, 2009; Sloboda, 2009), whereby languages are marginalized and concealed, but also sometimes used as a vehicle for social contestation, thus impacting in a number of ways the local readership, community, as well as ethnolinguistic vitality of sociolinguistic groups.