Linguistic Landscape Analysis for Educational Contexts:
Schools Unpacked | Speaker: Dr. Roswita Dressler
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
7:00-8:00pm
Online - Eastern US Time
Free registration by e-mail to TESOL@umbc.edu
Summary
Linguistic Landscape Analysis is a methodology that allows researchers to examine how languages are used on signs in specific contexts. While early adopters of the methodology envisioned examining the signs in and around schools, work on schoolscapes only began to emerge in the last 10 years. Schools provide an interesting context for linguistic landscape analysis since some of their signs fall under policy guidelines, whereas others organically appear as teachers choose to post them. In some cases, either guided by teachers or on their own, students are signmakers. Yet, little is known about how school signs interact with the signs of the neighborhoods in which they are situated. Do they exist as islands within their neighborhoods or is there interaction, either one-way or two-way? In particular, how are languages of the instruction and languages within the demographics of the neighborhoods reflected or interrelated? As an example of how such questions can be addressed in schoolscape research, I will present a recent study of schools in Canada that offer minority language Bilingual Programs and the linguistic landscape of the neighborhoods around the schools. Findings revealed the dominance of English in the schools and multilingual neighborhoods and the influence of schoolscapes on their neighborhoods. This talk will be of interest to those interested in linguistic landscape as a methodology and bilingual education research conducted in other countries.
Dr. Roswita Dressler is an Associate Professor, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. Her research examines Second Language Teaching and Learning. She is a former teacher of German and French as Second Language (FSL) in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia. In 2020, she was awarded the Robert Roy Award by the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers.
Free Registration
Free registration by e-mail to TESOL@umbc.edu
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