The Future of Education

In this paper we attempt to explore how the theory of landscape can be applied to language awareness and language learning. We intend to draw conclusions from landscape, identity building and motivation theories and consider their application to language promotion and language learning.

As a way of case studies, we will be using material we have developed as part of three EU funded projects involving  12 EU countries, developed between 2005 and 2014. Material in 14 languages (incl. minority languages and languages in bilingual environment) were collected in urban environments and included: photos of symbols, signs and landscape of  15 cities and towns in Europe carefully selected based on a thematic typology, short videos and films in the same cities and towns, online games and printed publications (language learning and storytelling books). As part of three EU funded projects - Signs in the City and Beyond Signs in the City (www.signsinthecity.net)  and Tell me a Story (www.tellmeastory.eu) we have explored how the use of city signs and symbols (street signs, bar, restaurant, shop, banks, post office, graffiti and anything else ‘printed’ as part of a city) can tell a lot more about the culture than history ever could and can also be used as a means for language learning and language comparison.

Language sciences have no tradition of the study of landscape, which has rather been used in disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, geography, architecture and the arts. Although language landscape is rapidly developing as a discipline this still remains an area which is underexplored as part of language motivation and language learning.

Linguistic landscape is a concept used in sociolinguistics and has been mostly related to multilingualism. Studies in this area are relatively recent but the linguistic landscape paradigm is growing rapidly. The languages used in public signs indicate what languages are locally relevant, or give evidence of what languages are becoming locally relevant (Shohamy 2010; Kasanga 2012).

Our research and methodology from EU project development having been tested in several EU countries demonstrates that there is clearly a case for interdisciplinary work in the area of language landscape in urban settings. City signs provide an easy, visual and clear way to promote language and culture while they also provide excellent material for language learning in ‘real life’ situations and indeed for comparative linguistic analysis.

We will be drawing conclusions and present recommendations for further research and European collaboration in this field of study. These will include interdisciplinary approaches to research and link between academia and EU project management . We expect conclusions from our research can be applied to the development of business and training material for students, tourists and tour guides as well as promotional materials for local authorities and the tourism and language learning sectors.