Malinowski @ CALICO2015: A 3-Layered Approach for (Technology-Based) Language Learning in the...

Finding Language in Place: A 3-Layered Approach for (Technology-Based) Language Learning in the Linguistic Landscape

CALICO 2015University of Colorado, Boulder

May 29

David MalinowskiCenter for Language Study

Yale [email protected]

Goals for today

1. Present a framework for scaffolding critical, grounded, and self-reflexive language learning activities outside the classroom, in the city WHAT

2. Offer one response to the implicit CALICO 2015 question of how “Places and Spaces” can redefine language learning by drawing lessons from linguistic landscape research HOW

3. Invite collaboration on establishing, implementing learning projects in the linguistic landscape WHY

A visual metaphor for today…

And a walk this morningwith Evernotelooking for signs of culture

So there was the strip mall...the antithesis of LL. Why didn't I think of starting my picture taking at Safeway? Because there's nothing there. No culture... (Augé?)

Then, crossing the street…

What undermines the authenticity of Pizzeria Da Lupo? We could look at the elements of the sign, its name, but even more than that, well...Larkburger??

And though I've crossed the street, still, the strip mall.

The essence of 'East meets West' in the Tokyo Joe’s fonts? But then what do you do with that period? I want to check their menu for "Sloppy Yokohama Joe”

I need to see the menu.

I get a little closer to find build-your-own-bowls. So...Chipotle gone Japanese-ish? What would Yoshino-ya think?

Have to get myself a Flatiron Meal Plan, apparently.

While tapping this note out, this someone carved into the wet concrete...this says more to me about what's real about this place than any of the signs I've seen so far. But who would I ask to be able to read this? Who here would know?

And, meanwhile, or before I knew it in the first place, I guess I'm in "the Village"?

Right here in front of Tokyo Joe’s.

And what picture collection isn’t complete without a selfie?

the place of linguistic landscape in language teaching and learning

• The “spatial turn” in the social sciences (e.g., Harvey 1989, Massey 1994, Soja 1989)

• “Space” not empty; a way to see “the simultaneity of stories-thus-far”; “the complexity and openness of the configurational itself” (Massey 2005, 12 & 13)

• “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” (p. 18).

context :: space

ACTFL National Standards for Foreign Language Education

The 5 C’s in context of multilingual texts, neighborhoods: • Connections (“Students reinforce and further their

knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language”);

• Comparisons (“Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language/the concept of culture through comparisons of the language and cultures studied and their own”);

• Communities (“Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting”)

translingual, transcultural competence

Cultural, ideological, subjective positioning of self and other with code choice: “[Students] learn to comprehend speakers of the target language as members of foreign societies and to grasp themselves as Americans—that is, as members of a society that is foreign to others” (MLA, 2007)

civic awareness, cosmopolitan ethics, and community-based language learning

● 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, and Area Studies, University of Southampton course documentation)

multimodal literacies

• “different aspects of meaning are carried in different ways by each mode” (Jewitt and Kress, 2003, p. 3)

• New London Group (1996) identifies Linguistic, Audio, Visual, Gestural, Spatial, and Multimodal Design as distinct and interrelated meaning-making processes

• “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)

the place of linguistic landscape in language teaching and learning

Urban sociolinguistics Globalization and transnational (strong Fr. tradition) flows of people, products, info

Language policyUrban studies Language planningCultural geography

Environmentalpsychology

Multimodal, spatial, material “turns” in social Proliferation of image,theory & discourse studies geospatial technologies

some originsWhat is “linguistic landscape,” and why does it matter?

Social semioticsGeosemioticsNexus analysis

definitions

“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

"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

consequences

• 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

Prior to Japanese internment in World War II, USA

The LL (still) tells us where we are and where to go…

…and how to move and behave…

…who to be…

…who you are and where you belong…

…and where you don’t.

A sampling: Research in linguistic landscape

• Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2008). The linguistic landscape as an additional source of input in second language acquisition.

• Chern, C. -l., & Dooley, K. (2014). Learning English by walking down the street.

• Dagenais, D., Moore, D., Sabatier, C., Lamarre, P., & Armand, F. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness.

• Malinowski, D. (2010). Showing seeing in the Korean linguistic cityscape.

• Rowland, L. (2012). The pedagogical benefits of a linguistic landscape project in Japan.

• Sayer, P. (2009). Using the Linguistic Landscape as a Pedagogical Resource.

• Shohamy, E., & Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic landscape as an ecological arena: Modalities, meanings, negotiations, education.

Language teaching & learning in the linguistic landscape literature

Language teaching & learning in the linguistic landscape literature

…linguistic…pragmatic…intercultural…multimodal, multiliterate…critical, sociocultural, reflective

competences

LL as opportunity to cultivate students’…

Various activities used in language classes

• Walking, observation, note-taking on “three dimensions of the LL that include the geographical, the sociological, and the linguistic aspects of the geosemiotic system” and chart these using X-Y coordinate system

• Students photograph instances of TL in everyday environments• Print, discuss, and classify photos according to “purpose” of TL• Neighborhood descriptions and exchange of narrative texts with

partner schools in other cities/regions• Drawings of familiar or favorite places and elicitation by T of

languages seen, heard in these places• Hand-drawn mapping activities• Discussion, writing activities on questions of legitimacy and

illegitimacy, power and representation in neighborhood spaces

Should learning in and about place be made more relevant for language students?

How can learning in and about place be made more relevant for language students?

“Lefebvre in the language classroom”?

Henri Lefebvre’s The production of space (1991) pushing innovation in LL methodologies

Trumper-Hecht (2010) analysis of Arab and Jewish walkers’ perceptions of Arabic & Hebrew in Upper Nazareth

1) Investigation of official policy2) Documentation of LL as visible to

the researcher, and reading 1) in light of 2)

3) Surveys and interviews with everyday residents, reading 1) and 2) in light of 3)

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).

Thinking in “threes”

we know and producespaces that are…

how can we cultivatelearning spaces that are…

Learning from the LL on/near your campus…

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

A walk this morningin Boulderlooking for signs of culture


I get a little closer [to Tokyo Joe’s front door] to find “build-your-own-bowls”…


While tapping this note out, this someone carved into the wet concrete


And hm okay so I guess I'm in "the Village"? Right in front of Tokyo Joe's:

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • observation • listening• sensing• recording …and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these


And hm okay so I guess I'm in "the Village"? Right in front of Tokyo Joe's:

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate… • contextualizing • historicizing• mapping• categorizing…and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these


While tapping this note out, this someone carved into the wet concrete...this says more to me about what's real about this place than any of the signs I've seen so far. But who would I ask to be able to read this? Who here would know?


this says more to me about what's real about this place than any of the signs I've seen so far. But who would I ask to be able to read this? Who here would know?


Get a little closer to find build-your-own-bowls. So...Chipotle gone Japanese-ish? What would Yoshino-ya think?

Think of tools and techniques to facilitate drawing, imagining, interviewing, designing, storytelling, creating, protesting, enacting, etc……and discussing, debating, representing, sharing these

Responses and directions

2015 Linguistic Landscape “walks” with language faculty at Yale


2015-6 Rethinking local approaches to big data


2015-6?? Revisiting telecollaboration for language learning in the linguistic landscape


Our project together

Thank you! 감사합니다

[email protected]

Malinowski @ CALICO2015: A 3-Layered Approach for (Technology-Based) Language Learning in the...

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