Multimodality, Language Learning and the Linguistic Landscape

This presentation focuses on the role that the linguistic landscape, in the sense of all the written language in the public space (billboards, language signs, graffiti, posters, commercial signs), can have in learning and using languages at school. The linguistic landscape has symbolic and informative functions and it is multimodal, because it combines visual and printed texts, and multilingual, because it uses several languages. The first part of this paper focuses on the characteristics of the linguistic landscape and the way meaning is created by combining different modes and languages. The second part of the paper focuses on the potential use of the linguistic landscape as a source of input in language learning and language use in bilingual and multilingual schools. In this context the linguistic landscape will be related to the acquisition of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. The paper also focuses on the role of the linguistic landscape in the acquisition of multimodal literacy skills and multicompetence as related to awareness raising in language learning.