Course code

KOI7052.FK

old course code

Course title in Estonian

Keelemaastiku uuringud

Course title in English

Linguistic Landscape Studies

ECTS credits

3.0

Assessment form

Examination

lecturer of 2023/2024 Spring semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

lecturer of 2024/2025 Autumn semester

Not opened for teaching. Click the study programme link below to see the nominal division schedule.

Course aims

The central objective of this course is to introduce the recent theoretical and methodological developments in the field of Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS). One of the major contributions of LLS is to provide a framework for a coherent understanding of the context in which human and social relationships take place, by focusing on the different languages and linguistic forms that share a physical space. Naturally, this has implications for the field of intercultural communication. By the end of the course, students will be acquainted with the field of LLS, and how it can inform our knowledge about intercultural communication and positively add to the study of it.

Brief description of the course

The basic theoretical developments around the core concepts (LLS and intercultural communication) will be introduced. Students will participate in a mini-ethnographic fieldwork in order to gather data and conduct observations of the linguistic landscape and the centrality of language(s) and linguistic forms in that context. Students will also conduct brief ethnographic interviews with people in different sites (shop assistants, information staff, clerks, etc.) to find out about the language(s) they need in their everyday work-related activities and the kind of trainings they receive or have received in order to communicate following specific patterns. The group will resume in a final session to discuss about the findings of the mini-ethnographic fieldwork trips and their relevance and relationship to the theories presented and discussed in the frame of the course.

Learning outcomes in the course

Upon completing the course the student:
- demonstrates knowledge of the topics (top-down, bottom-up, linguistic ideology, sociolinguistics of globalization, truncated multilingualism, Super-Diversity) covered throughout the course.

Teacher

Anastassia Zabrodskaja