Book notice: Linguistic Landscape

[Harold Schiffman]

Linguistic Landscape
Expanding the Scenery
Edited by Elana Shohamy, Durk Gorter

Price: $135.00
Add to Cart

ISBN: 978-0-415-98872-8
Binding: Hardback (also available in Paperback)
Published by: Routledge
Publication Date: 25th August 2008
Pages: 392
About the Book

In this comprehensive and pioneering volume, language scholars from
around the world examine the "linguistic landscape" from multiple
perspectives - theoretical, methodological, and critical. Written by
widely recognized experts, the articles in Linguistic Landscape:
Expanding the Scenery analyze linguistic landscapes in a range of
international contexts. Dozens of photographs illustrate the use of
language in the environment - the words and images displayed and
exposed in public spaces. Suitable for graduate or advanced
undergraduate students in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and
language policy studies, Linguistic Landscape is a vital contribution
to a burgeoning field.

Reviews
"Linguistic Landscape charts new territory by expanding the
methodological, theoretical, and empirical boundaries of the field. It
is essential reading for all interested in this rapidly growing area
of research."

-Kendall King, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University, USA


"This book is a substantial expansion of the framework for studies of
'linguistic landscape'. Only a decade after its coinage, the term is
becoming a major focus of sociolinguistics, attracting myriad
theoretical and methodological approaches and revealing manifold
practical and political implications. It is the wealth of aspects and
contexts as well as the multitude of research perspectives which makes
this volume extremely rewarding reading for the expert as well as the
student or the language planning and policy practitioner."

Ulrich Ammon, Professor of Sociolinguistics, University of
Duisburg-Essen, Germany

"With this collection, Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter have demonstrated
just how productive the notion 'linguistic landscape' has been in
furthering our understanding of language attitudes and of the role of
language in multilingual societies. Just as importantly, the
individual contributors validate the theoretical power of the
construct. It's welcome to have both aspects addressed so
comprehensively and so competently in one book."

-Margie S. Berns, Purdue University, USA

About the Author(s)
Elana Shohamy is a Professor and Chair of Language Education program
at the School of Education, Tel-Aviv University. Her research focuses
on language policy in education and societies within a framework of
critical applied linguistics, specifically in relation to immigrants
and minority groups, rights and activism. In the past few years she
has worked extensively on the topic of linguistic landscape,
specifically documenting the LL of Israel with its linguistic
complexity (Ben Rafael, Shohamy, et al. 2006) and on topics related to
language in the public space including LL of tourism and education.
Her recent books include: The Languages of Israel (1999, with Bernard
Spolsky, Multilingual Matters), The Power of Tests: Critical
perspective of the use of language tests (2001, Longman); and Language
policy: Hidden Agendas and New Approaches (2006). She is currently
working on a manuscript entitled: 'In the name of language', examining
among others methods of revival of Hebrew. Prof Shohamy is also the
current editor of the journal Language Policy.



Durk Gorter is now Ikerbasque Research Professor at the Faculty of
Education of the University of the Basque Country in San
Sebastian/Donostia, where he carries out work on multilingualism and
minority languages. From 1979 to 2007 he was a researcher in the
sociology of language and head of the department of social sciences at
the Fryske Akademy in Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Since 1994
he has been part-time full professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam
in the sociolinguistics of Frisian. He has been involved in survey
studies of the Frisian language situation and European minority
languages, on which he has published numerous books and articles. He
also does comparative work on the education of minority languages in
the framework of the Mercator-Education project. He edited a book
called Linguistic Landscape: a New Approach to Multilingua

(c) 2007 Routledge, member of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business

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