Paul Sebastian
Draft #3
Linguistic Landscape in Schools
According to Landry and Bourhis (1997), linguistic landscape is the “ visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region (p. 23).
Researchers working in the area of linguistic landscape employ a variety of creative approaches to their respective investigations. Furthermore, the locales in which this type of research is conducted are numerous and diverse. Backhaus (2006), for example, analyzed official and unofficial signage in Tokyo and concluded that official signage appeared to be linked to language power while unofficial signage seemed to represent an attempt at solidarity with the global community. Cenoz and Gorter (2006) investigated the prevalence of Basque in San
Sebastian, Spain and Frisian in Friesland, Netherlands and found that due to more transparent and explicit language policies, Basque was more visually represented in San Sebastian than
Frisian in Friesland. A number of other studies mirror these approaches of exploring public signage and draw conclusions regarding social, cultural, and political connections to the evidence they find (Lawrence, 2012; Ben-Rafael et. al., 2006; Huebner, 2006). One context that is not well represented in linguistic landscape research is the school setting.
Dressler (2015), in an attempt to fill this research gap, conducted a study of the linguistic landscape of a German-English bilingual school. She found that teachers were the main signmakers and that their bilingual signs were often extensions of their multilingual philosophies about education. Additionally, Brown (2012) analyzed the linguistic landscape of a schools in
Southeaster Estonia. She found that the majority language, Estonian, overshadowed other regionally spoken languages on signs throughout foyers, classrooms, and other areas of the school. In further justification for linguistic landscape research in the school setting Brown observes that “despite the centrality of schools in perpetuating and disrupting language ideologies, linguistic landscape research has yet to focus extensively on school buildings as a key site for inquiry” (p. 282).
In the light of these studies and in particular consideration of the lack of linguistic landscape research conducted in the school setting, I propose an exploration of signage in the elementary classroom. The purpose of this study is to better understand the nature of signage in the elementary classroom. This understanding will be sought out through a series of semistructure interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), on-site observation (Spradley, 1980), and through an analysis of participant-generated visual representations of signage in the classroom
(Bagnoli, 2009). The following research question will be used to guide the study along:
1.
What is the nature of signage in the elementary classroom?
This overarching question will be explored through four sub-topics including production, change, function, and reflection. An exploration of each of these areas will aid in understanding the nature of signage in the elementary classroom. Linguistic landscape research is still in its infancy and so it may be too early to thoroughly understand the outcomes and implications of this type of work. This study aims to provide some foundational information for later studies that might analyze the greater meaning and influence of different kinds of signs found throughout the linguistic landscape of a school. Given that it would be difficult to extrapolate meaning from a

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Draft #3 school’s linguistic landscape without first knowing what is there, this study aims to describe and explore these ideas in attempt to provide a helpful point of departure for additional study in this area.
Literature Review
One subset of the broader idea of semiotics is the study of signs as literal and tangible objects as they might exist in any given social landscape. It is based on this literal interpretation of semiotics that a group of researchers, mostly linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists, have been exploring the area of linguistic landscape. The term linguistic landscape was seminally defined by Landry and Bourhis (1997) which paved the way for a number of subsequently related and yet unique studies on the topic. In this review of the literature, I aim to illustrate some common threads that link together these studies on linguistic landscape while at the same time highlighting some key contributions of each. Furthermore, I will demonstrate how the school is one particular context that can benefit from linguistic landscape research.
Linguistic Landscape beyond the School
In considering the great variety in geographical locations in which linguistic landscape research is conducted, one might conclude that the field lacks a touch of cohesion or continuity.
However, in reflecting on some of the recent studies in this area, some unifying patterns are certainly present. These patterns include linguistic landscape and representation, language power, globalization, and multilingualism (Backhaus, 2006; Ben-Rafael et. al., 2006; Cenoz &
Durk, 2006; Huebner, 2006; Pietikäinen et. al., 2011; Sayer, 2009). These are topics that unite the field and that run through almost every study that I’ve come across thus far in my review.
Researchers have explored these broad ideas by analyzing which languages appear on signs, where the signs are located throughout cities and other public spaces, and have also looked into policies and laws that might be cause for a more prominent representation of one language over another. Additionally these researchers have explored details regarding text size, shape, and placement on a sign in order to infer meaning from these decisions. While these studies have predominantly focused on signage in public space, some studies have narrowed in on the specific context of the school.
Linguistic Landscape within the School
Dressler’s (2015) study on linguistic landscape in the school setting carries these general themes and ideas into the context of a bilingual school where she hones in on the extent to which signage can promote bilingualism. In her study of a German-English bilingual school she analyzed signs throughout the school in an attempt to measure the degree to which signage promoted bilingualism. She took used digital photography to catalogue the signs in the school.
She then conducted focus groups with the teachers who created some of the signs and showed them slides of the photographs she had taken while asking them about their decision making process. Dressler investigated what kinds of signs were in the school, what languages were used on the signs, where they were located, and whether they produced professionally but a company or individually by the teachers themselves. Her ultimate conclusions were that signage in the school did not explicitly promote bilingualism. She calls for more explicit purpose in sign

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Draft #3 creation, placement, and content that is directed towards promoting bilingualism as a reflection of the school’s purpose and mission. This moves beyond the paradigm of representation and into to realm of active promotion and to the extent that linguistic landscape can affect those who live within it.
As further evidence of the importance of rich purpose-driven linguistic landscape in the elementary classroom Giles and Tunks (2010) argued that the print surroundings, particularly those of the elementary classroom, have a significant impact on the members of that environment. Prior (2009) also reinforces this idea stating that “experiences with environmental print help children make connections between the informal literacy experiences they have at home and the more formal ones they engage in at school. She later goes on to describe a wide variety of signage that can also have an interactive component to it rather than serving simply as a display of information. As a particular benefit to English language learners learning a complex subject like mathematics, Moschkovich (2012) writes that English learners should “draw on multiple resources available in classrooms – such as objects, drawings, graphs, and gestures – as well as home languages and experiences outside of school” (p. 18). With my study I hope to take a few steps back in an attempt to gather a solid foundation of knowledge from which to then proceed. I hope to find out more about what kinds of signs exist in the elementary classroom, some of the decision making processes involved, and how the signs and the classroom members are connected to one another. Instead using these studies as a jumping off point, I am using them to frame a handful of more basic questions about the reality of signage one specific context.
Once this foundation has been gained, venturing forth into the areas of representation, language power, language promotion, and other ideas will be better served.
There are many questions that still remain in the area of linguistic landscape and the exciting thing about the field is that it is quite possible that questions will always remain. There is always another context, another culture, another society, and another landscape to be investigated. One question that perhaps is worth asking at this stage in the development of the field is what other unifying themes might be explored. I believe that the link between signage and pedagogy is one such theme that can benefit largely from further research and that Dressler
(2015), in particular, has opened the door for similar follow-up studies. Dressler concludes her study by stating that “linguistic landscape research in schools is an area of research ripe for expansion” (p. 142). She calls for additional studies in educational settings including bilingual schools where the relationship between signage and bilingualism can be further measured. This current project aims to contribute, at least in part, to closing the gap of context by exploring the semiotics of the classroom as perceived by teachers. In attempt to synthesize the current scope of research in linguistic landscape, I’ve included a matrix of some of the studies discussed in this section
Table 1
Overview of Recent Linguistic Landscape Studies
Authors and Date Setting Questions Findings

Backhaus (2006)
Ben-Rafael et. al.
(2006)
Cenoz & Gorter
(2006)
Dressler (2015)
Huebner (2006)
Lawrence (2012)
Paul Sebastian
Draft #3
Public spaces in the city Tokyo, Japan
Public spaces in
Israeli cities and East
Jerusalem
Public space in San
Sebastian, Spain and
Friesland,
Netherlands
German-English bilingual school in
Canada
Neighborhoods in
Bangkok, Thailand
Public space in Seoul,
Korea
How do official and non-official signs differ?
To what extent does the linguistic landscape reflect the ethnolinguistic diversity of Israel?
What is the relationship between linguistic landscape and language policy for minority languages?
How do the signmaking practices of teachers in a German bilingual program promote bilingualism?
How does English influence the varieties of Thai found in the environmental print in the city?
What languages appear on signage throughout Seoul?
Official signs reinforce power and non-official signs reinforce global solidarity.
Signs are misrepresentative of the ethnolinguistic diversity of Israel.
There is a strong relationship between explicit and advocacy-based language policy and the prevalence of minority languages in the linguistic landscape.
Found that the majority of the signs were English-only and bottom-up and did not promote
German-English bilingualism.
Found that English did have a prominent representation in the
LL. Also drew conclusions regarding speech community boundaries and LL’s representation of community.
Ratios of language representation varied among sections of
Seoul and with respect to where the signs were found
(main street, alley way, inside store, etc.).

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Draft #3
Pietikäinen et. al.
(2011)
Sayer (2009)
Signs in seven villages above the
Arctic Circle
Public signs in
Mexico
How are languages used in the LL? What are the factors that shape the LL? How are endangered indigenous and minority languages represented?
Why do people in
Oaxaca use English in public spaces?
Found evidence of national language, local minority language, and global languages in the LL.
These levels varied with regard to where the signs were found and with respect to the purpose or function of the sign.
English is used for a variety of purposes include for its prestige, place in popular culture, brand associations, and others.
Project Contributions
I’ll be honest in admitting that the contributions of this project, at least to the wider field of study, will be quite minimal. However, in considering the practical experience that I will gain with the qualitative data collection methods, the breadth of knowledge that I will have gained on the topic of linguistic landscape research, and the foundation that some of these data will provide for a future dissertation, the project certainly has its merits. I hope to use this current project as a starting point for future exploration of the linguistic landscape in school settings both here in the
United States as well as school settings abroad. This first foray into teachers’ thoughts and perceptions of the signs that surround them will be very valuable as I start to lay the foundation for this future research.
Methods
Theoretical Framework
Linguistic landscape as a field of research is perhaps a very literal application of semiotic theory. Semiotics, or semiology, refers to the broader concept of signifier and signified as described by Ferdinand de Saussure (Culler, 1976). In this broader field, a signifier could be anything that conveys meaning. [place holder for later development]
Participants
Participants for this study include three elementary school teachers. Two of the three teachers were in their first semester of student teaching. The third teacher was a veteran teacher who is currently in her # year of teaching. All three teachers were female. The participants were selected as a convenience sample and chosen because they were currently teaching at the elementary level. Apart from all teaching at the elementary level, the three participants differed

Paul Sebastian
Draft #3 quite a bit on a number of scales. From a research perspective, this variability was acceptable given the exploratory nature of the study and the emphasis on signage of the elementary classroom. Future phases of this project might seek to isolate these possible participant variables and control for them as potential influencing factors. A summarizing table has been included here to give the reader a better idea of the participants. The names that are used in this report are pseudonyms.
Table 2
Participant descriptors
Participant
Alisha
Helen
Isabel
Years teaching
Student teacher – 1 st semester
Veteran teacher in her # year of teaching
Student teacher – 1 st semester
Current grade level
2 nd
Grade
Title 1 teacher working with grades 1-4
Kindergarten
School setting
Bilingual charter school
Rural public school
Bilingual charter school
I was initially curious about the signage within the specific context of the bilingual classroom and this may very well be a context that I will explore in the future but this study was a bit broader in scope in that it looked more generally at the elementary classroom. Even though
Alisha is teaching in a bilingual school, she teaches in the English half of the program and so her experience was probably more similar to Helen’s than it was to Isabel’s.
Data collection
Data collection for this study consisted of three sources which included semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), observation (Spradley, 1980), and documents created by the participants during the interviews (Bangoli, 2009). The bulk of the data will be drawn from the interviews with additional insights included from the participant-generated documents and the observation session. The documents were sketches provided by the interviewees of what they could recollect from their classroom signage. As all interviews took place outside of the classroom, participants drew from their memory as they thought about what kinds of signs were found in their own classrooms. The inclusion of participant-generated drawings was used in attempt to both elicit additional data that might not emerge through a spoken format and also as a sort of talking point throughout the interview as the participants referred to their sketches while answering the interview questions. Again, this visual and artistic data collection process was very much informed by Anna Bangoli’s (2009) study which employed graphic elicitation and art-based methods to deepen the data collection during the interview process.
The interview protocol was design with the overarching research question in mind. Each question sought to define some subset of the broader idea of the nature of signage in the elementary language classroom. Interestingly, one question as added during the first interview and adopted in the following two interviews. This additional and unplanned question referred to the inverse correlation of decreased signage with increase in grade level. A list of the questions used during the interview is included to give a better sense of the data that were elicited. Each

Paul Sebastian
Draft #3 question was associated with a different topic butt his topic was not necessarily made explicit to the interviewee. The following table demonstrates the topics and their associated questions.
Table 3
Interview Protocol and Related Topics
Topic
Variety
Change
Function
Reflection
Question
Trying to visualize as best you can the classroom in which you work, please sketch some of the signs that are posted in the space.
How often are signs put up, taken down, or altered in your classroom?
What are the reasons for which these changes are implemented?
In which ways do you interact with the signs in your classroom?
In which ways do your students interact with the signs in your classroom?
In which ways do you think signs in your classroom reflect your personal ideas/philosophies about teaching and learning?
In which ways do you think signs in your classroom reflect your students?
Inverse correlation How do you think your classroom differs from classrooms at the high school or college level? What might be the reasons behind those differences?
Two of the interviews, those conducted with Alisha and Isabel were conducted in the researcher’s office. The third interview was conducted in the researcher’s home as the interviewee, Helen, is a close friend. It is worth noting that all three of the interviewees seemed to have difficulties with the first task of sketching the signage in their classroom from memory. It appeared that this difficulty was caused more from a lack of artistic ability to represent that signage and not necessarily from a lack of memory of the space. The interviewees were all conducted within a three week period during fall of 2015. Some initial coding of the first interview transcript had begun by the time the third and final interview took place. The last component of data collection was a one-hour observation session in which one of the participants, Alisha, was observed as she taught in her classroom. Particular attention was given to how she and her students interacted with the signage there.
Data analysis
Data from the first interview with Alisha were transcribed and the coded using attribute, structural, descriptive, in vivo, and focused coding as describe by Saldaña (2013). Each coding session informed the next which culminated in a visual hierarchical representation of the codes and categories. Although perhaps atypical to using so many coding strategies on one set of data, this task allowed for a very interesting and robust analysis and served as a basis for the coding of the subsequent interviewees. After coding the first interview, four areas related to the overarching idea of the nature of signage began to emerge. These were, as already stated as subsets to the research question, change, function, production, and reflection. Within these broad categories or themes, the more detailed topics of permanency, interaction, co-construction, and

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Draft #3 even empathy are explored. A chart is included which describes the codes and categories in a hierarchical distribution. Coding this first set of data had a profound impact on the study in that it allowed for a shifting and rearranging of the research questions. What were at first three separate questions were then collapsed into one single question with four areas of emphasis that would aid in answering the broader idea of the nature of signage.

Paul Sebastian
Draft #3
Figure 1. Codes and Categories
Production Change
What is the nature of signage in the elementary classroom?
Function Reflection
Bottom-up sign production
We decorated
Co-construction
Drawing
Posters Permanency
To benefit student learning and covering material
Display student work Location Reflection of teacher
Purchased signage White board writing
Interact with (learning resource)
Use them without being told to
Hanging on the wall
What she thinks the kids need go to a lot of effort Signs as anchor charts
They were looking up
(eye level)
Empathetic to student perspective (linked also to location of signage)
Buletin boards He Cares
Joke around with it
Teachers don't think they need them as much

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Draft #3
During the initial phases of data analysis, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a colleague at which time they were able to use my codes and descriptions to code sections from
Alisha’s interview. This process… [include reflection after tonight’s class on how the experience impacted the study, can talk about inter-rater reliability here for example]
After completing this study, a copy of this report will be distributed to the three participants and they will be ask to corroborate the findings and impression that have been articulated. This will be an attempt to increase the validity of these inferences in making sure that the participant’s voice is not being misrepresented in the analysis.
Subjectivities
It is important to note that as the researcher, I have no practical experience in teaching at the elementary level. My teaching has been at the post-secondary levels and within the specific context of language and applied linguistics. Furthermore it has been my experience that in teaching in the post-secondary level classroom there is very little integration or purposeful use of signs. [flesh out a little more in writing draft #4]
References
Backhaus, P. (2006). Multilingualism in Tokyo: A look into the linguistic landscape.
International Journal of Multilingualism 3 (1), 52-66.
Bagnoli, A. (2009). Beyond the standard interview: the use of graphic elicitation and arts-based methods. Qualitative Research, 9 (5), 547–570.
Ben-Rafael, E., Shohamy, E., Hasan Amara, M., & Trumper-Hecht, N. (2006). Linguistic landscape as symbolic construction of the public space: The case of Israel. International
Journal of Multilingualism (3) 1, 7-30.
Brown, K. (2012). The linguistic landscape of educational spaces: Language revitalization and schools in southeastern Estonia. In D. Gorter, H. Marten, & L. Van Mensel (Eds.),
Minority languages in the linguistic landscape (pp. 281-298). New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2006). Linguistic landscape and minority languages. International
Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1), 67-80.
Culler, J. (1976). Ferdinand de Saussure . New York: Cornell University Pres.
Dressler, R. (2015). Signgeist: Promoting bilingualism through the linguistic landscape of school signage. International Journal of Multilingualism, 12 (1), 128-145.
Giles R. M., & Tunks, K. W. (2010). Children write their world: Environmental print as a teaching tool. Dimensions of Early Childhood, 38 (3), 23-29.
Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The study of the linguistic landscape as a new approach to multilingualism. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1), 1-6.
Huebner, T. (2006). Bangkok’s linguistic landscapes: Environmental print, codemixing, and language change. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3 (1), 31-51.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Landry, R., & Bourhis, R. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16 (1), 23-49.
Lawrence, B. C. (2015). The Korean English linguistic landscape. Word Englishes, 31 (1), 70-92.
Moschkovich, J. (2012). 2012, January). Mathematics, the Common Core, and language . Paper presented at the Understanding Language Conference, Stanford University.
Pietikäinen, S., Lane, P., Salo, H., & Laihiala-Kankainen, S. (2011). Frozen actions in the Arctic linguistic landscape: A nexus analysis of language processes in visual space.
International Journal of Multilingualism, 8 (4) , 277-298.
Sayer, P. (2009). Using the linguistic landscape as a pedagogical resource. ELT Journal, 64 , 143-
154.
Spradley, J.P. (1980). Participant observation . Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc.