Northern Linguistic Landscapes

Research group Northern Linguistic Landscapes. Visual(izing) languages in the North.

The NoLL research group is a network of researchers with a special interest in the study of Linguistic Landscapes. The research group is part of the Humlab focus area on visualization.

Research projects

The language of place-making. A mixed-method analysis of linguistic landscapes (2019-2022)
Coppélie Cocq, Eva Lindgren, Lena Granstedt, Urban Lindgren

This project focuses on linguistic landscapes (languages on signs, billboards, etc) in a traditionally linguistic rich area of Sweden, Norrland.

This project focuses on linguistic landscapes in a traditionally linguistic rich area of Sweden, Norrland. The aim is to investigate how languages, as they materialize in our surroundings, contribute to the making of public spaces. Through a mixed-methods approach, we will describe and analyze which languages are visible and which are not, and relate these findings to demographic, socio-economic, educational and linguistic characteristics of different spaces. This will enable us to understand how urban and rural places are constructed by the use of majority, indigenous and minority languages.

The Production of Schoolscapes

Andreas Nuottaniemi

In this PhD-project, Andreas Nuottaniemi conducted an ethnographic study in two northern schools with diverse student populations. The aim of the study was to explore how language ideologies and relations of power are being (re)produced in the schoolscape (i.e. the linguistic landscape of the school), with a special focus on the representation and experiences of newly arrived and minority students. The project also examined how the language repertoires of the students as well as attitudes to languages and minority groups among policy makers, staff and students, are being reflected in the LL and how changes over time in the linguistic repertoires of students have come to affect the production of educational spaces.