Multilingualism in Transitions (MultiTrans)

September 2023: MultiTrans at Linguistic Landscape Workshop 14, Madrid

Ragni Vik Johnsen, Tamás Péter Szabó and Hilde Sollid organized a panel at Linguistic Landscape Workshop 14 in beautiful Madrid.

 

The theme of LL14 was Dystopia and utopia, which we took as an opportunity to discuss “Historically minoritized languages in public spaces – moving towards utopia?”. 

In addition to an introduction, the program included examples from Aotearoa/New Zealand (Sharon Harvey), Romania (Petteri Laihonen and Enikő Biró), Norway (Ragni Vik, Johnsen, Hilde Sollid and Tamás Péter Szabó), and Mexico (Haley De Korne). Pia Lane was the panel discussant. 

The panel was a great opportunity to get feedback on ideas about the linguistic landscape analyses of the situation of historically minoritized languages in public spaces. Although the panel showed that there are example of erasure and traces of violence in the linguistic landscapes in the different contexts, there are also positive developments. The panel ended on a hopeful note, discussing how we can get to better futures for minoritized languages.

The panel: Ragni, Hilde, Petteri, Tamás, Pia, Haley, Enikő and Sharon. (Photo: Edina Krompák)