A Collaborative Asset Mapping Approach to the Linguistic Landscape: Learning from the community’s Linguistic Capital in an L2 College-Writing Course

Abstract

AbstractThe Language Capital Project is a collaborative linguistic asset-mapping project that identifies non-residential locations in Tucson, Arizona, where languages other than English are present. This chapter introduces the project and theoretically situates it as LL research with a sociolinguistic justice approach. Through this approach, LL research is done alongside the language community members themselves, drawing from their knowledge and lived experience. This leads to a more complete understanding of the linguistic landscape, particularly minoritized community spaces, and it challenges homogenous, monolingual narratives of the southwest. After introducing the methods and outcomes of the project, the chapter presents an exploratory pilot case study of two undergraduate L2, first-year writing students who participated in the project as part of an extra credit assignment. This exploratory pilot case study showed that the students who participated in the project reported having had a positive experience as well as shifts in roles and transformational identity experiences.