Developing Critical Sociolinguistic Awareness Through Linguistic Landscapes in a Mixed Classroom: The Case of Spanish in Texas

Abstract

Mainstream educational systems often replicate and perpetuate socio-political views, and therefore, it is not surprising that the social and cultural value of minority languages is often disregarded and overlooked. Aiming at developing tools to enhance students’ critical awareness toward the value of these languages and the communities that use them, this chapter operationalizes linguistic landscapes (hereafter LLs) as a pedagogical tool in an advanced Spanish course among a mixed group of students (i.e., a combination of Spanish as a second language and heritage language learners). With a sharp focus on US Spanish and adopting an applied (socio)linguistic approach, we report on the effects of implementing a didactic unit evolving around the notion of LLs at the college level. The unit consisted of teacher-led lectures, readings, homework assignments, students’ analyses and reflections of an adapted version of an original LL dataset, and an ethnographic project. Qualitative data were obtained through questionnaires, written reflections, and the final project. The results reveal that LL-based pedagogies may provide students with a toolkit to enhance their sociolinguistic awareness, develop a critical perspective on local/community languages in their area, and how these languages co-exist alongside official/majority languages.