Space/place matters

Christopher Stroud,Quentin Williams,Tommaso M Milani

doi:10.14426/mm.v4i1.48

Abstract

This special issue of Multilingual Margins on the theme of “Space/place matters” has its origin in a doctoral summer school organised in December 2016 by the Department of Linguistics and the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape as part of a collaboration with the University of Oslo and three other South African universities – Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand – and financed by Research Council of Norway’s programme International Partnerships for Excellent Education, Research and Innovation (INTPART). Doctoral students based in Norway and South Africa attended the summer school, presented their research projects, and were encouraged to submit an article to Multilingual Margins. This was with a view to training budding scholars to deal with the peer-review process of academic publishing. This special issue is the material outcome of this process and includes three articles that have a common interest in unpicking the complex relationship between language and space/place.

Highlights

This special issue of Multilingual Margins on the theme of “Space/ place matters” has its origin in a doctoral summer school organised in December 2016 by the Department of Linguistics and the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape as part of a collaboration with the University of Oslo and three other South African universities – Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand – and financed by Research Council of Norway’s programme International Partnerships for Excellent Education, Research and Innovation (INTPART)
The notions of space/place have always played an important role in sociolinguistic inquiry
Linguistic Landscape (LL) research relies on a plethora of methodological techniques, from quantitative procedures such as counting how many times different languages appear on signs in multilingual cities (e.g. Shohamy 2006; Backhaus 2007) to more qualitative approaches which attempt to capture the interaction between the verbal and the visual in public signage, and, to long-standing ethnographies of how people perceive and make sense of public signage in their daily lives (e.g. Malinowski 2009; 2010; Leeman and Modan 2009; Todd Garvin 2010; Stroud and Jegels 2014; Peck and Stroud 2015)

Summary

Introduction

The notions of space/place have always played an important role in sociolinguistic inquiry. As a result of the socalled post-structuralist turn in the social sciences, sociolinguists have begun to emphasise the dynamic and discursive nature of space.

Results

Conclusion