The linguistic landscape of English–Spanish dual language picturebooks

Abstract

ABSTRACTPicturebooks which present stories in two languages are known as dual-language picturebooks (Daly. 2016. “Linguistic Landscapes in Māori-English Parallel Dual Language Picturebooks: Domination and Interaction.” New Zealand English Journal 29 & 30: 11–24), and the use of dual-language picturebooks has been shown to have a positive effect on community engagement with schools (Naqvi, McKeogh, Thorne, & Pfitscher. 2013. “Dual-Language Books as an Emergent-Literacy Resource: Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning.” Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13 (4): 501–528; Peterson and Heywood. 2007. “Contributions of Families’ Linguistic, Social, and Cultural Capital to Minority-Language Children’s Literacy: Parents’, Teachers’, and Principals’ Perspectives.” Canadian Modern Language Review 63 (4): 517–538). Given the importance of these books in creating relationships between bilingual children and children's literature, it is interesting to analyse the linguistic landscapes present in these books, and what messages they are communicating to readers regarding the relative status of the languages used in the text. In this article, over 200 English–Spanish dual-language picturebooks from the Marantz Picturebook Collection for the Study of Picturebook Art, based at Kent State University, are analysed in terms of the notion of linguistic landscape (Landry and Bourhis. 1997. “Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality. An empirical study.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 16 (1): 23–49). Findings are discussed in terms of the relative status of the two languages and how this is communicated via relative print size and placement. The presentation of languages in the picturebooks analysed is discussed in relation to translanguaging and ethnolinguistic vitality.