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Article published In:
Multilingual Landscapes and the Construction of Community
Edited by Leonie Gaiser and Yaron Matras
[Linguistic Landscape 6:2] 2020
► pp. 183–212

Community Ma(r)king in the linguistic landscape of the Ruhr Metropolis

| University of Duisburg-Essen
| University of Duisburg-Essen
| University of Duisburg-Essen

Central for this paper is the assumption that the Linguistic Landscape is a complex phenomenon that provides an insight not only into practices of symbolic place-making of communities but also into the relation between place, language, and belonging. According to Tietz (2002), a community is based on shared norms and attitudes, a collectively binding horizon of values and understanding which also mark the boundaries of a community. Starting from these considerations, we will explore processes of community ma(r)king in the Ruhr Metropolis, Germany, drawing on data collected in the interdisciplinary research project Metropolenzeichen/Signs of the Metropolis (Ziegler et al., 2018). Our multi-method approach combines data of geocoded digital photographs (N = 25,504) with metalinguistic data collected in on-site interviews (N = 180) and telephone interviews (N = 1,000) to gain a deeper insight into the formation of communities in the Linguistic Landscape of the Ruhr Metropolis.

Keywords: community marking, image data, interviews, sign recipients, sign producers, attitudes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Concepts of community
  • 3.Community Signs in the linguistic landscape
    • 3.1Graffiti scene
    • 3.2Monolingualism as a community marker
    • 3.3Multilingualism as a marker of intercultural encounter
  • 4.Discourses on group identities in public space
  • 5.Communities of practice as practices for communities
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.19031.zie
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