Glocal Language Awareness through Participatory Linguistic Landscape Research

Abstract

This article will explore the local experience of language awareness, scholastic linguistic identity and language ideologies through a scholastic linguistic landscape (schoolscape) (Brown, 2012) study in three schools in Canada where French was the language of instruction. Glocality is an especially useful frame for linguistic landscape studies (Manan et al., 2017) and has been used to look deeper into youth identities (Grixti, 2008). Photographic images of each school and photo-elicitation interviews with 37 students were used to qualitatively analyze the visible, written language found on the school walls of secondary schools offering three different French instructional programs. Glocality is used to draw the connections between the local schoolscapes and the global themes of language ideologies, scholastic linguistic identity and language awareness. Involving students in linguistic landscape research results in discussions surrounding linguistic diversity and can lead to multilingual language awareness. At the same time, such a practise can result in incidental language learning. The results showed that students were aware of the importance of their schoolscape as a representation of national language ideologies, as a symbol of their school’s linguistic identity and as a vehicle for promoting language use and awareness. Although the findings are local, the insights gleaned from the students are relevant to a global audience interested in language learning and multilingualism. Particularly, student perspectives and participation in analysis offer a unique contribution to linguistic landscape research and educational research in general.