EFL Learning Using the Linguistic Landscape of Sacred Spaces: A Case of a Shinto Shrine

Abstract

Linguistic landscape (LL)—publicly displayed signs, billboards, street names, and other forms of symbolic inscription—is a relatively new field. Although original studies focused on language policy and language vitality, recently there has been a recent trend toward using the LL as effective, real-world, out-of-the-classroom input for language learning. This paper investigates what happens when EFL learners engage with the multilingual LL of a 2,000 year-old Shinto shrine, an important historical location and sacred space in the Japanese indigenous religion. By creating and analyzing their own learner-generated multimodal artefacts, this paper takes a geosemiotic approach to focus on how the LL can apply to second language development, as well as how language learners make use of multimodality to question and challenge texts in their daily lives. Contributions include the study of the LL and language learning in sacred spaces.