EFL Learning Using the Linguistic Landscape of Sacred Spaces
Profile
- Doctoral candidate, Literacy, Culture & Language Education at Indiana University, Bloomington (USA)
- Faculty of Economics, Nagoya Gakuin University, Japan
- Interests: Linguistic Landscape, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Peer Evaluation
Agenda
Linguistic Landscape
- publicly displayed signs, billboards, street names, and other forms of symbolic
- putting the place first: ``any (public) space with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making” (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010, p. 2)
- “authentic, dynamic, public mega-text” that represents “society at a micro-level” (Rowland, 2013, p. 503)
Focus of Original Studies
- language policy
- language vitality
Recent Trends
- Semiotic landscapes
- Transgressive LLs
- Soundscapes
- Smellscapes
The LL of Religious Spaces
Linguistic Landscape in Sacred Spaces
- proselytizing billboards around Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (Woldemariam & Lanza, 2012)
- LLs of sacred spaces themselves: multilingual signs of holy places in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, English was found to be a neutral language that operates across inter-ethnic communication, despite the official prevalence of Bahasa Malay as an official language (Coluzzi & Kitade, 2015)
- English played the dominant role in a Philippine church, supported by the indigenous Filipino and Pangasinan languages (Esteron, 2021)
- role of English in language choice was also a theme in multi-religious areas of Nigeria (Christianity, Islam, and African Traditional Religion) (Inya, 2019).
Atsuta Shrine
- One of the three most sacred shrines in Shinto
- 2000 years old
- Open 24/7/365
- 9 million visitors a year
- 190,000m2
The LL of Atsuta Shrine
The Linguistic Landscape as applied to language learning
Environmental Print
“Reading the Environment”: Environmental Print
- Early research (e.g., Adams, 1990; Dewitz & Stammer, 1980; Goodman & Altwerger,1981; Masonheimer et al., 1984) in language development can be found in children’s engaging with environmental print—“surrounding non-continuous print (e.g. words, letters, numerals and symbols) that is encountered in a particular context and fulfils real-life functions” (Neumann et al., 2012, p. 232).
- Child logos, community logos, household logos (Horner, 2005)
Bringing the Outside In
- Hudelson (1984): environmental print in developing reading and writing skills in children learning English as a Second Language.
- Utilizing “students’ lives and living environments for literacy experience” (p. 235) building on their own funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992)
Additional Source of Input
- incidental learning
- pragmatic competence
- multimodal literacy skills
- multicompetence
- symbolic/emotional power of language.
(Cenoz & Gorter, 2008)
Early Studies: “In the Real World”
- Sayer (2010): Why do people in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico use English in public places?
- Student learning from a constructivist perspective, ``bottom up'' from their own exploration
- an authentic activity for exposure/practice where EFL opportunities are limited
- Social meanings that the symbolic use of English conveyed to the community:
- Fashion
- Sophistication
- "Coolness"
- Sex
- Love
- Subversive identities
- Shifted identities from language learners to sociolinguists & create their own inductive theories of language.
Pedagogical benefits of EFL learning in the LL
- vocabulary learning
- increasing familiarity with the language of English
- spelling
- English language structure (Dumanig & David, 2019)
- student choice in learning
- opportunity to critically engage with the LL in their language learning (Barrs, 2020)
The Linguistic Landscape as a Means for Learning about Social, Economic, and Political Issues
- The linguistic landscape can provide a clear mirror of society (Shohamy, 2018; Trumper-Hecht, 2010)
- can be a critical resource to learn about the culture of the target language “by focusing on diversity, discrimination, exclusion, controversies, ideologies and justice” (Shohamy, 2018, p. 32).
- Students have learned which languages are privileged and which are marginalized (Brown, 2007)
- Where groups of people, e.g., newly arrived immigrants and refugees, live and why they live there (Dagenais et al., 2009)
- and who has a voice to participate and why (Huyer, 2019).
- Teacher trainees have also been taught to examine their own attitudes about multilingualism in the linguistic landscape (Hancock, 2012).
- If society is unjust, “[C]an [a linguistic landscape] be changed and used to transform societies, cities and neighbourhoods?” (Shohamy 2018, p. 32).I
- Exposing learners to the silences within and related to texts of the LL, in order that they become active participants in meaning making and negotiation (Richardson, 2020)
Affordances
- With a digital camera, student-researchers are able to quickly learn to collect LL data ontheir own.
- By going out and collecting images of the LL, finding sources of authentic input becomes simpler and more straightforward than collecting other forms of authentic material, especially in locales where the target language is not often encountered in daily life
- Finding situated language may be easier to make sense of than decontextualized speech acts or written words that may be beyond the student’s ability
- “the opportunity to consider their own affective responses and ethical stance toward the people and places around them” (Malinowski et al., 2020, p. 2)
- uses the public space to create more social and political consciousness through language awareness, linguistic activism, and self-conceptions of citizenship (Malinowski et al., 2020).
The Study in Question
The purpose of this pilot study is to describe ways that Japanese EFL university students interacted with the multilingual linguistic landscape of an important Shinto shrine to construct their second language learning.
- How do Japanese university EFL students use the multilingual linguistic landscape in their language learning?
- What language learning practices does the teacher perceive as beneficial in general language learning?
- What professional teacher practices contribute to EFL students’ language learning in this context?
Methodology
- Participants: Seven females and six male first-year students majoring in Commerce from at a nearby university voluntarily took part in the study.
- Participants were recruited through snowball sampling.
- All were native Japanese speakers and were aged 18–19 years old.
- All had similarly low English language proficiency.
- Some were somewhat familiar with the shrine, but this was their first visit to the shrine.
Methodology
Data Collection
- Following a brief introduction to linguistic landscape and its basic concepts, I guided the participants on an approximately 10-minute walk from the university to the shrine, and had students take pictures of the multilingual LL and fill out a brief survey.
- “commented walks” (Stroud & Jegels, 2014)—an embodied, transmodal practice in the interaction of signs and bodies. There is “the importance of social action for the making of space” (Mondada, 2011, p. 291) in the linguistic landscape.
- Spatial practices, namely walking, “highlighting both a praxeological construal of local place and an understanding of locality in terms of mobility” (p. 183). The signage in and around the shrine was read and incorporated into the spatial narratives of the participants as they moved through it. I took field notes as I interacted with students
- participant-generated photographs of signs in the area were also collected.
- Questionnaire
Results
How do Japanese university EFL students use the multilingual linguistic landscape in their language learning?
- Initial familiarity: “[In my hometown], there are many signboards around the station and the cultural center. Those signs have Japanese text on the top, Chinese text in the middle, and English text on the bottom.”
- Authentic input: “I was able to visualize what kind of English there is in everyday life,”
- Learning in a local environment::“opportunities to come into contact with the language I was learning,”
- Motivation:“Since I can touch English in my daily life, I would like to continue using it as an efficient way to study English.”
How do Japanese university EFL students use the multilingual linguistic landscape in their language learning?
- The first surprise in this study was that although some texts were multilingual, the participants did not immediately associate it as such.
- Were both the speaker and audience are assumed to be Japanese—even if communicating through English words?
- English words are often used a decorative rather than communicative function in Japan, and although the information may be relayed in English, the participants did not see it as a “foreign language.”
- Additionally, although Japanese and Chinese share many of the same written language and the four-Chinese characters phrase can be parsed together by a Japanese speaker, the Chinese phrase is not commonly used in Japanese
- It was surprising to see that three languages on this sign were perceived to be only in Japanese.
What professional teacher practices contribute to EFL students’ language learning in this context?
- Although one student, in his first exposure to LL studies, saw “cross cultural understanding,” it may benefit students to encourage critical thinking about the sign.
- Four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (Traditional), and Korean.
- examining the materiality: English word “sacred” has been modified. It may be useful to have students discuss their findings with each other as well as to analyze modifications to signs.
What language learning practices does the teacher perceive as beneficial in general language learning?
- code preference is Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Portuguese.
- Students may take a critical view here on the inclusion and exclusion of languages as well as the choices of Simplified and Traditional Chinese scripts.
- The code preference (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) gives Japanese the top-billing and may indicate some power relations as the dominant authority (Ben-Rafael, 2008).
Conclusion
- This paper has described ways that Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students interacted with the multilingual linguistic landscape of an important Shinto shrine to construct their second language learning.
- affordances of using the LL
- Pedagogical possibilities of language order in a sacred space
- The positive attitude of learners connecting the target language to their daily lives
- participant difficulty finding foreign languages—occasionally mistaking English as Japanese communication, and traditional Japanese language for a foreign language.
Thank you!
Ryan Barnes
Nagoya Gakuin University