When we began analyzing languages in public space, back around 2010, the study of Linguistic Landscapes was still an emerging field of research. We were just starting to discover that public spaces offer us a privileged vantage point from which to observe the ongoing transformation of cities and their inhabitants. To explore how processes of change are reflected in space and reshape it, students of the degree in “Modern Languages, Culture and Communication” at the Autonomous University of Madrid walked the streets and photographed a kaleidoscopic record of the city. From that work emerged the exhibition “Multilingual Madrid: lenguas pa’ la citi”, held at La Corrala UAM in November 2011. The exhibition brought to light the many voices that often go unnoticed.
Shortly afterwards, in 2014, within EDiSo (the Iberian Association for Discourse and Society) and MIRCo, we launched a Discourse Observatory (download (PDF)). With it, we set out to study, through the linguistic landscape, the different forms of violence (gender-based, ethnic, linguistic, class-based…) that are exercised in everyday discourse. From then until the pandemic, many lecturers (women for the most part) worked as a team and collectively with internet users and students from various universities (Autonomous University of Madrid, University of Santiago de Compostela, Pompeu Fabra University, Public University of Navarre, University of Fribourg, Autonomous University of Entre Ríos). To do so, we used the Urban Voices platform, which allowed us to capture and geolocate discursive violence, urban struggles, and the linguistic diversity of our neighbourhoods.
In our study of the linguistic landscape within the framework of citizen science, we start from two reflections: (i) all people, as sociopolitical subjects, possess valuable situated knowledge; and (ii) observation is an interpretive action that transforms the observer and, at times, also the observed object. The Discourse Observatory revealed not only the plurality and diversity of discursive forms of violence that we face in our daily lives, but also the multiplicity of resistances they spark. Although the Urban Voices platform is no longer available for use, it preserves an archive of images that reflect biased or simplistic representations of people, groups, languages, events or identities, behavioral norms, body sizes, spelling norms, and language impositions. These are discourses often circulated by elites, and they generate resistances that likewise find channels of expression in the streets.
Currently, we continue to work on the linguistic landscape with new tools and perspectives that are enabling us to develop a range of collaborative projects. These initiatives draw on our accumulated experience, from which resources have emerged that have helped consolidate an interdisciplinary line of work combining participatory research with teaching tools and ICTs, fostering greater critical language awareness about the presence and value of languages in the everyday landscape. Through this page, we wish to make these resources available to anyone who would like to explore them.
MAVEL app, within the Virtual Atlas for Language Education, by Prego & Zas (2019).
Street Languages: Collective Landscapes of the Languages That Surround Us. A methodological guide to fostering critical sociolinguistic awareness, by Martín Rojo, Molina & Cárdenas Neira (2023): Spanish version | English version
The citizen science platform Voces Territorios, available for free on Google Play and the Apple Store.
You can also explore other resources we have created throughout our trajectory at the following link: mircouam.com/recursos (where you will find a list of MIRCo-related publications on landscapes), or get acquainted with other experiences of working with linguistic landscapes at mircouam.com/experiencias.
