Linguistic Landscape

Gorter (head of the social sciences research group at the Fryske Akademy, a Netherlands-based scientific center for research focusing on the Frisian language) presents a special edition of the International Journal of Multilingualism that contains four papers on the linguistic landscape of cities in Israel, Thailand, Japan, the Netherlands (Friesland), and Spain (the Basque Country). The papers analyze the "language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings" in each of the cases. With some of the studies discussing homogenous linguistic landscapes and others looking at more mixed ones, the papers discuss issues of the relation between the linguistic landscape and societal power relations, issues of language borrowing, the notions of power and solidarity as they relate to official and nonofficial multilingual signs, and comparative uses of minority languages versus state languages. Distributed in the US by UTP Distribution. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Durk Gorter is head of the Social Sciences research group at the Fryske Akademy/Universiteit van Amsterdam and part-time professor of Frisian sociolinguistics at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He has published on the sociolinguistics of Frisian, minority languages in Europe, trilingual education and language policy.The articles are written by experts on sociolinguistics and applied linguistics who are all involved in the study of multilingualism in its social context.