The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean ― French and Italian Coastal Cities

This book explores the Linguistic Landscapes of ten French and Italian Mediterranean coastal cities, analysing the ways in which the public space is managed by different individuals and groups for a range of purposes. Engaging with scholarship on border studies, insularity, peripherality, cosmopolitanism, and social representations, Blackwood and Tufi test the ways in which research beyond sociolinguistics can meaningfully inform Linguistic Landscape studies. The authors privilege four specific perspectives, namely the visibility of national languages, the claiming of space for regional languages and dialects, the creation of transnational spaces for migrant languages, and the role of English in cosmopolitan place-making. Drawing on their own data from along the Mediterranean shoreline, Blackwood and Tufi provide the first in-depth and cross-referenced examination of written language use in the public space in Perpignan, Trieste, Nice, Monaco, Genoa, Palermo, Cagliari, Ajaccio, Marseilles, and Naples.

Robert J. Blackwood is Reader in French Sociolinguistics at the University of Liverpool, UK. His researches focuses on aspects of French sociolinguistics, including the position and status of Corsican, language policy, new media, language revitalization, and the Linguistic Landscape. He is Associate Editor of the journal Linguistic Landscapes.

Stefania Tufi is Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK. She has published on variationist sociolinguistics, minority languages, and the linguistic landscape. Her research interests include Italian sociolinguistics, particularly the linguistic landscape, minority languages, language policy, language variation and change, and Italian dialectology.