Lletra (em)portada, The Welcoming of Multilingualism
LLETRA (EM)PORTADA
The Welcoming of Multilingualism
Saint George 2022 at the University of Lleida
Núria Pérez
npa10@alumnes.udl.cat
Mónica Sánchez
msj16@alumnes.udl.cat
Clara Serés
cse7@alumnes.udl.cat
Figure 1: Linguistic landscape "Lletra (em)portada, Sant Jordi 2022". Picture taken by the authors of the blog entry. 21/04/2022
1. INTRODUCTION
This year’s syllabus of the course English Language in Context is based on the ideas proposed by Sabaté-Dalmau (2022) in her research project proposal regarding linguistic landscapes. The project focuses on different multilingual linguistic landscapes that second year students of the English Studies degree at the University of Lleida have to find all over the streets of the city of Lleida. These multilingual landscapes that students find are then going to be analysed accordingly and used as a means to understand the social implications of languages in contact and in contrast, particularly English.
The linguistic token we have decided to choose as our main focus is the image seen at the beginning of this blog (see Figure 1). The picture was taken by the authors of this blog on the 21st of April 2022 and it shows a multilingual linguistic landscape whose support is a poster. The activity domain of the poster is educational and informational and it reads from left to right. The token is found inside the Rectorat building, the Languages Faculty of UdL, located in Plaça de Victor Siurana, n1, in the neighbourhood "Universitat".
The token is polyglossic, as it was written in five different languages which are the following: Catalan, found prominently, in the title "Lletra (em)portada" in "Sant Jordi 2022" and in "Tal donaràs, tal trobaràs"; Italian: "Come lascerai, così avrai"; French: "Qui doit, reçoit"; Spanish: "Donde los dan, los toman" and English: "Give one, get one". It is then a multilingual poster written using the Latin alphabet in which the same sentence -Give one, get one- is translated into four Romance languages (Catalan, Italian, French and Spanish) and one of Germanic origin (English). As mentioned before, Catalan is the main language of the poster and the rest are secondary. This is because Catalan is the vehicular language of the University of Lleida, and of Catalonia in general. In Spain, the official language is Spanish, but there are certain co-official languages and the one spoken in Catalonia is Catalan. The other secondary languages are used in the poster because they are the languages spoken by the majority of Erasmus students that come to study at the University of Lleida and thus the poster aimed at providing them the inclusiveness they deserve.
Regarding the choosing of the poster, we found this landscape in the corridor of our class at UdL, on the second floor of the Languages Faculty. The poster was found during the Sant Jordi week, a very popular festivity in Catalonia in which we give out books as presents, thus literature plays an important role in this time of the year. The poster uses a word game with the words “Lletra (em)portada”, whose literal translation would be "Taken word". However, this translation does not quite reflect upon the real meaning of the sentence, as it is a word game in catalan. "Lletra" means "word", but it can also refer to literature -thus, books-; moreover, "emportada" means taken, referring to the fact that during the days in which the poster remained posted on the halls, students from the university could go to certain parts of the faculty and take the books they wanted for free and with no attachments whatsoever. Therefore, the literal meaning would refer to this Saint George gift from the faculty to the students. However, If we analyse it from another perspective, we see that there is a parenthesis in "(em)", which leaves us with the word "portada", that in English translates as "cover". This other meaning of the poster can be understood as a reference to books per se, as it talks about the cover of said books.
2. CONTEXTUALIZATION
The linguistic landscape token that we have chosen is situated on the second floor of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lleida, which is located in Plaça de Víctor Siurana, number 1. Thus, it is in the Universitat neighborhood, in the city of Lleida (Catalonia), which is the capital of the region of Segrià. According to the university neighborhood residents association, this zone is mainly a middle-class area, where, in 2016, there were a total of 11.238 inhabitants and which also has a high presence of migrants, working and living (Regidoria de Participació Ciutadana - Ajuntament de Lleida, 2008).
Figure 2. Map of the neighborhood. Source: Idealista. https://www.idealista.com/venta-viviendas/lleida-lleida/mapa
Universitat has always been central and populated, as it is close to the city center. It has also always been one of the best-known areas, because, in it, there is the first university founded in Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon. In agreement with the UdL (Universitat de Lleida), it was founded in 1300 by the King Jaime II of Aragon, with the name "Stadium Generale Ilerdensis" ("Ilerda" was the name of the city in Latin), which would be "General Studio of Lleida". Nowadays, it is still working perfectly and has, approximately, 10.073 students (Universitat de Lleida, 2019).
As years have passed, more life has been created in this neighborhood and new establishments have been incorporated, such as bars, restaurants, copy shops and supermarkets, among others, but always maintaining its culture and beauty, as we can see in Figure 3 below. And, of course, more housing has been built, as can be appreciated in Figure 4 below (in which we can also see the new establishments that were created in the neighborhood), increasing the population number. Therefore, it is a zone of Lleida that, unarguably, has an important cultural part of the city and active life.
Figure 3. Street view map of its surroundings; front part. Source: Google Maps.
Figure 4. Street view map of its surroundings; back part. Source: Google Maps.
3. METHODOLOGY
Interestingly enough, the fieldwork we conducted had to be reduced to two single visits, given that our token was found outside our classroom in the Rectorat of the University of Lleida but the second time we decided to take a look at it it had disappeared, probably because it had been put there to celebrate Saint George's day, the international book day, which took place on April the 23rd and so had no reason to be there once it had finished.
As we can see in figure 5, the first visit was carried out by the three of us, once we finished the "English language in context" class where we were told what to do for this project, so we set out to find a token that could serve us for this purpose. Once we had located this image, we knew that it was perfect for what we wanted to do (even if it was removed later on which, in a way, reflects the ephemerality of LL tokens) and immediately captured it. A couple of weeks later we went to the same place where we found it in order to recapture it from a different perspective or check if something had changed, but we found out that it wasn't there anymore (As seen in figure 6). Anyhow, we didn't think this was an obstacle for our project because we had already taken the photograph and had the information we needed.
Figure 5: First visit. Date: 21/04/2022 Source: Universitat de Lleida, Rectorat. Picture taken by the authors of this blog entry.
Figure 6: Second visit. Date: 07/05/2022. Source: Universitat de Lleida, Rectorat. Picture taken by the authors of this blog entry.
Moreover, there are two types of language policies: Top-down and Bottom-up. On the one hand, Top-down policies are Laws regulating public language use and signs placed by nation-state, local governments and town councils, or owners of a building or site. Official languages are said to be more commercial and strategic in relation to multilingualism, so they tend to be dominant language policies that reinforce existing power relations. In the case of Catalonia, Top-down policies state that any sign in the public space of official nature must normally be in Catalan (La Paeria, 2018; BOP, 2014), which is the vernacular language of the territory. In the case of the poster we are analyzing, even though Catalan is actually present, we have to keep in mind that it is not an official document, and we must thus take a look at the Bottom-up policies, which, on the other hand, allow information to be in other languages. Bottom-up policies are produced by individuals or small groups (commercial enterprises, private organizations), they are non-official and highlight the “invisible” multilingualism, which uses, for instance, migrant languages.These policies are used to communicate solidarity and subversion, promoting the usage of more foreign languages, mainly English. In the case of our poster, we see how various languages are used: Catalan, Italian, Spanish, French and English.
Regarding the linguistic context of our LL token, we compiled data on other LL in that area of the neighborhood. Linguistic tokens found near our poster included Spanish, Italian, French, Finnish, Arabic, etc; taking into account both the languages heard inside the Rectorat and in the area around it. Inside the Rectorat this was mainly seen in foreign and local students, classes in progress and different kinds of documents that can be found, while on the outside this can be recollected in stores, bars and social gatherings, among others.
Needless to say, the majority of languages that can be recorded in this area are obviously Spanish and Catalan, however, the intention of our poster is to celebrate the mixture of these languages that share a common origin (Latin) and that still are present everywhere we look, but most specifically in our educational institution, an increasing multilingual location. Having said this, we can state that English is the language of reference in the educational domain which, in this case, conveys an ideology of marking the corridor or faculty as welcoming towards multilingualism and linguistic diversity.
All in all, it's safe to say that our Linguistic Landscape token functions as a representation of the great variety of nationalities and languages that are present day to day in our faculty in the University of Lleida, the Rectorat. It portrays the values that the studies present in this institution are based on: research, discovery, abroad experiences, etc; that is, it has social and identity values. By trying to analyse this poster, we have come to realise that, while studying and spending time working on our English studies degree, we are also learning about multiple other language perspectives.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Taking into account the different values that can be attributed to our token, we decided to divide it, as mentioned before, into identity and social values. In the first place, we considered its social value as the most important, seeing as how its main objective is to welcome different communities and compare their languages to ours in order to convey the same message, which is the celebration of literature during Saint George. By translating the same expression into different languages, every single student from every country will feel included and will understand the message projected. In this way, it offers a strategy designed to appeal to different cultures and depict an international environment.
Next, we also related the token to an identity value, which somehow is quite similar to the social one; however, its main function is to define the different perspectives and types of people that can feel connected to this poster, that is, that can think about their origins and languages when reading these sentences. Even if some people may not understand all the languages that appear in the poster, because they probably do know what the sentence in English means (conceiving it as a Lingua Franca), they will ultimately make sense out of the other languages, deducing that it means the same thing as in English or as in any of the countries projected that they do speak.
As for the social meanings that we can depict from our token, it is essential to mention globalization and English as a Lingua Franca and how it relates to the use made of the landscape by an individual or groupwith an interest for the community, given the need to be able to understand at least one of the languages inside the token in order to comprehend its meaning, and the fact that foreign students -who donSpanish, Catalan, French or Italian- will have to resort to their knowledge in English, which is probablyhigh if they are studying in the Rectorat, if they want to decipher the meaning. Our linguistic token may seem as a simple paper that promotes Saint George’s day but, in fact, it represents the reality of our linguistic situation and how the necessity of learning English (among other languages) and obtaining a high level is absolutely a priority in today’s society if we want to communicate successfully with each other.
Another interesting element that we can find in the token is multilingualism and the contact of the languages. It is obvious that the token presents multilingualism, but it also conveys a linguistic phenomenon, which is the contact of the languages. Nowadays and in our everyday lives, the different languages are constantly in contact, as, mainly from the starting of the pandemic, people all around the world began to be more exposed to social media, where there are people with different mother tongues, so, where people write and read in different languages, which finally, wanting it or not, put them in contact. In addition, people use this phenomenon in order to be up to date on what’s happening in the world, for example with the news about Covid-19: the main updates of the pandemic and the virus were in English, but as people needed to be informed as soon as possible the other countries’, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and France among others, journalists were forced to publish some parts of the news in English too.
Specifically, the urge of learning English and becoming proficient in certain languages is especially visible in communities such as this one, a high education institution that already expects its students to master a variety of languages and to exert the desire to learn even more and become proficient in as many languages as possible. Having said this, it must be mentioned that this multilingual experience cannot only be found in this kind of institution, but rather everywhere nowadays, as the level of immigration and integration of other languages is rising exponentially, creating the need for a great linguistic coexistence.
In this case, English may not be the main language inside our token, but it does represent the massive effect that it is having on our society as a Global Language. Nonetheless, it does this without excluding the presence and the importance of the other languages which, taking into account our mediterranean environment, French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan are exceptionally valued and part of the same family.
Moreover, we could say that the order and the color of the different sentences establish a certain scale of importance, starting with Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan and ending in English. It’s not that one language is more important than the other but, intuitively, languages such as our local ones, Spanish and Catalan, receive a specific position that highlights them more, making them the center of attention and comparing them to the other which, in the end, are our neighbor languages.
Finally, we shouldn’t forget about the second picture we took when carrying out the second visit, which is when our token disappeared. Even though it doesn’t portray any multilingual landscape, it does depict some of our cultural traits with activities such as “La festa de moros i cristians” and social necessities inside the university with another pamphlet that informs about an offer for sharing a flat.
5. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In order to conclude the blog, we want to express some of our thoughts and personal opinions regarding the overall general idea of the linguistic landscapes project and also on the use of LLs as a pedagogical tool to learn about sociolinguistics via TKA/TEP.
This project was conducted by following the idea of Linguistic Landscapes as a means to understand the social usages of languages in context, which was implemented in the second part of the course English Language in Context. The project was aimed at providing students with a more practical and collaborative approach to understanding sociolinguistics, by allowing them to analyze their surroundings and work in groups outside the typical classroom environment. Within the idea of linguistic landscaping applied to educational environments, this type of fieldwork research has become a way for students to become agents of their own education, as they become information generators through their own analytical work. Students apply their previously in-class acquired theoretical knowledge on sociolinguistics by applying a practical approach when analyzing their multilingual surroundings. Furthermore, linguistic landscaping in education also provides students with TIC (Information and Communication Technology) tools that allow them to carry out their educational research within the area of multilingualism in the city and languages in contact. These technological tools are both TKA (Technology of knowledge acquisition) and TEP (Technology of Empowerment and Participation). On the one hand, TKA is applied through the map that has been used as a means to localize all linguistic tokens in the different neighborhoods found in a map of the city of Lleida. On the other hand, TEP is the blog in which we are writing this paper that is our research project on LLs. As the authors of this paper, we think this innovative methodology for learning has allowed us to think outside of the box when learning about sociolinguistics. We are very much grateful to have had the opportunity to take part in this ingenious learning methodology.
The project consisted on finding linguistic tokens located in the city of Lleida and then analyzing them, with the intention of providing students with a critical education on sociolinguistics. Linguistic landscapes analysis allows students to get immersed upon gaining metalinguistic awareness of linguistic diversity. In the case of our study, the analysis of this certain linguistic token provides a deeper view on the idea of globalization of the English language -and also of the other languages found in the poster, certainly- given that the multilingual symbol that we have analyzed in our paper, “Lletra (em)portada” has been useful for us to understand the social implications of linguistics. This is given that we can clearly see how the institution that published said poster -that is, the University of Lleida- had the intention of including all students enrolled in their studies, namely local and Erasmus undergraduates, in order for them to feel valued and included. This is a clear example of the social usage of languages, as the implementation of a multilingual statement provides social inclusivity. All things considered, we can firmly state that Linguistic Landscaping clearly works as a well-rounded and innovative pedagogial tool for students to learn about sociolinguistics.
6. REFERENCES AND WEB SOURCE
Idealista. (n. d.). Mapa de Lleida - Idealista. Retrieved from https://www.idealista.com/venta-viviendas/lleida-lleida/mapa
Paeria. (n. d.). Ordenança municipal de civisme i convivència de la ciutat de Lleida.
Regidoria de Participació Ciutadana - Ajuntament de Lleida (2008). Associació de Veïns Universitat. Lleida Participa. Retrieved from http://www.lleidaparticipa.cat/index_web.php?idwc=czoxNjoiYmFycml1bml2ZXJzaXRhdCI7
Sabaté-Dalmau, M. (2021). 'Localizing English in town': A Linguistic Landscape for a Critical Linguistics Education on multilingualism. [Unpublished article] Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13670050.2022.2067978
Universitat de Lleida (2019). University of Lleida. History. UDL. Retrieved from https://www.udl.cat/ca/en/udl/history/
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