Contemporary urban spaces constitute complex linguistic landscapes where
languages co-occur, compete for space, and appear in a variety of different
forms and functions: Written and oral, official and subversive, informative and
for theming purposes, functional and aesthetic. This particularly applies to
multilinguistic, multicultural or touristic urban spaces, where different
languages (sometimes visualized through different sign systems) mix. In this
seminar we will use a combination of linguistic, cultural studies, and tourism studies
approaches in order to examine selected examples of urban toponymy. The
seminar, which will be run as a sister seminar to the eponymous seminar in
Linguistics, will combine the study of the theoretical
literature pertaining to urban linguistic landscapes with discussions of empirical data.
- Lehrende(r): Florian Freitag