Linguistic landscapes : emergent bilinguals living in a digital world

Abstract

The landscapes in a child’s life encourage the acceptance and use of their language(s) and are an important medium for engaging with family/whanau/aiga. The linguistic landscape is the visibility and salience of all the languages within a location. It reflects the strength of the language policy (formal and informal) and influences how languages are perceived and therefore used (Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Gorter, 2015). Linguistic landscapes go beyond what is seen, to incorporate text, images, objects and people over time and space (physical and virtual) (Shohamy, 2015; Harris, 2017). Drawing attention to the linguistic landscapes, both physical and virtual, of educational settings shows promise in facilitating teaching literacy practices and language awareness (Cunningham, Davis & Harris, 2017).