ABSTRACT
Linguistic Landscape Studies (LLS) investigates the presence of publicly visible bits of written language: billboards, road and safety signs, shop signs, graffiti and all sorts of other inscriptions in the public space, both professionally produced and grass roots. The tools of LLS can be applied to a particular space, the Rabot neighbourhood in Ghent, Belgium. The early stages of the development of LLS were dominated by a quantitative approach, in which publicly visible languages were counted and mapped as to distribution over a specific area. While this approach yielded useful indicative 'catalogues' of areal multilingualism, it failed to explain how the presence and distribution of languages could be connected with specific populations and communities and the relationships between them, or with the patterns of social interaction in which people engage in the particular space. 'Ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis' (ELLA) is used to get an accurate picture of the dynamics and the complexity that characterise superdiverse environments.
