ABSTRACT
The linguistic landscaping approach to mapping and measuring multilingualism, observing traces of languages within the social communication space, is enjoying growing interest. More and more research has been carried out in a range of contexts around the world, with a particular regard to urban spaces (see Backhaus 2006 for a review). This edited volume provides evidence both of the growing interest for this field, and of the need to define its subject matter and its boundaries, in terms of theoretical models and methodological approaches. It reflects a need to take linguistic landscape (LL) research beyond occasional description and documentation, to progress toward the theoretical and methodological definition of the subject and to analyze critical perspectives. As Gorter (2006) pointed out, the objective and the theoretical framework of the various investigations and studies carried out were not always identical, nor was the methodology for surveying and analysing data collected. There are questions that remain to be answered regarding various aspects of the approach: from observation and sampling methods to data analysis and classification procedures, to ensure the comparability of the different data.
