ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we considered the question ‘what is language?’ In this chapter, we are concerned with the question ‘where is language?’ Language is all around us. When we speak we use language, when we write and read we’re also using language. Recently, linguists have become particularly interested in the use of language in the everyday semiotic landscape, in what might normally be considered banal or mundane contexts. We begin by explaining what the linguistic landscape is, and in contrast to the abstract signs we investigated in Chapter 3, explore types of concrete signs and their authors. We consider multilingual linguistic landscapes, the ideologies that signs communicate and the different meanings of graffiti. The importance of the virtual landscape is then examined to show how signs communicate in this context as well as how the division between online and offline linguistic landscapes is collapsing.
