Humlab Showcase

The Language of Place-making
The Language of Place-making. A Study of Linguistic Landscapes

2019–2022

This project focuses on linguistic landscapes in a traditionally linguistic rich area of Sweden, Norrland. The aim is to investigate how languages, as they materialise in our surroundings, contribute to the making of public spaces. Through a mixed-methods approach, we will describe and analyse which languages are visible and which are not, and relate these findings to demographic, socio-economic, educational and linguistic characteristics of different spaces. This will enable us to understand how urban and rural places are constructed by the use of majority, indigenous and minority languages.

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Linguistic Landscape ArcGIS application has a crowdsourcing feature so people can contribute to the map. ArcGIS application screenshot of crowdsourcing feature

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Linguistic Landscape ArcGIS application main interface with a map, pie charts, and photos taken by the project. Linguistic Landscape ArcGIS application main interface

This application guides you through more than 6,000 photos of signs around Norrland, Sweden and highlights their language and underlying demographics. The images were documented in 2020-2021. The grid-based demographic data is taken from SCB Register of the total population (2020-12-31).