A new paper by Leonie Gaiser and OWRI multilingual strand leader Yaron Matras is now available.
‘The spatial construction of civic identities: A study of Manchester’s linguistic landscapes’ can be viewed here:
http://mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ManchesterLinguisticLandscapes.pdf
The paper describes the distribution of multilingual signage across space, the way public display of languages contributes to spatial demarcation, and what signs reveal about inter-community contacts, and the role of community languages in local commerce, cultural institutions, and top-down policy.
Data collection was carried out via LinguaSnapp — an app designed by the University of Manchester’s Multilingual Manchester initiative in order to capture and analyse multilingual signage.
The study draws on contributions from undergraduate and postgraduate students who collected data on Manchester’s linguistic landscapes using LinguaSnapp in 2016.