Article In:
Language, Culture and Society: Online-First Articles

Sensescapes in multilingual environments

A case study

| University of Groningen
Sensescapes refer to the complex multimodal and semiotic assemblages that confer meaning to space as experienced by individuals and groups. The study of sensescapes seeks to understand the nature of these assemblages, how they shape meaning, and with them, individual and collective experiences. This article unpacks sensescapes as an expansive lens to meaning in space, underscoring its potential to investigate the nexus between language and culture. To that end, it integrates existing proposals in linguistic landscapes and translanguaging, and connects them to a working definition of sensescapes drawn from various social sciences and humanities fields. To illustrate the study of sensescapes and their relevance to applied linguistics, the article reports on a case study conducted in the Al-Kissaria district of Nador, Morocco through participatory ethnography. The study provides a phenomenological account of the experiences of two multilingual sisters from neighboring Melilla, Spain, as they navigate a market area. The data illustrate how the sisters’ sensory interactions with the environment interplay with their linguistic and broader semiotic repertoires, activating their previous experiences and shaping their conceptualizations and negotiation of language and culture in this space.
Keywords: sensesecapes, translanguaging, linguistic landscapes, assemblages, participatory ethnography
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Arriving at sensescapes
  • 3.The transdisciplinary origins of sensescapes
    • 3.1Integrating sensoriality and multimodality into linguistic landscapes
      • 3.3.1Translanguaging beyond multilingualism
  • 4.Case study: Exploring sensescapes in multilingual Al-Kissaria, Nador
    • 4.1The sisters and the data sources
    • 4.2Results and discussion
      • 4.2.1Trans-ing at the breakfast table
      • 4.2.2Visualizing local linguistic repertoires
      • 4.2.3Reading, seeing and smelling bocadillos de calamares: Transmodal flows
      • 4.2.4Cultural meaning in color
      • 4.2.5Re-territorialization through a participatory approach
      • 4.2.6A deep dive into the sensescape
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Author queries
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (35)
References
Banda, F., & Jimaima, H. (2015). The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(5), 643–670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergold, J., & Thomas, S. (2012). Participatory research methods: A methodological approach in motion. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 191–222.Google Scholar
Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (2019). Voices of a city market: An ethnography. Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J. (2013). Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes. Chronicles of Complexity, Bristol: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buzova, D., Sanz-Blas, S., & Cervera-Taulet, A. (2021). “Sensing” the destination: Development of the destination sensescape index. Tourism Management, 871, 104362. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Creswell, J. W. (2014). A concise introduction to mixed methods research. SAGE publications.Google Scholar
Coupland, N., & Garrett, P. (2010). Linguistic landscapes, discursive frames and metacultural performance: The case of Welsh Patagonia.Google Scholar
Gomes, A. (2017). A framework of analysis for urban sensory aesthetics. Senses in Cities: Experiences of Urban Settings. RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Gorter, D., & Cenoz, J. (2015). Translanguaging and linguistic landscapes. Linguistic landscape, 1(1–2), 54–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harvey, D. (2006). Space as a keyword (pp. 70–93). In (Eds. Castree, N. and Gregory, N.). David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Wiley Online Library. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Helms Mills, J., Turlow, A., & Mills, J. A. (2010). Making sense of sensemaking: the critical sensemaking approach. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 5(2), 182–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C. (Eds.). (2010). Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space. A&C Black.Google Scholar
Johnson, P., & Duberley, J. (2000). Understanding management research: An introduction to epistemology. Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCartan, C., Schubotz, D., & Murphy, J. (2012, January). The self-conscious researcher — Post-modern perspectives of participatory research with young people. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 13, No. 1).Google Scholar
Milani, T. M. (2015). Sexual cityzenship: Discourses, spaces and bodies at Joburg Pride 2012. Journal of Language and Politics, 14(3), 431–454. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2009). Language conflict in post-Soviet linguistic landscapes. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 247–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peck, A. (2021). Find that thing that weighs more than drugs: YouTube as logotherapeutic placemaking for academic disruption and authentic expression. Gender & Language, 15(4). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2024). Linguistic Landscapes and Skinscapes. In The Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes. (eds) R. Blackwood, S. Tufi, and W. Amos. Bloomsbury Press.Google Scholar
Peck, A., & Stroud, C. (2015). “Skinscapes: Bodies as Linguistic Landscapes.” Linguistic Landscape, 1(1), 133–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peck, A., Stroud, C., & Williams, Q. (Eds.). (2019). Making sense of people and place in linguistic landscapes. Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A., & Otsuji, E. (2015a). Metrolingualism: Language in the city. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015b). Making scents of the landscape. Linguistic Landscape, 1(3), 191–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prada, J. (2023). Sensescapes and what it means for language education. In Linguistic Landscapes in Language and Teacher Education: Multilingual Teaching and Learning Inside and Beyond the Classroom (pp. 243–258). Cham: Springer International Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pütz, M., & Mundt, N. (2019). Expanding the linguistic landscape. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Stroud, C., & Jegels, D. (2014). “Semiotic Landscapes and Mobile Narrations of Place: Performing the Local.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, published in Tilburg papers in Culture Studies, Paper 50, 2013. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stroud, C., & Mpendukana, S. (2009). “Towards a Material Ethnography of Linguistic Landscape: Multilingualism, Mobility and Space in a South African Township.” Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 363–386. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). Material Ethnographies of Multilingualism: Linguistic Landscapes in the Township of Khayelitsha. In S. Gardner and M. Martin-Jones (eds.), Multilingualism, Discourse, and Ethnography, London: Routledge, pp. 149–162.Google Scholar
Stroud, C., Peck, A., & Williams, Q. (2019). Introduction: Visceral landscapes (the inside story). Sociolinguistic Studies, 13(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stroud, C., Williams, Q., Bontiya, N., Harry, J., Kapa, K., Mayoma, J., Mpendukana, S., Peck, A., Richardson, J., & Roux, S. (2021). Talking parts, talking back: fleshing out Linguistic Citizenship. Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, 591, pp.1636–1658. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thibault, P. J. (2017). The reflexivity of human languaging and Nigel Love’s two orders of language. Language Sciences, 611, 74–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tufi, S. (2022a). “Situated spatialities and the linguistic landscape: a diachronic account of an emblematic square in Naples.” Social Semiotics, 32(2), 240–261. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tufi, S., & Peck, A. (forthcoming). Decolonizing Linguistic Landscapes: paths to autoethnography as a teaching and learning tool in the landscape. In The Palgrave Handbook of Decolonizing Educational and Language Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan.
Wei, L. (2011). Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(5), 1222–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wehling, M. (2006). Translational medicine: can it really facilitate the transition of research “from bench to bedside”? European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 62(2), 91–95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhu, H., Wei, L., & Lyons, A. (2017). Polish shop (ping) as translanguaging space. Social Semiotics, 27(4), 411–433. DOI logoGoogle Scholar