Elizabeth Lanza | Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan – University of Oslo
In this article, we investigate how the linguistic landscape serves as an important strategy among a diaspora community not only to maintain a transnational identity but also to construct a unique identity in the recipient society. We examine the linguistic landscape in the Ethiopian diaspora of Washington DC, referred to as “Little Ethiopia”, which provides an interesting site to investigate the role of the linguistic landscape in constructing an imaginary community built on the myth of the old homeland, including a unique African identity in a new homeland with other Africans as well as African Americans. Serving as a rich source of data for investigating language, culture and identity, the linguistic landscape in “Little Ethiopia” encompasses many semiotic resources. This Ethiopian transnational community engages in (re)constructing socio-cultural and political ideologies through the linguistic landscape.
Andersen, B. (2006). Imagined communities (rev. ed.). New York, NY: Verso.
Ben-Rafael, E., & Ben-Rafael, M. (2010). Diaspora and returning diaspora: French-Hebrew and vice versa. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni (Eds.), Linguistic landscape in the city (pp. 326–343). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Benwell, B., & Stokoe, E. (2006). Discourse and identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Blackwood, R., Lanza, E., & Woldemariam, H. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). Negotiating and contesting identities in linguistic landscapes. London: Bloomsbury.
Bogatto, F., & Hélot, C. (2010). Linguistic landscape and language diversity in Strasbourg: The “Quartier Gare”. In E. Shohamy, E. Ben-Rafael, & M. Barni (Eds.), Linguistic landscape in the city (pp. 275–291). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). (2014). Ethiopians in the US cling to their heritage, 5August 2014. Retrieved [URL] (23 October 2014)
Chacko, E. (2003). Ethiopian ethos and the creation of ethnic places in the Washington Metropolitan area. Journal of Cultural Geography, 20(2), 21–42.
Chacko, E., & Gebre, P.H. (2013). Leveraging the diaspora for development: Lessons from Ethiopia. GeoJournal, 781, 495–505.
Daswani, G. (2013). The anthropology of transnationalism and diaspora. In A. Quayson & G. Daswani (Eds.), A companion to diaspora and transnationalism (pp. 29–53). Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Faist, T. (2010). Diaspora and transnationalism: What kind of dance partners? In R. Bauböck & T. Faist (Eds.), Diaspora and transnationalism. Concepts, theories and methods. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Retrieved from <[URL]> (27 October 2014).
Gambino, C., Trevelyan, E.N., & Fitzwater, J.T. (2014). The foregin-born population from Africa: 2008 – 2012. American Community Survey Briefs, 12 – 161. Retrieved from <[URL] > (27 October 2014).
Gee, J.P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses, critical perspectives on literacy and education. London: Falmer Press.
Gorter, D. (Ed.). (2006). Linguistic landscape: A new approach to multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Gorter, D., Marten, H., & Van Mensel (Eds.). (2012). Minority languages in the linguistic landscape. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Habecker, S. (2012). Not black, but Habasha: Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in American society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35(7), 1200–1219.
Hélot, C., Barni, M., Janssens, R., & Bagna, C. (Eds.). (2012). Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Ibrahim, A. (2014) The rhizome of blackness: A critical ethnography of hip-hop culture, language, identity, and the politics of becoming. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Iedema, R. (2003). Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication, 2(1), 29–57.
Jaworski, A., & Thurlow, C. (Eds.). (2010). Semiotic landscapes. Language, image, space. London: Continuum.
Joseph, J.E. (2004). Language and identity: National, ethnic, religious. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kenny, K. (2013). Diaspora. Oxford: OUP.
Kent, M.M. (2007). Immigration and America’s Black Population. Population Bulletin. A Publication of the Population Reference Bureau, 62(4).
Landry, R., & Bourhis, R.Y. (1997). Linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic vitality: An empirical study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16(1), 24–49.
Lanza, E., & Woldemariam, H. (2009). Language ideology and linguistic landscape: Language policy and globalization in a regional capital of Ethiopia. In E. Shohamy & D. Gurter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape. Expanding the scenery (pp. 189–205). London: Routledge.
Lanza, E., & Woldemariam, H. (2014). Indexing modernity: English and branding in the linguistic landscape of Addis Ababa. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(5), 491–506.
Leeman, J., & Modan, G. (2009). Commodified language in Chinatown: A contextualized approach to linguistic landscape. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 13(3), 332–362.
Malinowski, D. (2009). Authorship in the linguistic landscape: A multimodal-performative view. In E. Shohamy & D. Gurter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape. Expanding the scenery (pp. 107–125). New York, NY: Routledge.
Mohammed, H.M. (2006). Imagining and performing Habasha identity: The Ethiopian Diaspora in the Area of Washington, D.C. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Northwestern University.
Moriarty, M. (2014). Languages in motion: Multilingualism and mobility in the linguistic landscape. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(5), 457–463.
Quayson, A., & Daswani, G. (2013). Diaspora and transnationalism: Scapes, scales, and scopes. In A. Quayson & G. Daswani (Eds.), A companion to diaspora and transnationalism (pp. 1–26). Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Sebba, M. (2010). Discourses in transit. In A. Jaworski & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Semiotic landscapes: Language, image, space (pp. 59–76). London: Continuum.
Shohamy, E., & Gorter, D. (Eds.). (2009). Linguistic landscape. Expanding the scenery. New York, NY: Routledge.
Shohamy, E., Ben-Rafael, E., & Barni, M. (Eds.). (2010). Linguistic landscape in the city. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Singer, A., Friedman, S., Cheung, I., & Price, M. (2001). The world in a zip code: Greater Washington, D.C. as a new region of immigration. Washington, DC: Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, The Brookings Institute.
Vertovec, S. (2009). Transnationalism. Milton Park: Routledge.
Williams, Q., & Stroud, C. (2015). Battling the race: Stylizing language and the coproduction of whiteness and colouredness in a freestyle rap battle. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 24 (3),277–293.
Williams, Q. (In press). Ethnicity and extreme locality in South Africa’s multilingual Hip-Hop Ciphas. In H.S. Alim, A. Ball, & J. Rickford (Eds), Racing language, languaging race. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Woldemariam, H., & Lanza, E. (2012). Religious wars in the linguistic landscape. In C. Hélot, M. Barni, R. Janssens, & C. Bagna (Eds.), Linguistic landscapes, multilingualism and social change: Diversité des approches. Bern: Peter Lang.
Cited by (20)
Cited by 20 other publications
Arias Álvarez, Alba
2024. Asturian cider in Madrid? Linguistic identity and the multilingual signage of Asturian restaurants in Madrid, Spain. International Journal of Multilingualism► pp. 1 ff.
Bhujel, Birendra & Sweta Sinha
2024. Linguistic landscape as a tool of identity negotiation: The case of the Nepali ethnic communities in West Bengal. Ethnicities
2024.
La lluita continua
: socio-political debate and the linguistic landscape of a Catalan city
. Social Semiotics 34:1 ► pp. 113 ff.
Gu, Chonglong
2024. The (un)making and (re)making of Guangzhou’s ‘Little Africa’: Xiaobei’s linguistic and semiotic landscape explored. Language Policy
Guarín, Daniel
2024. From Bilingualism to Multilingualism: Mapping Language Dynamics in the Linguistic Landscape of Hispanic Philadelphia. Languages 9:4 ► pp. 123 ff.
Liao, Cecily Ran & Brian Hok-Shing Chan
2024. Linguistic landscape in transnational areas: a comparative study of African and Korean neighbourhoods in Guangzhou. International Journal of Multilingualism 21:1 ► pp. 489 ff.
2024. Introduction au volet 2 et présentation du cadre scientifique : quelques repères pour une exploration des paysages linguistiques européens. Diversité urbaine 21:2 ► pp. 3 ff.
2024. Introduction au volet 1 et présentation du cadre scientifique : quelques repères pour une exploration des paysages linguistiques du « bout du monde ». Diversité urbaine 21:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Bever, Olga & Mahmoud Azaz
2023. An Educational Perspective on Community Languages in Linguistic Landscapes: Russian and Arabic. In Spatializing Language Studies [Educational Linguistics, 62], ► pp. 179 ff.
Liu, Zhixin
2023. Liminalising and affectivising cityscape as a branding practice: a sociolinguistic ethnography in urban China. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development► pp. 1 ff.
Cocq, Coppélie, Lena Granstedt, Eva Lindgren & Urban Lindgren
2022. Multilingualism in the North: From Baklava to Tre Kronor. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 124 ff.
Han, Yanmei
2022. Enacting identity and ethnicity in transnational spaces: bilingual practices and positioning of Chinese visiting scholars in America. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 43:10 ► pp. 907 ff.
Amos, H. William
2021. Chinatown by numbers. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal► pp. 127 ff.
2019. Migration and ethnic diversity reflected in the linguistic landscape of Costa Rica’s Central Valley. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 40:9 ► pp. 759 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.