Reflecting the use of language(s)
How we all use languages and repertoires in daily life
In everyday life we all have to deal with multilingual / multicultural environments and plurilingual / pluricultural identities. What are your experiences in this area?
Have a look at the following questions and discuss the answers:
- What languages do you speak – always, often, sometimes, rarely – in everyday life?
- How do you use your linguistic resources differently according to contexts?
Analyse how you use your language repertoire. For your reflections you can use the questionnaire and see some examples.
What living environments tell us about attitudes towards languages
Our living environment shows linguistic diversity in many ways. Linguistic landscapes are one way to look at this diversity and this diversity can be documented by using mapping. Such mapping can raise awareness of the linguistic diversity in everyday life. Carry out some research and try to collect documents on the linguistic diversity in your life.
- What languages can be found in your environment (at school/at home/at work/in your region)?
- Where are the different languages and repertoires? In what formats and contexts do they exist?
- What do your findings tell you?
Present your results (as a written text, a series of photos, a drawing, an audio/podcast, a video, etc.) to your colleagues.
As an example of linguistic landscape research, you can find photographic documentation of the city of Graz on the Multilingual Graz website.
If you want to know more about linguistic landscapes, here are some texts.
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Header image based on "The World according to Cloud Gate" by Kevin Dooley (CC BY 2.0).