Abstract
This chapter investigates virtual linguistic landscapes (VLLs) from ‘below’ by exploring (potentially) multilingual practices on social media. Due to the participatory culture of social media, resulting in user-generated content, users may construct the linguistic landscape (LL) of the networks in which they engage. This study examines the diversity of languages used in tweets about the European Day of Languages (EDL)—an annual event organised by the Council of Europe to highlight and promote linguistic diversity as well as the importance of language learning in Europe. A corpus of Tweets (N = 50), compiled from the official EDL hashtag (#coeEDL), is both quantitatively and qualitatively examined using a coding scheme for hashtag analysis. The tweets (i.e. semiotic signs) were analysed for language visibility and saliency in the corpus. Initial findings show the dominance of English in tweet composition, along with a ‘symbolic multilingualism’ in added modalities. While the latter confirms the potential of Web 2.0 platforms for multilingual representation, the former must be evaluated critically from both linguistic and (socio)technical perspectives. Although diverse user practices and motivations determine the multilinguality of bottom-up VLLs, their experiences of those same VLLs are partly determined by platform algorithms. This has implications for virtual knowledge experiences, and may be explored via classroom pedagogies.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, 2021 was declared the European Year of Rail to promote rail as a sustainable and beneficial mode of transport. Other ‘European Years’ have sought to raise awareness of topics such as ageing, sport and citizenship. For a full list of ‘European Years’, see https://eurlex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/european_year.html?locale=en.
- 2.
The Charter defines these languages as those “i. traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and
ii. different from the official language(s) of that State” (Council of Europe, 1992, p. 2). The languages of migrants are not included in this definition.
- 3.
English is the most popular foreign language in schools across the European Union, with 97.9% of pupils in lower secondary education learning the language. This is followed by French (33.4%), German (16.9%) and Spanish (16.9%) (Eurostat, 2019).
- 4.
41 language versions were available at the time of writing. As this chapter went to print, Maltese had been added, bringing the language selection to 42.
- 5.
German EDL webpage (accessed November 2021): https://edl.ecml.at/Home/tabid/1455/language/de-DE/Default.aspx.
- 6.
Irish EDL webpage (accessed November 2021): https://edl.ecml.at/Home/tabid/1455/language/ga-IE/Default.aspx.
- 7.
As companies and political bodies increasingly utilise Twitter as a marketing channel and informational platform, returns from so-called ‘hashtag counters’ can be purchased from third parties who advertise such services on the web.
- 8.
Arabic, Arabic (feminine), Bangla, Basque (beta), British English, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician (beta), German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish (beta), Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu (beta), Vietnamese.
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McMonagle, S. (2023). Virtual Linguistic Landscapes from Below: A Hashtag Analysis of the European Day of Languages. In: Melo-Pfeifer, S. (eds) Linguistic Landscapes in Language and Teacher Education. Multilingual Education, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22867-4_16
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