Exploring Linguistic Landscapes — a student perspective

In the summer of 2021, BA Education, Culture and Childhood student Zitong Cai undertook a linguistic landscapes-inspired research project. She was working with Dr Jessica Bradley, whose Multilingual Streets project explored young people’s experiences of multilingualism through arts-based methods.

Image shows Level 2 BA ECC student Zitong Cai, in front of a window.

Zitong was taking part in the research as part of an internship scheme for the School of Education. One of the aims of the scheme was to give undergraduate students the opportunity to get experience of doing research and understand the different aspects of a research project. Given the situation with COVID19, students had to be flexible and creative in terms of how they might engage with ideas emerging from the research. Zitong’s first challenge was to gain an understanding of current research into linguistic landscapes and consider some of the different methods used to generate data. She also read about some of the research undertaken into linguistic landscapes during COVID19 times. You can read about Zitong’s initial engagements with the literature here.

After reading about some of the wide ranging research in this area, Zitong then started to think of ideas for what she might research and how she might do it. She brought these thoughts together into a draft document which outlined some points of interest in the city she lives in. Find out more here.

Zitong’s exploratory work in this area demonstrates some of the many possibilities for research into linguistic landscapes.

Zitong is a Year 2 student on the BA Education, Culture and Childhood.