In their introduction to this edited collection, Malinowski & Tufi frame the book as primarily ‘the outcome of a dialogue between two events’, namely the 7th International Workshop on Linguistic Landscapes (LL) in Berkeley and the 8th in Liverpool. The collection's dialogic origins, along with the negotiated development of LL as a field, result in different forms of ‘tension’ characterising the contributions, most notably tensions of methodology, ideology, and space.
LL's recurring ‘methodological disquiet’ (to quote the editors) is evinced by several chapters calling for revised approaches. Jakob R. E. Leimgruber, Naomi Vingron, & Debra Titone suggest adding an emic take to LL data by introducing eye-tracking technology, and Kate Lyons demonstrates that inferential statistics can help uncover subtleties in the ‘what/where’ and ‘how’ of signage that qualitative analysis alone could miss. Will Amos & Barbara Soukup question the current qualitative paradigm and propose a quantitative ‘Variationist linguistic landscape studies’ based on the statistical rigour and contextual awareness of variationist sociolinguistics. For Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, the under-theorisation of space is a core methodological weakness of LL studies, and the LL is a ‘discrete and objectively observed social space’. This chimes well with Jeffrey L. Kallen, Esther Ní Dhonnacha, & Karen Wade's definition of the Online Linguistic Landscape as language online, in public, and on display. Hiram Maxim encourages language learners to discuss and negotiate methodologies during an LL project culminating in a scholarly report in the target language.
Competing ideologies also bring tension, for example as Shoshana Waksman & Elana Shohamy analyse the contrasting ideological framing of tour guides in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Natalija Cerimaj, Tommaso M. Milani, & E. Dimitris Kitis find the ‘haunting presence’ of apartheid is a resource claimed by pro-Palestine and pro-Israel demonstrators in South Africa. Yael Guilat & Antonio B. Espinosa-Ramírez view Granadan street-sign changes during Spain's tense transition to democracy not as bluntly reterritorialising what the Francoists deterritorialised, but as a careful rememorialisation of shared patrimony, while graffiti and street art are viewed by Sabrina Machetti & Claudio Pizzorusso as simultaneously embodying dissent and consensus to power. Tamás Péter Szabó & Robert A. Troyer study Hungarian schoolscapes and find discord between parents’ and teachers’ educational ideologies, and Robert Blackwood references the ‘tension between restoration and conservation’ when approaching three adaptively reused buildings as semiotic texts.
Discussing spatial tensions, Aaron Anfinson uses Foucault's definition of heterotopia as an ‘inverse, multimodal site of crisis and deviation’ to approach the reflexive power dynamics and temporary materiality of street occupations in Hong Kong. Frank Monaghan's discussion of de/reterritorialisation processes between commercialising football club owners and tradition-minded fans frames the stadium as a site of contestation, and Gilles Baro demonstrates that the semiotic landscape of a Johannesburg district helps reterritorialise public space for private profit. Deirdre A. Dunlevy examines how borders between language policies affect the LL in Spain, and Gintare Kudžmaitė & Kasper Juffermans’ study of the ‘linguistically semi-permeable’ Lithuanian-Polish borderlands considers historic, socioeconomic, and ethnolinguistic reasons. For Rolf Kailuweit & Aldina Quintana, both terrorist attacks and subsequent public mourning rituals deterritorialise public space, which the authorities reterritorialise with official memorials, and Olga Bever & Diane Richardson find that the very sparseness of the German LL in Tucson, Arizona encourages learners to consider its symbolic aspects.
These explorations of reterritorialisation, contested boundaries, and emergent spaces are topical, varied, and bring fresh perspectives to LL research. In a tense world, such studies are helpful, and those that venture towards alleviating such tensions, particularly so.
