Interest in public signage has grown rapidly since Landry and Bourhis (Reference Landry and Bourhis1997) introduced the term linguistic landscape (LL), translating it from the French paysage linguistique in their seminal paper. Since then, two books (Backhaus Reference Backhaus2007, Gorter Reference Gorter2006) have been devoted to LL, and it is the topic of a chapter in a book on language policy (Shohamy Reference Shohamy2006). A special issue of The International Journal of Multilingualism (3(1), 2006) was dedicated to the field, and a huge number of articles on the subject have come out in various publications.

But many questions have been left unanswered. For example, researchers have yet to reach consensus on whether to call their research sites “landscapes” or “cityscapes.” This book responds to a vital need to sum up what has been done so far and foresee the challenges that the field faces. In it, LL is reexamined from multiple perspectives, involving various cases with manifold implications. The book attempts to expand the framework of LL, making it a focal point of a wide range of disciplines such as sociolinguistics, language policy, language ecology, the economy of language, and politics. It “is an attempt to take LL further, to gain a deeper understanding by examining its relationship to and connections with a variety of tangent fields, in a number of ways” (4).

The book consists of five parts, each aiming to expand the concept of LL from a specific perspective. Part 1 concentrates on the study of LL from various theoretical perspectives. Florian Coulmas treats the functions conveyed by publicly displayed written words from a historical perspective and finds that linguistic landscaping is as old as writing. He analyzes five historical landmarks in terms of their authors, settings, and functions, and concludes that landmarks are a defining feature of the city life. Berhard Spolsky approaches LL from the perspective of agency and proposes a theory of language change. Eliezer Ben-Rafael emphasizes the theoretical importance of the study of LLs from the viewpoint of social sciences. According to Ben-Rafael, the formation of the LL is a structuration process based on the sociological principles of “the presentation of the self,” “good reasons,” and “collective identity.”

Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter consider the concept of LL from an economic perspective. They propose the Contingent Valuation Method, which has been applied when studying environmental economics concerning biodiversity. Thom Huebner applies the perspective of ethnography of communication with emphasis on the context of a sign, its agents, its place and its audience. Finally, Francis Hult suggests that LL analysis be used together with nexus analysis in the study of ecological multilingualism and applies these methodologies in the analysis of data collected from a large study of multilingualism and language policy in Sweden.

Part 2 aims at expanding LL analysis from methodological perspectives. David Malinovski focuses on the theories and methods of multimodality to examine the notion of LL authorship, placing emphasis on the symbolic and political significance of a particular linguistic code's appearance with other codes in bilingual signs. Monica Barni and Carla Bagna introduce a multidimensional model for studying LL by using a flexible computer program that had been previously used in geography. Finally, Loulou Edelman discusses methods of LL data classification, focusing on proper names like brand names and shop names.

Part 3 considers the relationship between LL and language policy from various perspectives through a regionally diverse set of case studies. Peter Backhaus compares two contexts (Quebec, Canada and Tokyo, Japan) with various geographical, political, and linguistic characteristics in terms of rules and regulations in linguistic landscaping and finds that linguistic landscaping in these environments is different in content but similar in form. Marián Sloboda, who focuses on the relationship between state ideology and LL, examines the LL environments in three countries (Belarus, The Czech Republic, and Slovakia) which have recently undergone radical sociopolitical and economical transformation. Elizabeth Lanza and Hirut Woldermariam expand the concept of LL, discussing it in relation to language ideology in a regional capital of Ethiopia. They explore how people position themselves with regards to the policy and to multilingualism through their contribution to the LL. Finally, Silvia Del Negro focuses on the LL in a rural environment in three mountain villages in Italy from a language policy perspective.

Part 4 further expands the concept of LL, viewing it from the perspectives of identity and awareness perspectives. Melissa L. Curtin focuses on the relationship between social identity and properties of indexicality of language scripts in the public space of Taipei. She examines how two types of orthographies are used in the city and emphasizes the importance of the graphic regime of orthographic scripts in the process of identification. Nira Trumper-Hecht considers LL as a sociosymbolic phenomenon from the perspective of constructing national identity and claims that the battle between Hebrew and Arabic on signage serves as an instrument within a wider status struggle between the two national groups in Israel. With the case of Upper Nazareth, a mixed city, the writer shows how language can be used to construct national identities. Diane Dagenais, Daniéle Moore, Cécile Sabatier, Patricia Lamarre, and Françoise Armand approach LL from an educational perspective and try to reveal the relationship between LL and language awareness. Focusing on elementary school children in Canada, they document their literacy practices, examining multilingualism and language diversity in their communities. Finally, Jeffrey Kallen examines the interaction of language policy, tourism, and ethnolinguistic vitality with the Irish LL.

Part 5 further expands the concept of LL. David J. Hanauer extends the notion of LL to an educational scientific context and views it as a literacy-research paradigm. He defines the functions of representational wall space within a professional microbiological laboratory. Alastair Pennycook considers the relationship between LL and graffiti, arguing that an understanding of graffiti as transgressive urban semiotics opens up important directions for an understanding of LLs. Pennycook believes that focusing on the process of the production of signs, the reasons for the emergence of a sign, and the agents involved would help us understand how signs appear, with what purposes and motivations. Finally, Elana Shohamy and Shoshi Waksman significantly expand the scope of LL, claiming that it includes everything that can be seen, heard, spoken, and thought. They think that the public space is a negotiated and contested arena that is influenced by a variety of factors and features. Therefore, they present LL as both a significant tool for documentation and inquiry and a powerful medium within a framework of critical pedagogy, activism, and language rights. They illustrate the role that LL can play in language education in their analysis of Haapala (Tel-Aviv, Israel) from a multimodal and multilingual perspective.

The book is a significant contribution to the field, as it radically expands the notion of LL in various directions: theoretical, methodological, and empirical. Theoretical approaches brought to bear include the historical, sociological, ecological, and sociolinguistic. The notion of LL is considered vis-à-vis language rules and regulations, state ideology, language ideology, identity, and awareness. The scope of LL is widened to such an extent that it includes such diverse areas as the wall space of a laboratory or transgressive graffiti. In short, what has been done is quite impressive. Nevertheless, “the feeling among researchers working in this area is that the work has only just begun” (10).

There is no doubt that the book is valuable for undergraduate and graduate students in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and discourse. It could be useful to anyone who is interested in the relationship between language and society. The book may also be of interest to politicians who may be indirectly involved in such issues as language policy and language management.