ERIC Number: EJ1316548
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Nov
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1568-4555
EISSN: N/A
Language Policy and Linguistic Landscaping in a Contemporary Blue-Collar Workplace in the Dutch-German Borderland
Language Policy, v20 n4 p645-666 Nov 2021
This article argues that an expanded view of linguistic landscapes provides a useful metaphor for exploring language policies. Following this view, "language policy" is defined as "linguistic landscaping" (i.e., placing language policy mechanisms which, together with already placed mechanisms, construct a metaphorical landscape). The application of this landscaping metaphor has several advantages, as it provides a way to imagine language policy as a continuously ongoing construction process, and as it provides a way to imagine the historical layers of a landscape, the overlap and connections between different landscapes, and the complex hierarchical positions within a landscape. The article is based on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in a metal foundry in the Dutch province of Limburg, within walking distance from the Dutch-German border. Specifically, it discusses why a group of senior production workers from Limburg were dissatisfied with the linguistically diverse landscape that had emerged in the foundry over time, even though the foundry's management tried to place Dutch-speaking workers in the company's sociolinguistic norm centre. Confirming the usefulness of the landscaping metaphor, the article shows that a full consideration of diverse historical and contemporary acts of both linguistic and semiotic landscaping helps explain why these workers experienced that their position in the foundry had become peripheralised over time. In conclusion, the article calls for more attention to the complex human experience, rather than just the detection, of sociolinguistic inequalities.
Descriptors: Work Environment, Foreign Countries, Language Planning, Figurative Language, Ethnography, Metal Working, Indo European Languages, Geographic Location, Language Usage, German, Employee Attitudes, Sociolinguistics, Equal Education, Semiotics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Netherlands; Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A