Linguistic landscape: The semiotics of public signage

The paper starts with signs that Cooper and I found in the Old City of Jerusalem. It describes how the term Linguistic Landscape was applied to the recollections of francophone high school students of the signs they had seen. It traces the many collections of photos employing digital cameras and cell-phones, and research that was derived from these collections, including published papers and books, a journal, and an annual workshop. The paper regrets the rarity of details of authorship (but reports who was responsible for the Jerusalem street signs), and the tendency to interpret signs without detailing authorship. Signs provide evidence of the state of literacy, but ignore the sociolinguistic make-up of the local community, missing that for earlier scholars “linguistic landscape” meant speech as well as writing. It regrets the paucity of efforts to provide a theory of public signage, arguing that this could be derived from the field of Semiotics.