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Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (Eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery. New York and London: Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group). 2009. xiii + 352pp. ISBN: 978 0 415 98873 5 (pbk), £29.99
Recent decades have witnessed an increase of interest towards linguistic landscapes (e.g. Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Gorter, 2006a, 2006b; Backhaus, 2007). To the best of my knowledge, the present volume is the first effort to focus on such a wide range of issues all together connected to linguistic landscape (LL) research, that is, from usual linguistic approaches to multilingualism and semiotics to architecture and economics. The book comprises 20 contributions that are logically divided into five parts, notes on contributors, and an index.
In their Introduction, Shohamy and Gorter emphasize a multidisciplinarity of the emerging LL research. According to them, LL is a dynamic and energetic authentic topic that needs to be studied everywhere (starting with shopping centres and finishing with beaches or cyber spaces). The editors state that the contributors attempt to widen existing frames of LL research for a better understanding of its connections to different disciplines and to broaden our comprehension of LL.
The first part of the book, 'Theoretical Perspectives', consists of six articles. Coulmas discusses possibilities of analyzing historical LL, stating that 'linguistic landscaping is as old as writing' (p. 13). He shows what lessons historical landmarks such as the Rosetta Stone, the Taj Mahal and others, could give to LL researchers and concludes that two important questions for them should be 'Who is able to read this sign?' and 'Who reads it?' (p. 22).
Spolsky gives a comprehensive overview of the history of LL research, which started long before Landry and Bourhis (1997) named it 'linguistic landscape', the term that Spolsky characterizes by the adjective 'awkward' (p. 25). True, if one looks at the places where the data for LL research is predominantly collected, then usually these are multilingual cities, towns or other urban areas. In that case, the author reflects, why not use the term 'cityscape'? In a very understandable way Spolsky enumerates theoretical problems of LL research (such as what to include and so on). It is worth mentioning that the author tends rather to use the term 'public signage' than LL and this becomes...