Aspects of linguistic landscapes in Europe

This chapter discusses linguistic landscape studies, a strand in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics dealing with the visibility of language in the public space. First, it elaborates on key terminology and concepts and presents possible commonalities of linguistic landscape studies in European research contexts, highlighting recurring topics such as multilingual settings, including officially minority and minoritized languages of different status, and the rising presence of English as a language of globalization. Then, European commonalities are exemplified by way of case studies from Austria, both from rural and urban sites, highlighting power struggles and imbalances, and reflections of minority politics and language policy in the public space.