Raising critical awareness of the linguistic landscape : an experience with a group of pre-service english teachers in Colombia

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The linguistic landscape (LL) is loaded with a myriad of texts such as advertisements, government signs, and graffiti, which, like any other text, are never neutral. With them and through them, various agendas are battled, negotiated, and dictated, as they depict how people are socially and politically included or excluded, reflect who has and exercises power over public spaces, and have the power to shape people’s values, identities, and even behaviors. Given this power of LL texts, raising critical awareness of the LL within educational contexts is of paramount importance. Aware of this, LL scholars abroad have begun to make efforts to critically analyze LL texts within educational settings. These studies have focused on analyzing with students linguistic diversity or dominance, multilingualism, and the presence of English in public spaces of big cities. However, few of them have been concerned with developing critical awareness of the LL; i.e., having students understand the non-neutral nature of LL texts (e.g., that LL texts carry various purposes, represent some people and exclude others, target some audiences and exclude others), unveiling hidden messages about community issues, or engaging in transformative actions. Besides, although pedagogical experiences have begun to emerge in second language learning contexts, classroom experiences in EFL classrooms or EFL teacher education programs are rather limited. In Colombia, some scholars have already begun to study publically displayed texts and their role in second language education. However, pedagogical experiences showing how to engage EFL pre-service teachers and students with critical analysis of these texts are still scarce. Aware of this gap, this qualitative case study aimed at exploring how a group of Colombian pre-service English teachers developed critical awareness of the LL by participating in a pedagogical intervention in which they were asked to critically analyze the LL of their communities. Data collected included participants’ written work samples, reflections, and questionnaires. Results from this study suggest that all participants made gains in understanding the non-neutral nature of LL texts and in unveiling hidden messages about community issues portrayed by them. Also, three out of eight participants engaged in actions aiming either at transforming community issues or raising other people’s critical awareness. Notwithstanding, this study also suggests that developing critical awareness of the LL is a process that takes time and needs carefully planned scaffolding for it to occur.