Vision – Goals

The Volos Linguistic Landscape Research Group (VLLRG): Linguistic Landscape Diaries approaches the linguistic landscape as a site of social dialogue, (re)production and negotiation of identities. The idea of “diaries” stems from our commitment to observing linguistic landscapes in everyday life, as an integral part of both our lived experience and our exploration of the spaces we inhabit and engage with on a daily basis. Through this ongoing practice, we seek to recognize the temporal dimensions of spatial continuity, transformation and change. At the same time, the words embedded in the title Dia-ries reflect the importance we attribute to language in the co-construction of space and the meanings attached to it, both at individual and collective levels. By exploring the messages embedded in our surrounding environments and engaging with linguistic landscapes as part of an emerging research identity that intertwines with our multiple social identities, while attending to the words and discourses through which linguistic landscapes are (re)produced, our shared vision is one of linguistic justice.

We envision a society in which language functions not as a mechanism of exclusion but as a tool for equality, participation and empowerment. Our aim is to render visible the role of language in the (re)construction of both public and private spaces by examining how different discourses shape social reality. At the same time, we seek to foster critical language awareness, critical and multilingual literacies, and to promote multilingualism, translanguaging and interculturality across diverse sociolinguistic contexts, including both formal and non-formal learning environments. We are equally committed to strengthening the agency of socially marginalized groups—including refugees, unaccompanied refugee children and young people, and incarcerated youth—through their active participation in collaborative research. By approaching our research and community-based initiatives as spaces for collective learning, individual and collaborative reflection, and sociopolitical and sociolinguistic transformation, we aspire to contribute to approaches that make visible the voices, embodied performances and lived presences of the very people who produce linguistic landscapes.

Our work begins with a shared passion for research. We strive to connect sociolinguistic inquiry with the critical examination of contemporary sociopolitical realities. We investigate local linguistic landscapes through qualitative, ethnographic, rhizomatic and multimodal approaches. We map both the presence and the absence of languages, voices and semiotic resources in space. Drawing on intercultural, translanguaging and critical discourse-analytic perspectives, we seek to recognize and interpret the relationships that shape people’s experiences of place. We discuss, reflect, imagine and intervene together.