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When we first started the project of looking at minority languages through a linguistic landscape lens, we felt that the visibility of minority languages in public space had been insufficiently dealt with in traditional minority language research. A linguistic landscape approach, as it had developed over the last years, would constitute a valuable path to explore, by looking at the ‘same old issues’ of language contact and language conflict from a specific angle. We were convinced that fresh linguistic landscape data would be able to provide innovative and useful insights into ‘patterns of language […] use, official language policies, prevalent language attitudes, [and] power relations between different linguistic groups’ (Backhaus 2007, p. 11). The linguistic landscape approach, as presented by the different authors in this volume, has clearly proven to be a heuristic appropriate and relevant for a wide range of minority language situations. More specifically, the ideas and analyses in the different chapters do contribute to a further understanding of minority languages and their speakers. They deepen our comprehension of language policies, power relations and ideologies in minority language settings.
This chapter explores the Linguistic Landscape of six medium-size towns in the Baltic States with regard to languages of tourism and to the role of English and Russian as linguae francae. A quantitative analysis of signs and of tourism web sites shows that, next to the state languages, English is the most dominant language. Yet, interviews reveal that underneath the surface, Russian still stands strong. Therefore, possible claims that English might take over the role of the main lingua franca in the Baltic States cannot be maintained. English has a strong position for attracting international tourists, but only alongside Russian which remains important both as a language of international communication and for local needs.
Over the past decades, problems related to linguistic minorities and their well-being, as well as to minority languages and their maintenance, have developed as an independent branch of minority studies. Studies of language in society and sociolinguistics, strategies of minority language survival and the empowerment of their speakers have produced a considerable output of case studies and theoretical writings.In this multifaceted field of investigation, language use, language practices, language policies and language politics represent interrelated aspects of social and linguistic relations that cannot be meaningfully addressed from a point of view of one scientific discipline only. This is specially the case when one wants to understand processes of language loss and maintenance, or the revitalization and empowerment of a language community. Such processes are linguistic expressions of complex social settings, and reflect group and individual identities that in turn express changing systems of collective values, human networks, fashions and social practices.
This article discusses the situation of the Latgalian language in Latvia today. It first provides an overview of languages in Latvia, followed by a historical and contemporary sketch of the societal position of Latgalian and by an account of current Latgalian language activism. On this basis, the article then applies schemes of language functions and of evaluations of the societal position of minority languages to Latgalian. Given the range of functions that Latgalian fulfils today and the wishes and attempts by activists to expand these functions, the article argues that it is surprising that so little attention is given to Latgalian in mainstream Latvian and international sociolinguistic publications. In this light, the fate of the language is difficult to prognose, but a lot depends on whether the Latvian state will clarify its own unclear perception of policies towards Latgalian and on how much attention it will receive in the future.