Open Access

Being visible may be as important for minority languages as being heard. Traditional research on minority languages focuses on language maintenance and language shift, on language endangerment and revitalization, on language transmission in the family, on education, and on language policies in other social domains such as the media. Although literacy has become an important issue also for speakers of minority languages, much less attention has been given to the written displays of minority languages in the public space. In this volume, our aim is to explore the contribution of linguistic landscape research to the understanding of the dynamics of minority language situations, with an explicit focus on Europe. We wish to add a new perspective to the long history of studies of linguistic minorities, because we believe the aspect of the visibility of minority languages in public space has received too little attention in traditional minority language research. The linguistic landscape approach seems particularly appropriate for a number of reasons. First, it adopts an all-encompassing view on written language in the public space, paying attention to all signs, rather than limiting its scope to the study of predominantly one type of signs. Second, linguistic landscape research not only studies the signs, but it investigates as well who initiates, creates, places and reads them. Moreover, linguistic landscape research as presented in this volume looks at how the linguistic landscape is manipulated — consciously or unconsciously — in order to confirm or to resist existing or presumed language prestige patterns and hierarchies.

This chapter familiarises readers with main concepts of language policy and planning (LPP) from an LL perspective. The chapter provides an overview of the development of the understanding of LPP, culminating in an up-to-date definition. Then, it visualises relations between the LL and LPP through an application of the Holistic Ecolinguistic Model for the Analysis of Language Policy (HEMALP). As a case in point, the paper provides insight into two LL projects conducted in 2022 in Latvia: First, an analysis of the semiotics and languages used during protests against the Russian war and crimes in Ukraine shows how a changing geopolitical situation may trigger LPP changes, e.g. with regard to the tolerance of vulgarisms and the roles of Russian, English and of multilingual signs in general. Second, an LL study in a rural parish in Eastern Latvia reveals changing practices of Latvian, Latgalian, English and Russian and identity-related semiotics, pointing to public space as a palimpsest of language policies.

Die gegenwärtig zu beobachtenden Auseinandersetzungen zum Thema Gendern zeigen überdeutlich, wie ein vermeintlich nebensächlicher "Triggerpunkt" (Steffen Mau) zum Zentrum kulturpolitischer Debatten werden kann. Dabei war Sprachpolitik in Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg eigentlich ein nur selten diskutiertes Thema. In ihrer Programmatik hatten die Parteien kaum einen Satz dafür übrig. Es war schließlich die AfD, die der Sprachpolitik als erste Partei in ihrem Grundsatzprogramm von 2016 größere Aufmerksamkeit zumaß und dadurch als ein Betätigungsfeld markierte. Seitdem wird dieses mit einem kontinuierlichen Strom von Anträgen, Anfragen und Gesetzesinitiativen in den Parlamenten auf Bundes-, Landes- und kommunaler Ebene bespielt.