OWL+

Ownership and Leadership: Pathway for (Endangered) Languages’ Use in School

Reading the Place Where I Live (Linguistic Landscapes)


I Material Phase

  1. Take your mobile phone or a digital camera and go outside home/school to explore the environment you live in. Find a new focus for exploring your environment, e.g., signs in different languages and other visual signs.
  2. Choose an important street or square in your town/city or your parish as a typical place where a lot of people meet, where there are shops, services, or other things which make the place alive.
  3. Take pictures of signs written in the shop windows, on doors, on signposts or billboards etc. Think also about nonverbal signs (drawings, photographs, images, symbols, and others).
  4. Save all pictures on your computer creating a separate folder.
  5. Group the signs according to criteria which you find interesting and appropriate: e.g. language (Latvian, Latgalian, English, and others); the coexistence of languages (monolingual, bilingual or multilingual, e.g. official tourist information in three languages); types of signs (e.g., house names, street names, graffiti); or the level of comprehension (understandable vs. incomprehensible). 
  6. Select signs written in Latgalian or designed with symbols which reflect regional culture or specific linguistic practices.
  7. Look at them and think about how these signs reflect particular historical periods, identities, values, and belonging to local communities, traditions and cultural transformations. 

II Verbal Phase

  1. Work in pairs or small groups. Share your thoughts and findings with your classmates (try to communicate in Latgalian):
  • Which signs have you collected when taking pictures?
  • How often did you see Latgalian on these signs, and in which situations?
  • How did you feel during the activity of taking pictures and analysing them?
  • What kind of challenges and surprises did you encounter?
  1. If you have collected signs with house names (names on plaques), street names or similar signs with names, discuss questions such as:
  • What do you think – what does generally stand behind house/ street names and which stories do they tell us?
  • In which contexts do Latgalian names appear?
  • How are the signs designed and which other semiotics / signs do they show?
  • What does owning a house imply in Latgale? What possible backgrounds may house owners have, and what benefits and challenges may they encounter?
  • What do the names that you found tell about the identity of the house owners and of the local community in general?

III Mental Phase

  1. Define, discuss, and explain new concepts relevant in your investigation of the signs (e.g., regional identity and language, linguistic landscapes, semiotics, house names, street names, etc.). What do they mean for your community?
  2. Look at signs in Standard Latvian and Latgalian. 
  3. Identify similarities and differences between both languages (morphology, semantics, pragmatics). Create a table which will allow you to notice and remember these similarities and differences.
  4. Prepare you views and your way of argumentation in class about questions such as:
  • How does the official construction of the public space through the linguistic or semiotic landscape (i.e. how signs by the municipality or other important players are used) display the identity of the place? Which role does Latgalian have in that?
  • Have you heard of any resistance more Latgalian or other languages would be used? 
  • What would you suggest for re-structuring the linguistic landscape of your local environment?
  1. Summarise the views expressed in the discussion, and reflect upon your own knowledge, ideas and attitudes. Define in written form:
  • the concepts regional language, identity, and belonging 
  • the functions of signs in public space
  • What does property and ownership of a place mean?
  • What is a local community?
  • What is individual responsibility and leadership?

Area of Interest: Documentation and text collection

Skills: Reading and Speaking

Competences:

Age Bracket: 6 – 10

Time Commitment: Over 60 minutes

Affordability:

Materials:

Digital cameras (as part of your phone or as separate devices), computers

Expert recommendations: