Two decades in <i>Linguistic Landscape</i> studies: theoretical and methodological approaches and new challenges for research

Abstract

In the last 20 years, the Linguistic Landscape (PL onwards) became a sociolinguistic research focus on the use of languages in space. The LL as a method of data analysis in urban sociolinguistics has come to encompass several objects of study, being able to respond to a series of challenges for the analysis of multilingualism and multimodality in relation to space. The development of LL in the last decades helped in its consolidation later as a line of research on the use of language in the construction of space, and therefore as an object of study potentially attractive for applied linguistics. So, the objective of this article is to offer an overview of the main theoretical-methodological approaches that have been developed over the last two decades for the analysis and study of LL. These approaches have been characterized by being broad, varied and diversified, where even other approaches questioned the LL category itself as an object of sociolinguistic analysis. Likewise, my intention is to try to develop a balance, outline of contrast and historical development of these approaches with a relatively broad vision that reflects their diversity and the different tools of analysis, emphasizing the research produced over the last decade.