Visible language is widespread and familiar in everyday life. We find it in shop signs, advertising billboards, street and place name signs, commercial logos and slogans, and visual arts. The field of linguistic landscapes draws on insights from sociolinguistics, language policy and semiotics to show how these public forms of language relate to multiple issues in language policy, language rights, language and education, language and culture, and globalization. Stretching from the earliest stone inscriptions, to posters and street signs, and to today's electronic media, linguistic landscapes sit at the crossroads of language, society, geography, and visual communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book-length synthesis of this exciting, rapidly-developing field. Using photographic evidence from across three continents, it demonstrates the methodology and approaches used, and summarises its findings and developments so far. It also seeks to answer common questions from its critics, and to suggest new directions for further study.

‘This book is one of a kind. It studies linguistic landscape from all major disciplinary angles which this topic is tackled from by its numerous students - from sociologists to researchers in art and design. The fruit of immense knowledge, this book pays due tribute to the methodological diversity which has warranted the rapid growth of the field among scientists in recent years. Above all, the book shows, with clarity and conviction, how linguistic landscape research accounts for the life of language in society.’

Eliezer Ben-Rafael - Professor Emeritus, Tel-Aviv University

‘In this first, thorough textbook for a new, dynamic field, Kallen takes the reader on a superb journey across multilingual texts written in space.’

Adam Jaworski - Emeritus Professor, University of Hong Kong