Acknowledgements

This book relies on the creative activities of the designers, sign makers, graffiti artists, and others who have put together the materials that feature in the photographs and discussion here. In trying to understand these creative efforts, I have been helped by other people who have given me permission to take photographs, discussed signage with me, and in other ways provided further information about the workings of their local LL. Acknowledging the help of these anonymous individuals is not merely a formality, but a deep appreciation of their social expression and activity: without them, there would be no LL.

As for photographs, I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Research Incentive Scheme of the Long Room Hub in Trinity College, Dublin, for the ‘Documenting Linguistic Landscapes: Communities, Globalisation, and Policy’ project that facilitated my trip to Astoria, Albany, and Montreal. Though I took nearly all the photographs in the book, I also express my sincere thanks for permission to use photographs taken and given to me by David Abrahamson (Figure 3.13B, Rosh Pina), Xiaoou Hong (Figure 4.5B, Beijing), Cormac Leonard (Figure 5.3A, Dublin), and Esther Ní Dhonnacha (Figures 5.7C and 5.13A, Dublin). The meme in Figure 8.11D is shown with thanks to the artist, ‘briosca-sa-spéir’. Special thanks go to the Dublin City Library and Archive for the photograph in Figure 8.12, which comes from the Dixon Slides Collection and appears by kind permission.

Thanks go as well to people I have corresponded with on matters of documentation and permission, notably Anne-Marie McInerney, Breda McGuigan, Claire Cunningham, Julieann O’Reilly, Lucia Rinolfi, Paul Clifford, Pierre Boutet, and Robert Ethel. Very few restaurants replied to my email queries about signage, but a correspondent at Djerdan Burek in Astoria was very helpful. A particular high point for me centred on Connolly’s Irish Pub in Oak Park, IL, where Bill Kelly and friends Dana and Fred not only provided me with first-hand experience of the Old World–New World interface in the Irish diaspora, but advised me about promising LL sites in Chicago. I was honoured to be included in their quiz night team (where I learned the word diastema), and though I did not come up with many good answers, I am glad to have been welcomed into this Irish American setting.

Every LL researcher is constrained by the limits of their own linguistic knowledge, whether in the basic lexical-grammatical sense or in the nuances of wordplay, interlanguage, and textual reference which feature prominently in the LL. I have benefited especially from Esther Ní Donnacha’s translations and discussion with regard to Japanese, and from extensive commentaries on Chinese in the LL given to me by Tingting Hu. I also express my thanks to Mohamed Ahmed and Nada Abdel Aal with regard to Arabic, Deirdre Dunlevy for Catalan and Spanish, Karina Vamling in connection with languages of the Caucasus, and for further comments on Chinese by Ying Wu, Junling Zhang, and Yaying Fang. Thanks, too, to Seán Whelan Dempsey for an insider’s perspective on graffiti.

My first contact with the emerging field of LL research came about almost by chance, at the 2004 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference in Portland, OR (see Chapter 2). Since the issues of language policy and its relation to community and territory discussed at the panel were so richly multidisciplinary, and had such strong parallels in the Irish LL, I knew instantly that I would want to work in this new field. To my great pleasure, Elana Shohamy invited me to join members of the panel and others for dinner afterwards; I thank her not only for her characteristically supportive and creative way of introducing me to the LL world, but for her leadership in the field as a whole. From this connection, I have been fortunate to have had many stimulating conversations with Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Miriam Ben-Rafael, and with other LL researchers who were part of the early enterprise, notably Thom Huebner, Durk Gorter, and Jasone Cenoz. Many other students, colleagues, and friends have also contributed to my understanding of the LL in various ways, sometimes by hosting events which have given rise to lively discussions. I would particularly like to thank Adam Jaworski, Áine Connell, Alastair Pennycook, Amiena Peck, Bernard Spolsky, Breffni O’Rourke, Cassandra Moss, Christine Hélot, Ciara Kay, Crispin Thurlow, David Hanauer, David Malinowski, Deirdre Dunlevy, Des Ryan, Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Elisabeth Okasha, Francis Hult, Greg Niedt, Hans van de Velde, Heiko Marten, Jackie Jia Lou, James Lantolf, Jennifer Putnam, Jessica Garska, Joe Murphy, Karen P. Corrigan, Kasper Juffermans, Kate Lyons, Kellie Gonçalves, Kevin Nolan, Larissa Aronin, Laura Diver, Laurence Mettewie, Liezl Hendryckx, Louis Strange, Luca De Santis, Maeve Dunn, Mark Sebba, Martin Howard, Maryssa Kozek, Olga Balaeva, Piotr Sadowski, Rakesh Bhatt, Rebecca Todd Garvin, Robert Blackwood, Robert Train, Robert Troyer, Roy Willoughby, Shoshi Waksman, Stefania Tufi, Susan Gass, Vicky Garnett, Vivian Cook, Viviane Ribes, Will Amos, and Yael Guilat. Within Trinity College, Dublin, colleagues of mine in history and geography have also given me new perspectives, and I thank Ciaran Brady and Michael Quigley for the innumerable conversations we have had on these and related matters.

It has taken time – in a world that has changed in many ways – to bring this book to its conclusion. Helen Barton and Izzie Collins at Cambridge University Press have been consistently helpful with their encouragement, patience, and good humour. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their advice. The book-writing process has been greatly helped by members of my family. Thanks to my brother, Greg Kallen, whose arm appears in Figure 8.2B, and who now asks how the book is progressing. Esther Ní Dhonnacha and Margaret Mannion have contributed beyond measure to this enterprise. When Esther and I gave our ‘Rising Sun, Celtic Tiger’ presentation at the LL workshop in Siena in 2009, it was the first father–daughter paper in the field. Whether sourcing or discussing photographs, opening my eyes to the online LL, translating, bringing together the ‘three professors’ group with Karen Wade (who I also thank here), or in other ways, Esther has made an invaluable contribution to my attempts to understand the LL. Margaret Mannion, my wife, has enriched my understanding with an artist’s eye, a literary sensibility, and a sceptic’s independence of thought. Trekking through the sites of fieldwork, pointing out new LL material, and always ready to discuss the LL with me, Margaret has helped me see this book through to completion in ways that no other person could. Margaret and Esther share a love of good writing and editorial practice as well as an antipathy towards academic jargon, and I have tried to stay true to their advice. In this regard, as with everything else in this volume, any shortcomings are my own responsibility.