Those are the types of questions that Lourdes Sánchez-López, Ph.D., hoped to hear when she introduced linguistic landscape to students taking her Globalization in the Hispanic World course.
Research by (left to right) Samantha McDonald, Nayivis Cunill, Lourdes Sánchez-López, Charli Hannah Tyree, and Nicole Lassiter could help local health-care providers assist non-English speakers.For example, “if I speak only Spanish, and I walk into one of the hospitals in the Birmingham area, am I going to be able to get to the emergency room? Or to find my way if nobody there knows my language?” asks Tyree, a 2016 graduate in Spanish now pursuing a master’s degree at UAB. The Birmingham native is one of the students who recently surveyed the city through its signs, advertising, and pamphlets, trying to understand how the area physically reflects its diversity, and how it looks to people speaking other languages. “Linguistic landscape is the visual representation of languages-all languages-in public places,” explains Charli Hannah Tyree. In other words, if you don’t speak English, then you might have a tough time finding your way around the city. But its linguistic landscape, students discovered, is rather flat.
Media contact: Tiffany Westry Womack, natural landscape is a rolling mix of mountains and valleys.