The Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a specific branch of Applied Linguistics is investigated as a challenging, growing area of research, while its methodologies and theoretical framework still need to be explored and established in order to become a Linguistic Landscape theory.
On a representative sample, the distribution of LL studies around the world is shown so the reader can see how widespread the area already is. Over the years, linguistic landscapes have become a means and a tool to investigate multilingualism, minority languages, the complexities of language, and cityscapes around the world. Yet researchers have often neglected the forces and drives behind LLs, by including these complex structures, LL has the potential to become a theory in its own right. This book tries to give a first holistic insight into the dynamics, mechanisms, and patterns such linguistic landscapes display with a special focus on new methodologies to help LL step out of the shadows of its interdisciplinarity.