Lydia Mitits is Assistant Professor at Democritus University of Thrace in Greece where she teaches Applied linguistics – Bilingualism in education. She has also taught EFL in primary, secondary and tertiary education. She holds an MA in TEFL and a PhD in Applied Linguistics. She has presented in international conferences and published peer reviewed research papers on multilingualism, language learning strategies, instrument adaptation, etc. in books, international journals and conference proceedings. Her main research interests lie in the fields of language learning strategies and multilingualism, bilingualism and education, language teaching methodology and bi-/multilingual language development.
PRESENTATION TOPIC
From City Signs to Classrooms: Exploring Linguistic Landscapes for Multilingual Understanding
The study of linguistic landscapes (LL), among others, aims to enrich our understanding of societal multilingualism by focusing on language choices, hierarchies of languages, contact phenomena, regulations, aspects of literacy, and so forth, in the language presentations found in public spaces. In this talk, I will explore how multimodal texts in various languages found in urban spaces can be analyzed from the sociolinguistic and applied linguistics perspectives and discuss how the LL can be used as a research instrument and a rich source of data for understanding issues related to multilingual practices. I will also provide some examples from a number of LL studies around the world as well as the case study conducted in Thrace, a region of Greece where I live and work. Finally, I will argue for the pedagogical possibilities of LL research. Examples include engaging language learners in LL fieldwork or conducting classroom-based research that examines LL as a discourse type. This approach can be incorporated into the foreign language curriculum to create a connection between the learner and the LL from a critical literacy perspective.
SPEAKERS MARIJANA PRODANOVIC DANIEL STOLFI