| The linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration is formed by the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings (Landry and Bourhis, 1997). Studying the linguistic landscape gives new insight into multilingualism and language contact. This young research field is attracting interest worldwide. In my Ph.D. project I examine the linguistic landscape of the Netherlands. Urban and rural locations in the city belt Randstad (including Amsterdam) and the province of Friesland are compared with respect to the use of the state language Dutch, the international language English and the minority language Frisian. Other languages, like German, French, Chinese and Arabic, are also considered. |
