[PLing] Max Spotti PhD-Workshop on ethnographic linguistic landscape analysis, Wednesday, 14 October 2026

[Khoi Nguyen]

**Dear colleagues,

We are very pleased to invite PhD students and colleagues to a workshop 
with Dr Max Spotti, Associate Professor in Digital Literacy and 
Ethnography at the Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University: 
‘Uncovering the dynamic and multilayered sociolinguistic landscape of a 
mittel-European multilingual contact zone: A reflexive approach to 
Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis carried out by primary school 
children’

*Wednesday, 14 October 2026, 10:00–12:00*

*University of Vienna*

Universität Wien, Hauptgebäude, Universitätsring 1

Linker Seiteneingang, Stiege 9, 2. Zwischengeschoss, *Seminarraum 2*

*Places are limited and registration is required. Please register via 
this link 
<https://www.termino.gv.at/meet/de/p/13b9586223a8e2441e01690da753ad02-638331>. 
*

*How to find us: *Please use the left side entrance of the Main Building 
and take Staircase 9 to the 2nd mezzanine floor. After exiting the lift, 
turn left and go through two glass doors. Seminar Room 2 is on the 
left-hand side.

**

The workshop is open to PhD students and colleagues, and we warmly 
encourage anyone interested in the topic to join us. Please also feel 
free to pass this along to anybody you know who might be interested.

ABSTRACT:

*/Uncovering the dynamic and multilayered sociolinguistic landscape of a 
mittel-European multilingual contact zone: A reflexive approach to 
Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis carried out by primary school 
children/*

Ethnographic Linguistic Landscape Analysis (ELLA) has been used as a 
refreshing approach to understanding bottom-up sociolinguistic practices 
in several socio-cultural arenas. Against this background, the citizen 
science project at the core of this ethnographic workshop, called*/Taal 
Detectives,/* part of the*/Alle Scholen Samen Verzamelen/*initiative, 
serves as our case in point. Through phone-mediated instruction, primary 
school pupils (aged 8-12) across the Netherlands collected 3.580 
pictures documenting the Linguistic Landscape around their schools. They 
then performed an in-depth analysis using the MODIPLAC model by 
Kerschhofer-Puhalo (2021) on a subset of 780 pictures, in which they 
were asked to reflect on the diverse roles languages play in their 
environment. Thanks to our young ethnographers and their hard work, the 
data collected formed the basis for an in-depth exploration of the 
Linguistic Landscape of the villages of Tienray and Swolgen in the 
Dutch-German border area conducted via a border-scapes lens (Tufi, 2024) 
and the Bourdieusian loop (Blommaert, 2018), which helped enrich the 
pupils’ data with a map visualisation and a network analysis of the 
sociolinguistic landscape. With this unique ELLA approach, the case 
study helped me and the team to reflect on the sociolinguistic landscape 
of the two villages as layered and segmented multilingual contact zones 
that, on top of their idiosyncratic sociolinguistic peculiarities, 
embody an institutional ‘nexus of digital practices’ (Scollon, 2001) for 
the integration of newly arrived third country nationals.

The Bourdieusian loop approach to ELLA has benefited the study in two 
ways. First, it explores the needed balance between ethnographic (thick) 
and quantitative (big) data. Second, by extending the analysis to 
digital practices that inevitably shape the sociolinguistic landscape. 
The case study also shows how a reflexive ethnographic method enables 
the condition of ethnographic serendipity (Patiño-Santos, 2019). By 
providing quantitative information reappreciated through the 
ethnographic Bourdieusian loop, a reinterpretation of the children’s 
data made it possible to uncover the complexity of socio-cultural spaces 
in border zones that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

*About Max Spotti*

Max Spotti is Associate Professor in Digital Literacy and Ethnography at 
Tilburg University. His research spans sociolinguistic ethnography, 
language and identity, migration and asylum, superdiversity, language 
policy, and digital literacies.

More information: https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/m-spotti


*We look forward to welcoming you to the workshop!*

  Miriam Weidl & Khoi Nguyen


-- 
Khoi Nguyen, BA MA PhD (er/ihm; he/him)
Universitätsassistent
Universität Wien
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
Sensengasse 3a
A-1090 Wien
+43 1 4277 41727
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