Translanguaging and linguistic landscapes

In this article we discuss the concept of translanguaging in relation to a holistic view of linguistic landscapes that goes beyond the analysis of individual signs. On the one hand, we look at instances of multilingual signage as a combination of linguistic resources. On the other hand, at the neighborhood level the individual signs combine, alternate and mix to shape linguistic landscapes as a whole. We expand our “Focus on Multilingualism” approach from school settings to the multilingual cityscape. One bookshop and its surrounding neighborhoods in Donostia-San Sebastián illustrate how readers navigate between languages and go across linguistic borders. Through translanguaging we foreground the co-occurrence of different linguistic forms, signs and modalities. At the level of neighborhood emerges the space in which translanguaging goes outside the scope of single signs and separate languages. We conclude that translanguaging is an approach to linguistic landscapes that takes the study of multilingualism forward.