Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The City As A Text
The City As A Text
The City As A Text
https://mapamundi.online/america/del-sur/colombia/
Two schools in the historic district
We understand urban literacies as social, artistic, political, cultural and pedagogical manifestations
and practices that connect different community actors with diverse texts.
For Lozano et al. (2020) Studying urban literacies contributes to connecting students' cultural and
linguistic resources with those of communities. Urban literacies are framed within the social and
spatial turn in language education. “The spatial turn emphasizes critical reading of texts and other
semiotic resources within and across different spaces (classrooms, homes, schools, communities,
virtual) that are embodied, interactive, multimodal/multisensory, and that evolve over time (Mills
2016; Kramsch 2018) “( P,19 )
Semiotic Landscape, Multiculturalism and Multilingualism
Jaworski & Thurlow (2011, p. 2) the Semiotic landscape as "any public space with a visible
inscription made through deliberate human intervention for the construction of meaning“.
Malinoski (2016). LL research allow students to explore the politics of multilingual expression in
public space through first hand documentation and interpretation.
Sayer (2009). “Involving students in LL projects decentralizes the practice of language learning and
ensures language learner interaction with a variety of highly contextualized and authentic texts in
the public area” (p.101).
Pennycook (2010) “Language is part of social and local activity, both locality and language emerge
from the activities engaged in” (p. 2).
Kress and van Leeuwen (2010) The new realities of the semiotic
The Team: The ethnographic study (2019-2020) involved five university researchers, two graduate
and four undergraduate students from three different language teacher education programs at
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas.
Participants: Teachers from two schools (12+33), urban artists (4), a resident, and university
students (5).
Question
How does exploring urban multimodal, multicultural and multilingual resources contribute to
language and literacy education?
Methodology: Ethnography of
place
➢ Ethnographic walks to map the places and the text plurality of the historic district.
➢ Photographic corpus (387)
➢ Interviews (teachers and urban artists)
➢ Six workshops with teachers in schools.
➢ Researchers´ field notes.
Data Analysis
The use of English has ideological and political purposes as it is used to denounce police violence, especially against
graffiti artists. We encountered different signs that conveyed subaltern political and ideological messages. These signs
The graffiti message suggests a critical analysis of social and political meaning
From a critical literacy perspective, reading semiotic landscapes in the larger historic, and sociological
contexts teachers, and students can contribute to decolonization beyond taking it merely as a metaphor
Pereira Borelli, Viana Silvestre, and Rocha Pessoa (2020) reflecting on some of the multifaceted
challenges of decolonizing English teacher education affirm that one of the challenges teacher educators
“ graffiti allows to see culture and ideology of different peoples and ethnic groups; that is why artists
decide to portray such ideologies, customs and traditions” Poligrafo Eclectico, August 12th, 2020
SL highlighting multilingualism and translanguaging
The multilingual practice includes the use of global languages in response to tourism
and transnational flows. (Canagarajah, 2013 and Pennycook, 2010).
SL highlighting multilingualism and translanguaging
The signs allowed us to understand how Bogotá's urban texts show separate (monolingual) and
integrated language ideologies (translanguaging) for different purposes such as expressing feelings,
Reading the semiotic and linguistic landscape that surrounds schools offers opportunities to develop
critical awareness and to recognize the purposes, audiences, and semiotic resources that students can
In teacher preparation programs, places and semiotic landscapes constitute curricular resources.
Teachers and students can transform the school curriculum using multicultural and multilingual
resources that places offer.
Teachers and students can develop a critical posture from embracing semiotic, linguistic and
multicultural resources.
Teachers can use the semiotic landscapes and place explorations to decolonize their curriculum,
especially by centering linguistic diversity, multiculturalism, and social struggles that are
materialized on the walls of the city.
Conclusions
The political, multicultural and multilingual dimensions of texts in the historic district can help
situate the language curriculum in the complex local realities.
Connecting students with authentic cultural and linguistic experiences of places they inhabit
transforms teachers´pedagogical work and makes learning more meaningful (Lozano, et al. 2020)
We found that different actors were part of assemblages or networks of literacies in which different
individuals in the community interact with passersby, places, social discourses, and multimodal texts
that constitute urban literacy practices of their own.
Using semiotic landscapes as critical literacy resources leads to the recognition of multicultural and
linguistic diversity that is rarely reflected in traditional curricular content.
Amparo Clavijo Olarte PhD
aclavijo@udistrital.edu.co
Gracias!!! https://comunidad.udistrital.edu.co/lectoescrinaut
as/
Thank you!!
Danke!!! Kewin Arley Prieto González M.A. Student
kaprietog@correo.udistrital.edu.co
https://comunidad.udistrital.edu.co/lectoescrinaut
as/