Kapitolina Fedorova (Tallinn University School of Humanities)
Abstract
Linguistic landscape – a universe of all written signs placed in public space – can be seen as a visual representation of speech patterns existing in a certain place. However, it also attests to power relations between different social and ethnic groups as well as to domineering language ideologies. Languages spoken in the streets can be underrepresented in written public use; and vice versa, the language overwhelmingly used in signage can be imposed by political authorities but not actually spoken by local residents. What is more, multilingual signs and spaces around them can become both contact zones and conflict spaces for various languages and individuals and groups speaking them. The lecture will focus on several cases studied by the speaker first-hand: Russian megalopolises Moscow and St. Petersburg; Russian-Chinese border area; town of Vyborg in Russia near Finnish border; various districts of Seoul Metropolitan Area in South Korea; twin cities of Narva and Ivangorod on Estonian-Russian border; Tallinn, the capital of Estonia; it will show how ethnographic analysis of linguistic landscapes can reveal language attitudes and social tensions existing in society and provide rich data for studies on language management, urban multilingualism and social interaction.
Bio
Kapitolina Fedorova, Professor of Russian Studies, Tallinn University School of Humanities
Graduated from St. Petersburg State University (Department of Russian and Department of General Linguistics), 1998, and European University at St. Petersburg (Department of Ethnology), 2001. PhD in Philology (2002). In 2003–2018 worked at European University at St. Petersburg and then at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea. Since 2020, she holds the position of Professor of Russian Studies at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, urban multilingualism, language contact, migration studies, border studies, linguistic landscape, and language ideology.