Jazyková krajina jako kronika komplexity

A number of places in the world today, thanks to the increased turnover of people and the development of telecommunications, are undergoing fundamental changes that significantly diversify these locations in terms of the presence of different languages and cultures. The book by Jan Blommaert, one of the most inspiring sociolinguists today, presents the theory of sociolinguistics of globalisation in an imaginative connection with the concepts of semiotics, discourse analysis, migration studies, and ethnography. In particular, ethnography, characterised by an effort to adequately capture the social and cultural complexity of the investigated localities in their historical depth, is not yet very developed for language and communication research in our country. The same applies to the use of knowledge about inscriptions and signs in the physical space, or linguistic landscape, to identify social and cultural changes. Ethnographic approach to the linguistic landscape, vividly applied in the analysis of one Antwerp district, will also interest those who think about the current transformations of the city’s public space. Thanks to its interdisciplinarity, the book will find its audience among linguists, ethnologists, anthropologists, semioticians, sociologists, social geographers, and urban sociologists.