Institutional linguistic landscape in Buenos Aires dialectal area: the language teaching promotion

Abstract

The study of the so-called linguistic landscape, that is, the socio-spatial distribution of the uses of the various languages and linguistic varieties –many times in contact–, is still in incipient development in Argentina. Most of the researchs that are being developed correspond to the Buenos Aires dialectal area, and the one whose results are presented in this article was carried out in the same area. Nevertheless, and differentiating ourselves from the practically exclusive interest in outdoor spaces, we deal in this paper with spaces with public access but architecturally interior: we approach the linguistic landscape that is usually called institutional, focusing the promotion of foreign language teaching in two higher education institutions (universities with public management) located in the city of Bahía Blanca, a reference point for the referred dialectal area. We register and analyze the way in which the offering of extracurricular foreign language classes is promoted in these institutions: on the one hand, we specify for which languages they are offered, and by which senders; on the other hand, we explore the promotion strategies that the different actors use, according to the language in question.