Agency and Policy: Who Controls the Linguistic Landscape of a School?

Abstract

Agency has been an ongoing topic of concern in Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies since the field’s emergence while more recently notions of top-down vs. bottom-up power have been questioned in favor of more nuanced appreciations of the multiple factors that influence a local LL actor’s selection and emplacement of public language. Agency in public schools in the United States exists at the nexus of policy (determined at national, state, and local district levels) and the many decisions made by administrators at individual schools while teachers and support staff, students, and other stakeholders act according to and sometimes against explicit and implied policies. Previous studies of the LL of schools (schoolscapes) have demonstrated the role that public displays of language play in constructing identities, agency, diversity, and ideologies that affect multilingualism and literacy practices. This chapter reports findings of a mixed-methods study of all three elementary schools and the two secondary schools in a mid-sized public school district in Oregon. The combination of photographs, video-recorded walking tours led by schoolscape actors, and interviews with teachers and administrators documents the district’s schoolscapes and provides insight regarding their composition. This data leads to a classification of the functions of schoolscape signage and comparisons across the three elementary schools and across educational levels in terms of languages present, attitudes, policies, and agency. A Nexus Analysis focuses on the ideological positioning of Spanish relative to English and the construction of collective identities primarily as they affect English Language Learners and Spanish heritage speakers in the district.