The talking city – The Linguistic Landscape as a didactic resource: developing language skills through urban Interaction: a proposal

Abstract

A significant number of research projects and publications indicate a growing interest on the part of applied linguistics in the use of written texts found in urban spaces, which represent the elements that define the linguistic landscape of an urban environment. This phenomenon could represent a growth opportunity for students, providing a potential teaching tool for the lexical acquisition of students of Italian at the pre-A1 or A1 level. This proposal aims to explore how the linguistic landscape can play a crucial role in the process of language acquisition, particularly in the context of art, language space and learning. Following the guidelines of the updated version of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR-2018), which recognizes a new competence, intercultural mediation, we aim to examine the potential of this competence so that it can be considered a significant pedagogical resource. If multimodal texts create an environment conducive to sociocultural mediation and student motivation in lexical acquisition, teaching activities will be proposed that highlight the importance of the linguistic landscape in the teaching of Italian as a second (L2) or foreign language (LS). These activities will aim to encourage students to explore and understand the urban linguistic context, using the resources present in the city space as a starting point for the development of their lexical skills.