Ricerc@Sapienza

Beyond the significant results achieved in field research, the study of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) offers a testing ground for the theoretical and categorical changes that have impacted the latest sociolinguistic research. It is in fact through this concept that linguistic studies have participated in the so-called ‘spatial turn’ so pervasive in the human and social sciences in recent decades marked by an increasingly complex interpretation of space. Compared with this debate’s other arenas, however, sociolinguistic research has so far proved to be less attentive to consideration of the affective component of space, which always involves a person who experiences it, perceives it, crosses it, works in it, speaks it (lived space).
By means of a novel crossing with the notion of atmosphere, developed by the new aesthetic of phenomenological orientation to indicate the emotional feel of human space, the present essay aims to question the conception of landscape itself at the base of sociolinguistic research, opening the way to a more complex and articulated analytical model that can more effectively tackle key dimensions of the contemporary linguistic experience, such as speakers’ modes of perception and representation in urban spaces characterized by growing plurilingualism.