Discursive constructions of the viewing of a bathroom as a linguistic landscape in a shared home

Abstract

Abstract In the linguistic landscapes (LL) literature there is frequent mention of the viewing of public locales by passers-by, owners, and tourists, who necessarily enter and exit locales in different ways, times, and conditions. This paper extends our understanding of the viewing of LL by investigating the discursive constructions of the bathroom of a shared home through the voices of its residents: six Vietnamese international students studying in Australia. When the residents of the home were asked to reflect on their perceptions of language in this locale, the findings show that they attend to the inscriptions on the artifacts, the linguistic activities that take place within the locale, or see no LL whatsoever because of the ways they construct the locale. The findings suggest that linguists need to give more consideration to the types of linguistic activities that occur in a locale in exploration of how individuals view their LL.