Artifacts and actors

Abstract

The linguistic landscape is a powerful indicator of the linguistic communities within an area, their prevalence, and their position within the social and political hierarchy. Therefore, language artifacts in the physical space reflect the attitudes toward different languages in the area and toward language revitalization projects. This study examines the linguistic landscape on the Seneca Nation Cattaraugus Reservation. The physical language representations in this area are analyzed in conjunction with interviews from community members to understand how the linguistic landscape represents the local population, and their attitudes toward Seneca language revitalization. The intentions of this study are to understand how the linguistic landscape is influenced by, and how it influences, the population's attitudes toward different languages on the Seneca Nation, how the linguistic landscape is being used for Seneca language revitalization, and how it could be used for language revitalization in the future. [from abstract]