Linguistic Landscape of an International University Campus: Approaches, Features, Findings

Abstract

The relevance of this study is explained by the fact that despite the diversity of linguistic landscape studies of urban spaces, the methodology for studying the linguistic landscape of educational organizations is not systematically described and there is a lack of research on the communicative space of universities. Meanwhile, the linguistic landscape of a university is one of the important tools for its management and transmission of values and ideology, it is also a space for interaction between administration, teachers and students. In addition, the linguistic situation developed at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, where the campus is a unique multinational multicultural space with a peculiar linguistic landscape, is of scientific interest. The purpose of the study is to describe the linguistic landscape of the international campus of RUDN University as a classical university with high level of internationalization with the use of the methodology developed by the authors. The material presents visual texts posted on RUDN University campus. The objectives of the study involved the following methods: sociolinguistic methods and techniques; descriptive method with characteristic techniques of generalization; classification and interpretation; quantitative, comparative and semiotic methods. The main results, which also contribute to the scientific novelty of this study, are as follows: 1) the authors proposed a methodology to describe the linguistic landscape of an educational organization; 2) clarified methodologically important issues related to the concept and functions of the linguistic landscape of a university; 3) identified the subjects shaping the linguistic landscape of the university, and determined the degree of their activity in its creation and contribution to the linguistic diversity of the landscape; 4) established that the ratio of languages, as well as the dominant language of written communication, depends on the subject of the texts; 5) pointed out that the linguistic landscape reflects the focus of RUDN University on internationalization; 6) formulated preliminary recommendations for organizing written communication on campus to increase its effectiveness and improve the ergonomics of the campus communicative space; 7) noted that the linguistic landscape is only a part of the complex communicative space of a university campus, for a comprehensive study of which the authors of the article introduce the term ‘communicative landscape’.