This chapter provides a critical review of the blossoming of Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a research field in the early 21st century. Arguing that the LL itself is at least as old as written language, the chapter examines the multiple sources of contemporary LL research in such fields as onomastics, the visual arts, language policy and planning, and examinations of the social and linguistic outcomes of multilingualism, globalisation, and population movement. The chapter argues that the field of LL research did not stem from any one source, but instead developed from bringing together researchers from different interests and parts of the world. The chapter reviews terminology in the field from English and French, and argues for the use of LL as one which is broad enough to include a wide range of modes of expressing meaning, but retains a focus on language that gives it a distinct conceptual identity.

This chapter understands the Linguistic Landscape (LL) as a flow of discourse in time. LL units are structured as texts, materials, and discourse, but the LL only unfolds when these units engage the sign instigator and the sign viewer in discourse in the public eye. Using the foodscape as a focal point, the boundaries between the LL and other social practices are examined. A review of LL research methodology examines the role of photographs and the photographer’s point of view, fieldwork approaches that include interviews and reflexive ethnography, and the position of quantitative analysis. The chapter discusses relationships between the material LL and online linguistic landscapes (OLL), examining language displays in the OLL and ways in which users transcend the apparent boundaries between the two. Pointing out the long history of representing the LL in literature, the chapter discusses James Joyce’s Ulysses for its portrayal of the outer forms of the LL and its representation of the inner world of characters who move through the LL. Recommendations are made for further expansion of the field geographically, temporally, materially, and ethnographically.