Abstract Regional and minority languages are often challenged as their communicative value decreases. However, given their use in marketing and for identity construction, and as an outcome of language maintenance and revitalisation initiatives, their public display can increase. This study combines online language use with Linguistic Landscape research to examine the use of Low German in the Virtual Linguistic Landscape of commercial Instagram posts. Using qualitative and quantitative data analysis of a multimodal corpus of commercial Instagram posts’ visuals, the paper shows that Low German is the most common language and, unlike High German and English, primarily serves a symbolic function as prints on products and in language learning contexts. This Low German use follows patterns of enregisterment, commodification, and postvernacularity while also furthering these. The high visibility of Low German in the data is thus not a sign of a language of everyday communication but rather emphasises its symbolic nature.
Frederike Schram (Fri,) studied this question.
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