This study examined how a linguistic landscape task integrated into a short-term study abroad (STSA) program in Boston helped cultivate critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) – the ability to notice and critique how multilingual language practices reflect and reproduce ideologies and power relations (De Costa and Van Gorp 2023) – among Korean college students. Twenty-one undergraduates participated in a three-week program that included coursework on language education, ideology, and technology in US schools, alongside explorations of Boston’s history and culture. As part of the coursework, students completed a linguistic landscape task. Prior to fieldwork, they were introduced to the task’s procedures and reflection questions. Students then photographed and categorised pictures of public signage observed during outdoor explorations of the city, completing the task weekly across the program. Students’ multimodal posts show how they noticed linguistic surroundings and how they sometimes interrogated ideologies embedded in multilingual and multimodal signage by uncovering hidden messages and by assessing respect, inclusivity, and social belonging. Findings suggest that linguistic landscapes can serve not only as a source of authentic input, but also as a pedagogical tool for fostering social awareness and critical language engagement. The study discusses implications for designing CMLA-oriented STSA programs.
Kang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.