Beyond the signs: multimodal approaches in analysing multilingual landscapes in Transcarpathia (Ukraine)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58423/2786-6726/2025-3-63-86Keywords:
linguistic landscape, multilingualism, ethnography, TranscarpathiaAbstract
This study investigates the multilingual and multimodal dimensions of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Transcarpathia, a historically contested borderland region of western Ukraine marked by political transformations, demographic shifts, and an ongoing conflict. Home to Ukraine’s largest Hungarian minority, the region has witnessed the gradual restriction of minority language rights through legislation such as the 2017 Law on Education and the 2019 State Language Law, alongside intensified de-Russification policies after 2022. Against this backdrop, the project Cross-Border Language Accessibility in Public Life explores how language policy, multilingual practices, and community agency intersect in public signage and communicative spaces. Building on previous research of the Antal Hodinka Research Centre for Linguistics, our approach integrates multimodal and ethnographic methods to examine not only the textual content of signs but also their visual, spatial, material, and sensory dimensions. Data collection combined geosemiotic analysis, video- and sound-recordings, and ethnographic fieldwork, including semi-structured walking interviews with local officials, school directors, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. Photo-elicitation techniques further revealed subjective interpretations and emotional responses to signage. The findings highlight how multilingual public texts function as ideological instruments that both reflect and reshape identity politics, particularly as bilingual signs are replaced with monolingual Ukrainian ones. Multimodal observations also demonstrate that signs’ material decay, spatial positioning, and sensory environments embody symbolic struggles over memory and belonging. By foregrounding the agency of sign producers and the lived experiences of minority communities, this study argues that LL research must move beyond static documentation toward multimodal, multisensory, and actor-centred perspectives. Such approaches not only capture the complexities of multilingualism under conditions of war and shifting policy but also provide critical insights into how minority languages adapt, resist, or fade within contested borderland societies.
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