The contribution of exterior schoolscapes to neighbourhoods: a linguistic landscape analysis during COVID-19 school closures

Within neighbourhoods, exterior signage of schools is part of the overall linguistic landscape. As community members pass by, these signs contribute to the languages they read. Additionally, signs serve functions in keeping with their visibility. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada (March – August 2020) school buildings were closed to students, yet exterior signage remained present for passersby. In this study, how the languages and functions of these schoolscapes contributed to the overall linguistic landscape during this time period was explored. We photographed 1452 signs from Bilingual Programme schools and their neighbourhoods. We analysed the languages and Halladayan functions of the signs to investigate how school signs contributed to the overall linguistic landscape. English-only signs were predominant, and most signs served as regulatory (rule-enforcing), including the small sample of signs that were specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that schoolscapes influenced the multilingualism of the neighbourhoods through their languages of instruction. Schoolscapes mainly functioned in regulating behaviour of passersby and communicating that their spaces were largely closed to them as outsiders. These findings confirm the important contribution of schoolscapes in the ecology of the linguistic landscape.