This is the fourth blog post created by students of the 2026 ‘Linguistic Landscapes‘ Summer School at Venice International University, in conjunction with the University of Exeter and KU Leuven.
Martha Targett, Yi Lu
The area we explored was the Santa Marta area of the Dosorduro district of Venice (see picture below). It is an area of Venice which is highly populated by students, and there is a large student accommodation complex associated with the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The area we studied is also home to various university buildings relating to Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and IUAV University of Venice. In particular, the headquarters of the IUAV University of Venice are based here and the district is also home to many of the Ca’ Foscari humanities department buildings, which means that many of the students living in this area are humanities students. In accordance with this, a lot of the graffiti, stickers and posters from this area referred to left-wing ideas and political movements. Alongside the large student population, the area is historically a working-class area, and there is lots of social housing dating from the 20th Century.
While walking around the Santa Marta area of Venice, we noticed the substantial amount of graffiti. As a result, we decided that our study of the linguistic landscape of Santa Marta would be focussed on our research relating to the graffiti we observed while investigating this urban landscape.
This is the third in a series of blog posts created by students of the 2026 ‘Linguistic Landscapes‘ Summer School at Venice International University, in conjunction with the University of Exeter and KU Leuven.
Mona Mezhoud
Public space is never neutral. As Michel Foucault argues in his influential essay on heterotopias, places are always embedded in relations that either reveal or obscure power structures: heterotopias function as counter-sites where social orders are “simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (Foucault, 1986 [1984]: 24). Applied to Venice, this observation can be sharpened considerably — and, as the following comparison suggests, it is not merely an external theoretical import grafted onto the case. Tufi’s own linguistic landscape study of Venice arrives independently at the same framework, describing the city’s linguistic landscape as the product of a “dislocation of (real) place and the creation of a heterotopia” (Tufi, 2017: 89), a liminal space that is “simultaneously real and unreal.” Venice is no longer an everyday living space for its residents but a site where representation, contestation, and inversion of spatial order are constantly layered on top of one another under the sign of mass tourism. As Tufi notes, “In the LL [Linguistic Landscape] of Venice’s most visited areas there is evidence that Italian is undergoing a minoritisation process and, as a result, social levelling with respect to the languages ascribed to the main tourist groups” (Tufi, 2017: 85).
Language plays a central, though often underestimated, role in this negotiation of space. Norman Fairclough showed that language is not a neutral resource but a social practice that both reflects and (re)produces power relations (Fairclough, 1989: 26) — a framework applicable directly to Venice’s linguistic landscape, from multilingual, tourist-oriented signage to official municipal announcements: decisions about who may place which language where are never merely stylistic, but are always already questions of power.
This paper examines how a specific form of linguistic dominance has taken hold in the area around Santa Maria Maggiore in Venice, one that has increasingly adapted public space to an international, English-speaking tourism economy — and how this dominance has progressively marginalized the Venetian population, prompting residents, in turn, to reclaim that same space through language.
This is the second in a series of blog posts created by students of the 2026 ‘Linguistic Landscapes‘ Summer School at Venice International University, in conjunction with the University of Exeter and KU Leuven.
Wout Huygens, Horace Lee & Ellie Nicholls
During the Summer School on Linguistic Landscapes in Venice, we analysed the linguistic landscape of the area around the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the northern part of the main island. By adopting Lynch’s framework on the elements of the city image (Lynch, 1960), we identified the major paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks in the region. In this blog post, we argue that transportation has a clear effect on the linguistic landscape, that the graffiti and stickers reveal certain political tensions and that there is clear asymmetry of multilingualism in our chosen area of the city.
Mapping the area
By following Lynch’s elements of the city (Lynch, 1960), we started by tracing the edges, which are all clearly defined waterways, as well as the waterways within our region. Next, we plotted all bridges on our map acting as a base for the paths. Then, we added the public transportation nodes and landmarks, consisting of two water bus stops for the vaporetti, a hospital, the basilica and 3 churches. After carefully analysing the linguistic landscape and the transport streams, we added the main walking paths (see Image 1).
Image 1:Mapping process of the Santi Giovanni e Paolo region in Venice
Based on these data, we also divided the region into different districts (see Image 2), coinciding with Lynch’s categorization (Lynch, 1960). Districts 1 and 5 cover the waterfront areas near the touristy Fondamente Nove area and the hospital area respectively, characterized by the public transportation nodes. These districts are characterized by movement from/to a specific node within the district. Districts 2, 4, 7 and 8 each symbolize a path, characterized by pedestrian through-traffic. Instead of movement from/to a specific point within the district, this area acts as a passageway from a point outside the district to another point outside the district. Finally, districts 3, 6, 9 and 10 refer to areas around landmarks, in this case a church, the basilica or the hospital. Similar to the node districts, the movement within these districts is also oriented towards a specific point within the district, but these districts usually act as destinations as opposed to intermediate transfer points in districts 1 and 5.
Image 2:Identified districts in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo region in Venice
Figure 1 The Rialto Pescheria and Beccarie area in Venice
This is the first in a series of blog posts created by students of the 2026 ‘Linguistic Landscapes‘ Summer School at Venice International University, in conjunction with the University of Exeter and KU Leuven.
Karin Swahn, Shinhaz F. N. & Wenhan Kang
Space can be understood through the interrelated dimensions of perceived, conceived, and lived space (Lefebvre, 1991). Walking through the Rialto Pescheria and Beccarie area in Venice, we encountered the city primarily through the perceived dimension of space. We understood the area through what we saw, heard, and noticed through our senses. As visitors, we experienced the space without inhabiting it as part of our everyday lives and without the planner’s perspective through which urban space is conceived. Wenhan Kang, our only Italian-speaking member, was also the only one who had previously visited Venice, leaving the other two of us to encounter the area as tourists with analytical gazes.
To analyse this, we decided to frame our material through the concept of authenticity. According to Zukin (2008, 2010), authenticity has become increasingly important as a way of marketing and selling urban spaces since the 2000s. Zukin challenges the conventional idea of authenticity as something inherent, traditional, or sincere by presenting it, instead, as a quality that is socially constructed and externally recognised. It does not necessarily represent local residents and often reflects the tastes of the middle and/or upper classes. In this sense, authenticity can function as a form of power that contributes to gentrification and the displacement of an area’s original inhabitants.
What does “authentic” look like in urban spaces? According to Zukin (2008, 2010), it often appears through small shops, “ethnic” restaurants, alternative forms of lifestyle consumption, and carefully constructed narratives attached to venues or products. We know what these narratives look like: “this shop started as a dream between two friends…”, or “our cicchetti continues the fish market’s tradition of combining fresh fish, international influences and old recipes…”. Zukin (2010, p. xiii) describes such authentic spaces as using, “bits and pieces of cultural references: artfully painted graffiti on a shop window, sawdust on the floor of a music bar, an address in a gritty but not too thoroughly crime-ridden part of town.” While this description is rooted in an American context, similar authenticity markers can be found in Venice, for example in wooden signs, chalkboards, and the mixing of Italian and English.
A mix of Italian and English ads / signs in Venice
In Venice, tourists’ search for authenticity produces a space that is constantly judged by its appearance, cosmopolitan character, and performance of heritage. It creates a city of heightened representation and romanticisation, in which locals’ lived space is given very little room. Residents often have to navigate streets crowded with tourists who suddenly stop to take photographs. It is, therefore, fitting that Venice has been described as a “museum city” (Blackwood & Tufi, 2015; Tufi, 2017). Venice can also be understood as an assemblage of heterotopias in Foucault’s sense: spaces that are simultaneously real and unreal, situated within time yet somehow outside of it (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986; Tufi, 2017). In the following, we present our assemblage of authenticities and heterotopias through three themes: heritage as branding, homogeneous door signs and ghost doors, and vernacular authenticity.
This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, as they usually occur in urban spaces.
More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people.
Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.
Faculty Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven (Coordinator) Richard Toye, University of Exeter (Coordinator) Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice Bert Oben, KU Leuven Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter Michela Maguolo, Independent researcher Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
Guest lecturers Alberto Toso Fei, Director Urbs Scripta (tbc) Desi Marangon, Director Urbs Scripta
Who is it for? Applications are welcome from current final year Undergraduates (finalists, BA3), MA and MPhil/PhD Students in Linguistics, Sociology, Classical Studies, (Business) Communication Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Political Studies, Translation Studies or any other related discipline.
Faculty: Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven (Coordinator); Richard Toye, University of Exeter (Coordinator); Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice; Geert Brône, KU Leuven; Claire Holleran, University of Exeter; Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter; Michela Maguolo, Iuav, University of Venice; Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
In Santa Marta, a quiet Venetian district, the city itself becomes a text: walls, streets, and public spaces speak through signs, graffiti, and infrastructures that reveal five interwoven themes: Anti-tourism, Transport & Mobility, Multilingualism & Symbolic Resistance, Government & Authority, and Prison as an Edge. From anti-tourism sentiments to the symbolic tensions of incarceration, our investigation examines how language, infrastructure, and public space interact to shape meaning and mobility. As shown in Figure 1, which provides a satellite view of Venice highlighting key landmarks and mobility nodes, our study is grounded in the spatial reality of the city. We begin by analysing local resistance to mass tourism, then move through the spatial logic of transport hubs like Piazzale Roma. We further consider multilingualism and graffiti as forms of symbolic resistance, explore the role of governance in shaping visibility and authority, and finally, interpret the Santa Maria Maggiore prison as both a physical and discursive edge.
Satellite view of Venice highlighting key landmarks and mobility nodes, including Santa Marta and Piazzale Roma. (Snapshot by Boam Olivia Boam, 3 July 2025)
Beatrice Gervasi, Katarzyna Jonkisz, Meng Hao, Sabeth Malfliet, and George Ellis
Students of ‘Linguistic Landscapes‘, Venice International University Summer School 2025
Faculty: Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven (Coordinator); Richard Toye, University of Exeter (Coordinator); Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice; Geert Brône, KU Leuven; Claire Holleran, University of Exeter; Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter; Michela Maguolo, Iuav, University of Venice; Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
Our case study of Venice for the ‘Linguistic landscapes: signs and symbols’ summer school was centred around the storied neighbourhood of Santa Maria Formosa. This area boasts a historic Basilica, the Fondazione Querini Stampalia library and a new art installation of 2 lions and 2 lionesses which is intended to promote public interaction with art and celebrate Venetian pride. In short, this area offers a lot culturally and historically. This is strongly evident when walking down the side streets. During our first excursion, our group got the immediate sense that this was a residential area that had developed a strong tourist population due to its historical significance and geographic location (en route to the Rialta bridge).
We were fortunate in the sense that this region of Venice was not a particularly large one, being measured at 0.0072km^2. However, this did not mean that our investigations were without challenge. The geography of this area (a seeming thoroughfare for tourist populations) led to difficulties in photo collation. This combined with the high-content-per-area (a total of 73 relevant primary photos) and the labyrinthine streets led to our group having an abundance of data and difficulties delimiting our data set and research question. To overcome this, we adopted a thematic approach which split our data set into three relevant points for discussion: action flows, multilingualism and polyfunctionality. We then used relevant semiotic and anthropological studies (for example Landry and Bourhis 1997, Scollon and Scollon, 2003) to dissect the data set and apply a linguistic landscapes lens with the end goal of finding out whether Santa Maria Formosa is a healthily functioning neighbourhood or another victim of the increasing globalization faced all over the western world.
This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, as they usually occur in urban spaces.
More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people.
Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.
Faculty
Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven (Coordinator) Richard Toye, University of Exeter (Coordinator) Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice Geert Brône, KU Leuven Claire Holleran, University of Exeter Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter Michela Maguolo, Independent researcher Luca Pes, Venice International University Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
Katie Baker, Emily Cooper, Gabriel Labrie, Nicla Pennacchio, and Esther Roza
Faculty: Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven; Richard Toye, University of Exeter; Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice; Geert Brône, KU Leuven; Claire Holleran, University of Exeter; Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter; Michela Maguolo, Independent researcher; Luca Pes, Venice International University; Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
While exploring the area around the Frari, we noticed the following sign in front of a bar:
What does this divergent text tell us about the potential audience? What do the spelling mistakes tell us about the owner or the creator? (cf. Spolsky Handwrittenbottom-up sign with divergent text 2008, 31). in Italian and English (Calle de le Chiovere)
The boundary of the sestiere of San Polo, highlighted.
The questions raised by this image piqued our curiosity about multilingual signage. Therefore, we decided to focus on signs containing more than one language (cf. Backhaus 2005 on Tokyo and Moser 2020 on Luxembourg City). Due to time constraints, the shaded area of the sestiere was omitted for this analysis, thus limiting our evaluation to the streetsimmediately surrounding the Santa
A larger version of the previous map with all insulaeapart from Frari and Nomboli shaded, and the routes around the basilica and the Vaporetto stop are highlighted.
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari Basilica,which permeates the insulae of Frari and Nomboli. We also examined the shortest path from the Basilica to its closest vaporetto stop, San Tomà, as this is a common route taken by ourselves and other tourists (cf. Lynch 1960, 46−49).
Furthermore, only signs of the A4 format or larger were included. The size and language criteria allowed for systematic, thorough data collection in the defined area. Our final corpus accounts for 105 signs.
Faculty: Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven; Richard Toye, University of Exeter; Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice; Geert Brône, KU Leuven; Claire Holleran, University of Exeter; Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter; Michela Maguolo, Independent researcher; Luca Pes, Venice International University; Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
In this blog, we present our exploratory study of the linguistic landscape of the neighbourhood surrounding the Chiesa dei Santi Apostoli di Cristo in Venice. By the term linguistic landscape, we refer to “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region”, as defined by Landry and Bourhis (1997). The fieldwork was carried out in the context of the VIU Summer School ‘Linguistic Landscapes: Using Signs and Symbols to Translate Cities’ that took place from June 24 until June 28, 2024. Our survey of the area focused on how bottom-up street communications (meaning those not put up by the city and its officials) differ between residential areas, more frequently utilised by locals, and busy thoroughfares frequented by large amounts of tourists.
By Ikuo Harimoto, Marian Gabani Gimenez, Dongfang Liu, Javiera Scarratt, and Alexander Van Herpe
Faculty: Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven; Richard Toye, University of Exeter; Matteo Basso, Iuav University of Venice; Geert Brône, KU Leuven; Claire Holleran, University of Exeter; Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter; Michela Maguolo, Independent researcher; Luca Pes, Venice International University; Paul Sambre, KU Leuven
When we were assigned the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, in the neighborhood of Castello, as the central point of our fieldwork for the 2024 “Linguistic Landscapes” Summer Course at Venice International University, we had to decide on the criteria to delimit the area we would be exploring. Based on Kevin Lynch’s (1960) typology of the contents of the city image, i.e. referable physical forms that people recognize and rely on in their wanderings through the urban space, we reflected on the various possible maps that Venice offered. As pointed out by Lynch, the image of the same physical reality shifts according to the circumstances of viewing, and Venice is the locus where numerous circumstances coexist: for instance, the canals seem to work as an edge for earth-bound wanderers, but a path for water-bound locals. In this reflection, we realized that water could be seen as this ambiguous–or fruitful–element according to which the “circumstances of viewing” shift profoundly. We opted, thus, to define the canals as the limit for our explorations.
Venice is formed by several small islands, connected by canals, lagoons, and waterways. One could argue that this is what makes Venice distinctively attractive to people all over the world. Such geographical features, coupled with its unique history, foreground a particular identity, expressed in signs, art, images, and structures across the city. On the flip side, Venice’s geography and history also bring their own issues: over-tourism, rise in water levels, and sinking foundations. This tension is what intrigued us and guided this project. Starting from the Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, a 14th-century church of Gothic architecture, we wandered through the paths and followed the margins of the canals seeking structures, signs, and images that referred to water, however loose the reference might be. Our goal was to understand if and how water informed and still informs the architectural, semiotic, and linguistic landscape of Venice.
We divided the results of our research into three topics: the uses of water (utility), protection from water-related events (defense), and water as a cultural element. The first topic explores the structures in place to make use of water in Venice and how they differ depending on who is making use of it. The second topic investigates the remnants and the new strategies to defend the land from water-related events and disasters. In the third and last topic, we argue that water is also present as a symbol in the cultural landscape of Venice.
The Summer School Linguistic Landscapes: Using Signs and Symbols to Translate Cities aims at equipping participants with a comprehensive understanding of modern Linguistic Landscapes (LL) research. This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of LL, which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, as they usually occur in urban spaces. More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people. Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.
Suitable for: current final year Undergraduates (finalists, BA3), MA and MPhil/PhD Students in Linguistics, Sociology, Classical Studies, (Business) Communication Studies, History, Cultural Studies, Political Studies, Translation Studies or any other related discipline.
Call for applications: December 1, 2023 – March 5, 2024 via the VIU website
This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, as they usually occur in urban spaces.
More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people.
Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.
Call for applications: December 1, 2022 – February 28, 2023 via the VIU website
This course focuses on the growing interdisciplinary field of Linguistic Landscapes (LL), which traditionally analyses “language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings”, usually as they occur in urban spaces. More recently, LL research has evolved beyond studying only verbal signs into the realm of semiotics, thus extending the analytical scope into the multimodal domain of images, sounds, drawings, movements, visuals, graffiti, tattoos, colours, smells as well as people.
Students will be informed about multiple aspects of modern LL research including an overview of different types of signs, their formal features as well as their functions.
Faculty Kurt Feyaerts, KU Leuven Claire Holleran, University of Exeter Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter Michela Maguolo, Iuav University of Venice Luca Pes, Venice International University Paul Sambre, KU Leuven Richard Toye, University of Exeter
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