The impact of the linguistic landscape on university and urban spaces in Brazil and Bolivia

Abstract

In this article we apply a Linguistic Landscape approach to explore university and urban spaces as the background to highlight discrepancies in ethnic integration and incorporation of differences in Brazil and Bolivia. We focus on two vibrant cities that attract talents interested in participating in their academic environments. In Brazil, we address ethnic protests that, in some spaces, are naturalized as student occupations, a regular and general right that resonates in university spaces as a symbolic but fleeting phase. In Bolivia, we highlight the outcome of past protests whose marks are still found on the urban and university landscape, although protests have been silenced with no significant changes in ethnically different conditions. We have done qualitative, descriptive research based on in loco photographs and various documents to collect records of how superdiversity of actions, attitudes, and movements has outlined results in São Paulo that have already been witnessed by La Paz. By comparing these spaces, we have placed emphasis on the discrepancy in advances in the major large cities of these two Latin American countries. The analysis of images that populate university and human spaces allowed us to identify the different attitudes and strategies used by ethnic groups to claim their rights. This is an element that should ultimately be assimilated by Linguistic Landscape scientific methodology.