28. Okt 2025
Jessica Hampton
University of Liverpool
Into the In-Between: towards a methodology for exploring the transformative potential of Indigenous language concepts for decolonising Linguistic Landscape studies
Abstract: Language shapes how we view and interact with the world. While many Global North narratives retain colonial dualisms, Pacific cultures often perceive in-between spaces not as voids but as relational dimensions that transcend binary notions of space and time. This co-authored autoethnographic study challenges us, as scholars from the Global North, to (re)view landscape through an Indigenous language lens. We explore how language shapes perception and how vā can unsettle the boundaries that traditionally frame objects of Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies. In this talk, I focus on my individual engagement with a local beach as the chosen site. Through a first visit, I observed and recorded its semiotic and material elements; after engaging with the concept of vā, I returned to the same space, documenting how my perception had shifted. This re-encounter transformed the beach into a relational field, allowing me to revisit struggle; my own, the imagined struggle of the place, and that of others I care about. Through this process, vā emerged not only as an analytical lens but as a way of being with and within landscape. The study thus offers a methodological pathway for decolonising LL research by foregrounding affect, connection, and reciprocity across spaces and collaborators.