Digital Maps for Linguistic Diversity

Documenting and analyzing how multilingualism materializes around us gives insights in the use, hierarchies and inclusions of languages in society. The visualization of these insights, however, is often challenging as characteris- tics of languages, their flows, movements etc. demand contextualization and clar- ifications that can be difficult to render on a visualization model such as a map. This paper discusses the challenges of visualization and the potentials of digital maps in Linguistic Landscape Studies. We suggest to include and integrate vari- ous layers of qualitative and quantitative data in order to strive for rendering the dynamism of language use.