Language for All: Teaching Graffiti for Intercultural Literacy

This article describes how to help students connect what they learn in the language classroom to the outside world as they learn to understand, produce, and analyze spoken, written, visual, and cultural information in their second language (L2). As learners make connections between course material and the physical and virtual spaces where the L2 is used, they are introduced to the concept of "linguistic landscape" (LL), which refers to language on signs, advertisements, in graffiti, and other public venues. The examples come from a Hebrew class, where students gain deeper understanding of diverse intercultural realites in Israel and are prepared to function in authentic communicative situations. Colleagues in other languages could also use LL as a basis to explore intercultural realities of any multilingual space--from Berlin to Québec or in students' own environments.