(1) Diversity through portraits – #ELL10fun

We are a diverse group of students who are taking “Introduction to Language” this semester (Spring 2019) at LaGuardia Community College. LaGuardia is a welcoming environment for everyone, it has more than 57,000 students from more than 148 countries. As a small representation of the student body at LaGuardia, with our #giftheportrait work, we want to show the different cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds we bring to the classroom.

With this work, we express ourselves through art, sharing our journeys as a class, we display a hindsight of who we are and where we come from. No matter where you are or what you call home, language(s) is the essential component that binds us all together. Together with this visual piece, access our site to listen to our podcasts and learn about our linguistic background, linguistic identities, and discover how we navigate our linguistic practices at home and at LaGuardia: Oral Histories from LaGuardia.

(2) Our Linguistic Landscape

Linguistic landscapes are the visual semiotic signs within a public space; from printed, written or sprayed visible language, to colors, graphs and other meaningful signs. Linguistic landscapes are relevant and critical components because they inform us about the linguistic ecology of a given space; they represent the linguistic diversity or the lack of it, along with language hierarchies.

LaGuardia Community College is located in Queens, one of most ethnically diverse urban areas. Despite the diverse student body, LaGuardia’s linguistic landscape is predominantly monolingual in English. With our digital art we want to communicate how there is room to create more multilingual spaces in our school in order to embrace our cultural, linguistic, and ethnic backgrounds.

As a part of this project, we have also translated into Spanish, Korean, Bangla, Polish, and Hindi several handouts that will be available at the E-portfolio web next Fall semester.