ELLViA is an FWF Elise-Richter project that was hosted by ACDH-CH (Linguistics research unit) from 2018 to 2019, and whose main output, the ELLViA Corpus (a collection of annotated photographs from the linguistic landscape of Vienna), is archived in ARCHE.

The central research interest of ELLViA was to investigate the amount, forms, and functions of English language use on written texts in Viennese public space from a sociolinguistic perspective (= studying the interactions of language and society). Over 17000 written artifacts were collected in different areas of Vienna in the year 2015 and annotated for language use, location, activity context, material, size, etc. to determine the amount of English and factors influencing its occurrence.

Results show that 80% of the data feature some German, 20% English, 4% other languages (mostly French and Italian), and 13% not clearly attributable words (e.g., Restaurant, Internet). Analysis of language constellations on the collected items showed that 60% were monolingual German, and 18% monolingual English. 20% were multilingual, the most frequent combination being German-English (~30%). English appeared particularly frequently on items that contain only names, suggesting that English is used rather for symbolic representation (e.g., in brand/product names) than for informational content (e.g., wayfinding or guidelines).

To explore why (to what effect) English is present in the Viennese LL, studies were conducted in which informants were shown, e.g., the same ad with an English and with a German text; and they were asked to indicate what characteristics they associated more with each version (regarding modernity, internationalism, youth culture, high quality, etc.). Results suggest that Austrian/Viennese LL audiences perceive English as more international, cool, and modern than German. However, this outcome is highly context-dependent, such that English is typically judged more positively in lifestyle ads (fashion, make-up) than in food ads, where German is preferred (indicating better quality and sustainability).

ELLViA’s contribution to the sociolinguistic study of linguistic landscapes lies in the large amount of data collected and the results described, as well as in the processes and tools developed for this kind of research, especially for LL data collection and the analysis of the social associations called up by LL language use in audiences. One major benefit of the systematic approach taken in ELLViA is its replicability: the procedures developed here can be readily applied in other research contexts, in order to compare results and gain a more comprehensive picture of how English as a global language (or any other language) appears and functions in public space anywhere, with the goal of better understanding what kinds of messages we get from interacting with the linguistic landscape in everyday life, and how it affects us.