Reframing Virtual Linguistic Landscapes: making the most of multimodal signs in Twitter/X to enhance contexts and meanings. A multilingual overview

Linguistic landscapes (LLs) have become an important field of study, especially in intertwining a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds (Kallen, 2023). In recent times, a tight connection between LLs and online communication is observed. In particular, Social Networking Sites (SNSs) canalise different forms of communication in a twofold perspective: a direct, one-to-one communication and a more public, discursive interaction addressed to a community. Against this background, the idea put forward in this study is that SNSs are proper forms of LL spaces, since they are able to convey signs that become information and discourse-related practices as soon as they are decoded properly by a given discursive community. A particular case study involves the analysis of contents posted on Twitter/X. In a reframed perspective in which SNSs are perceived as virtual LLs (Lyons, 2017; Biró, 2018), users make the most of some specific features that allow continuity of interaction, guiding addressees and whole audiences towards a complete retrieval of contents that otherwise would be fragmented, in step with messages and signs in ‘traditional’ LLs. An example is represented by a growing use of threads and specific hashtags; such elements, along with other semiotic markers such as emojis (Zappavigna and Logi, 2024) or fixed patterns shape a linguistic landscape in SNS contexts. The analysis shows some examples in a multilingual perspective by comparing similar contents conveyed in several languages (e.g., Italian, English, Spanish, French, etc.) trying to look how repeated VLL patterns (especially non-verbal, such as emojis) convey a universal sequence of signs decoded in a communicative and universal perspective just as in conventional LL scenarios.