Linguistic Landscape of ULAB in the time of Corona

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 has spread to almost every part of the world by the first quarter of 2020. Besides the economy, one of the worst affected hits of Covid-19 is the education sector. Schools and universities across the world began to close gradually. Bangladesh government declared to close all educational institutions from March 17. Since then, many private universities started online classes from April including the one which has been used as the site of data collection in this study. First the authority started with the app Zoom, later they shifted to Google Classroom as it did not have any time limitations, besides the interaction with students got easier. The researcher has used the framework of Linguistic Landscape (LL) in this study to generate a description of urban multilingualism (i.e., the images--colors, signs, layout and written languages in public space). This paper shows how the look or landscaping of ULAB has changed due to the pandemic. It is shown how things were in physical space and how it is now in virtual space. The images collected by the researcher were from the University website, its official Facebook pages and different online discussion groups. The researcher has taken screen shots and downloaded the images to examine and explain them based on their purpose and placement. The research required to answer the question of how the linguistic diversity is experienced in the cyberspace of ULAB.