Learnings from/about diversity in space and time: discursive constructions in the semiotic landscape of a teacher education building in Norway

Abstract

This article critically examines the discourses concerning historical and transnational linguistic and cultural diversity in the semiotic landscape of a new teacher education building in Norway. In 2020, this building, housing the Department of Education, opened at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, in the city of Tromsø. Designing, constructing, and decorating a new building for a national teacher education was taken as an opportunity to reflect on and negotiate the institution’s role in relevant contemporary, as well as historical, educational discourses and to mark a current standpoint. Taking a nexus analytical approach, we analyse how linguistic and cultural diversity are represented in the department’s public space and how this is interwoven with the construction of the institution’s position in a multilingual and multicultural environment. Our analysis shows that this diversity is constructed through various contrasts. Sámi identities and regional roots of knowledge are emphasised in the official part of the semiotic landscape – framed as learnings from diversity. However, by analysing meta-sociolinguistic discourses about diversity, we show that this is accompanied by the erasure of other aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity, in particular Kven culture and identity, transnational diversity, and children and their lifeworld.