Mapping Language Visibility in a Philippine Public Elementary School: A Schoolscape Analysis

What becomes visible in a school’s linguistic environment can reveal how language policies, institutional practices, and everyday communication are materialized in educational spaces. This study examined the schoolscape of a public elementary school in Aringay, La Union, Philippines, focusing on the languages displayed in school signs, their hierarchical representation and spatial distribution, their classification as top-down or bottom-up, and their relationship to the language orientations articulated in DepEd Order No. 020, s. 2025. Anchored on Geosemiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), Spolsky’s (2004) Language Policy Model and the top-down and bottom-up framework of linguistic landscape analysis (Ben-Rafael et al., 2006), the study systematically documented and photographed visible linguistic signs across accessible areas of the school. Data were gathered through systematic walkthroughs and analyzed using deductive thematic analysis based on predetermined themes corresponding to the research questions. The findings reveal an uneven linguistic distribution, with English emerging as the most visible language, followed by Filipino, while Ilocano had minimal representation. English appeared across instructional, administrative, informational, safety, and achievement-related spaces, whereas Filipino was more selectively represented in practical areas. The schoolscape was also predominantly shaped by top-down signs, demonstrating the significant role of institutional actors in determining linguistic visibility. In relation to language policy, the findings show that English and Filipino are both represented, but their visibility is uneven. Overall, the schoolscape reflects the interaction of language policy orientations, institutional practices, spatial contexts, and communicative functions, while linguistic visibility alone cannot establish policy compliance or language preference.