Representation of the Spanish language in the virtual linguistic landscape of university websites in Australia

Abstract Although it can be argued that the language of the internet is English, the portrayal of other languages in virtual academic settings such as university websites may face constraints related to institutional and monolingual policies. Thus, this research adopts a linguistic landscape perspective to explore the representation of the Spanish language and culture in Australian university websites. In particular, it focuses on how Spanish language/studies programs or courses are portrayed and what meanings are conveyed in the virtual linguistic landscape of four Sydney universities. This paper applies a social-semiotic, multimodal analysis to explore the hierarchical organization of information on universities’ websites and webpages and the meanings conveyed by the designers in relation to the semiotic resources selected to promote Spanish language/studies programs or courses. The study concludes that only two of the studied webpages attempt to portray Spanish language/studies programs or courses fully multimodally, one uses text and video, and the last relies solely on written text to convey meanings. These choices may have ideological implications because these institutions fail in their attempt to represent Spanish as a pluricentric language. Additionally, these programs/courses are disadvantageously positioned in the hierarchical organization of information on the four analyzed websites, which makes it harder for potential students to find relevant content about these programs/courses.