Proper names in the Linguistic Landscape: theoretical challenges in a multimodal discourse

n this article, we discuss different kinds of proper names in the linguistic landscape(LL) and address methodological and theoretical issues we have encountered in ourresearch within the fields of LL studies and socio-onomastics. We stress the impor-tance of the positioning discourse of proper names in the linguistic landscape, thatis, the “unwritten rules” of where to place proper names e.g. on a shop’s façade, asan underlying structure that enables language users to distinguish between differentkinds of texts, words and grammatical classes. This resource is particularly relevantwhen language users are confronted with homonyms, which can make it hard for lan-guage users to determine what meaning and function a particular sign is to have. Wealso discuss the multimodality of proper names in the LL, which presents a theore-tical challenge for both describing the language use in the LL and defining the wordclass of proper names in grammars. The theoretical discussion is supported by empi-rical findings on language users’ ability to distinguish between proper names and othertexts in the context of LLs.