Multilingualismo e politica: il Linguistic landscape nelle elezioni amministrative 2023 in Alto Adige/Südtirol.

This study examines the presence and role of electoral signs in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Alto Adige/Südtirol during the 2023 election campaign. Given the region’s bilingual (Italian-German) and in some areas trilingual (including Ladin) context, electoral signage provides a unique insight into political communication strategies and language use. Using a qualitative approach, the research analyzes monolingual and multilingual election posters collected in the week preceding the October 22, 2023 elections through the LL-Politics_Südtirol corpus, built with the Lingscape APP. The study explores how parties utilize linguistic and multimodal strategies in their campaign materials and whether language choices reflect the linguistic composition of candidate lists. Findings indicate that language use in political messaging varies significantly across parties, with some adhering strictly to monolingual communication and others incorporating multilingual elements to reach a broader electorate. Applying models from Reh (2004), Kress/van Leeuwen (2006) and Scollon/Scollon (2003), the research highlights pragmatic, symbolic, and strategic uses of language in the electoral LL.