Does the Linguistic Landscape influence happiness? Framing perceptions of language signs among speech communities in Germany

This paper investigates the potential relationship between multilingual landscapes and minority speech community members' sense of subjective well-being. It focuses on three speech communities located in Germany: Chinese, Japanese, and Turkish. Drawing on interviews with members of these speech communities, it analyzes how individuals perceive their engagement with public displays of their language in terms of happiness and in the context of the host society. Integration, which is prominent in both Happiness studies and Linguistic Landscape research, is identified as a key theme influencing the emotional interaction between signs and sign readers. The paper's aim is to integrate a subject-focused approach into the study of Linguistic Landscapes that can better address how individuals perceive and interact with language signs in multilingual and multi-ethnic settings.