The majority of current linguistic landscape (LL) studies concentrate on urban areas. This study concentrates on the LL of the southern Free State, with the aim of investigating whether the LL of rural areas is as responsive to broader socio-political changes as cityscapes are. The LL not only reflects societal changes, but is also employed to impact on society by creating and maintaining power relations and (collective) identities. For this reason, public linguistic choices are motivated largely by both pragmatic and symbolic considerations. The political transformation in 1994 wrought changes in several domains in South Africa. A remnant of the previous regime is the ethnolinguistically divided neighbourhoods (a white, coloured and black area in each town). The three population groups make separate contributions motivated by their different socio-economic compositions and their new roles within the transformed society. This division provides the basis for a more in-depth investigation of the dynamics between society and the public space.
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