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Asian Social Science; Vol. 10, No. 18; 2014
ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education
246
Linguistic Landscape: A Case Study of Shop Signs in Aqaba City,
Jordan
Faten Amer1 & Rasha Obeidat1
1 Department of English Language, University of Hail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Correspondence: Faten Amer, Department of English Language, University of Hail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
E-mail: famer1981@yahoo.com
Received: April 9, 2014 Accepted: July 10, 2014 Online Published: August 25, 2014
doi:10.5539/ass.v10n18p246 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v10n18p246
Abstract
This research paper aims at investigating the language of business in Jordan in order to find out to what extent
the foreign language, English in this case, has influence on the local language, i.e. Arabic, in business sector and
what governs the presence of foreign elements in business language? Is it the type of business, customers, or
other factors? Another aim is to find out whether these foreign words/phrases are used elsewhere in the local
language or they are specific to certain business contexts. A final aim is to see the present status of English in
Aqaba and the attitudes of shop owners towards English as a foreign language.
Keywords: linguistic landscape, shop signs, business language, Jordan, Aqaba, attitudes
1. Introduction
Due to the recent advancement in communication and technology, our present world has become a global village;
communication nowadays is much easier than it was in the last millennium at least. Language plays a vital role
in such communication. In any modern society the use of foreign words is inevitable. English is one of the major
world languages that have a kind of influence on most of everybody’s aspects of daily life. Business sector is no
exception. English language is translated, borrowed, or used as it is in business. People involved in business use
their shop signs, as they constitute a vital area in their business, to display the names of goods and services they
deal with. As for customers, each item displayed on the sign is significant nevertheless the linguistic item.
Together, linguistic items and non-linguistic ones constitute an idea for the customer about the nature and the
type of business of the shop.
Aqaba ‘the Burden’ is the only Jordanian coastal city situated at the northern end of the Red Sea. It is the
southernmost part of Jordan and one of the major tourist attractions in Jordan which is famous for its warm and
rich marine life. However, due to its location and being the only seaport in the country, it is an important city for
industrial and commercial activities. The total population of Aqaba by the census of 2007 was 98,400; however,
the 2009 population estimate is 108,500. It has one of the highest growth rates in Jordan, with only 44% of the
buildings being built before 1990. A turning point in the business history of the city economy was made in
August 2000 when the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA) was passed by the Jordanian
Parliament. Under which some investments and trades are exempted from taxation resulting in new resorts,
housing developments, and retail outlets are being constructed to provide high-end vacation and residential
homes for Jordanians and foreigners as well. Therefore, the economy of the city became heavily dependent on
tourism and port sectors. The major language of daily communication is the Arabic language, as the case with all
other Arab cities and countries, a colloquial form of Arabic, Jordanian Colloquial Arabic (JCA), is used in most
informal situations whereas the standard form, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is retained for all formal
situations. English is the first leading foreign language used with non-native speakers of Arabic. However, due to
its important role in tourism and the fact that two universities out of four in the city are American and British, it
is by and large intelligible and welcomed.
Commercial shop signs in Aqaba are part of the country’s linguistic landscape. The present study comes into
sight from a synchronic analysis of commercial signs in the city in order to document the contemporary situation
and status of English in shop names and displays.
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2. Literature Review
The study of shop signs has been the focus of linguistic research in different regions. Researchers have analyzed
shop signs from different perspectives. For instance, EI-Yasin and Mahadin (1996) study the linguistic material
in 355 shop signs in Irbid (a city in north Jordan) in order to see the use of foreign elements in these signs. They
conclude that the use of foreign elements is intended for promotion and they are so widespread that they may
eventually be borrowed into Arabic. In a similar connection, Al-Kharabsheh et al. (2008) investigate
orthographic translation errors and problems in shop signs in the Jordanian public commercial environment.
They aim at empirically investigating the linguistic factors (e.g., word-order, wrong lexical choice, and
reductionist strategies), and extra linguistic factors (i.e., sociocultural and promotional) that have caused the
translation inappropriateness and unparallelisms, information skewing, and, consequently, serious
semantic-conceptual problems. They conclude that shop signs in Jordan are transnationally “error-ridden”, due to
a variety of linguistic and extra linguistic factors as in certain shop signs there is no relation between the source
language text and the target language text while in other shop signs, it is found that the translation was based on
the source language text, a case common in many signs they investigated.
Trumper-Hecht (2009) investigates the linguistic landscape of Upper Nazareth, Israel, a mixed city of Jewish and
Arab. She conducts the study to show how the linguistic landscape can be a site where identity is constructed by
the two groups in the city and the “language battle” between Arabic and Hebrew which reflects the overall
tension in Jewish-Arab relations. In spite of the fact that Arabic and Hebrew are official languages in Israel,
Hebrew has more visibility than Arabic as the majority of the inhabitants are Hebrew speakers who resist the
Arab population in general. The author states that in spite of the official orders to add Arabic to all public signs
in the city, the visibility of Arabic on public signs has not been improved. She includes also interviews collected
from Arab and Jewish participants about the language they wished to see represent landscape of Upper Nazareth.
The majority of Jewish respondents want to see Hebrew as the most visible language in the linguistic landscape
whereas the Arab informants want to see Hebrew and Arabic and thus displaying more accepted attitude.
Examining the street signs on business names and commercial signs within middle-class and upper-middle-class
in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Banu & Sussex (2001) state that in spite of the fact that Bangladesh established Bengali
as its national language and decreed it as the prescribed language of posting and signage as a form of resistance
to both Urdu and English, instances of English-Bengali alternation on signs represents challenges to state
policies and hence constitute prima facie examples of how the state is adjusting to the representation of minority
languages in the landscape in which English is becoming more persistent in the linguistic landscape of Dhaka. In
addition, they note that Bengali script is used to transliterate English as an instance of creativity and adjustment
which appears mainly in the middle and upper class neighborhoods as they are more socio-economically
privileged areas.
In a study conducted on the linguistic landscape of Taipei, Taiwan Curtin (2009) shows how the linguistic
landscape can be a site where particular ideologies are promoted. The study looks at collective national identity,
and examines how national identity is indexed in the linguistic landscape by the use of script and orthography.
The author concludes that in accordance with the de facto official language policy, Mandarin written with
traditional Chinese characters was the tremendously represented language in the linguistic landscape of Taipei,
and the use of this script indexes a push-pull relation between two different ideologies: a national ideology which
supports resistance to a potential reinstatement of Taiwan to China and a “mainlander” ideology which uses the
linguistic landscape to mark or index a return to an authentic Chinese national identity and culture.
Lanza and Woldemariam (2009) study the linguistic landscape of the downtown and main shopping areas of
Mekele, Ethiopia to see how the linguistic landscape is indexical of linguistic ideologies. The authors state that
the majority of signs were bilingual rather than monolingual, and English was found either a second or as the
only language on these signs. English frequent use can be due to willingness of the local population to use
languages with a growing global sphere of influence. It is also used for decorative purposes and to attract
customers as mentioned by some shop owners.
The use of linguistic landscape as a space of instrumentalism has been the focus of a study conducted by
McArthur (2000) who investigates the store signs in Zurich, Switzerland and Uppsala, Sweden. He states that in
these two cities the local language was the most represented in the linguistic landscape in a haphazard and
unstructured use involving a diversity of language mixes. The author concludes that the use of English as well as
other languages as an established practice reveals how these languages are used for instrumental purposes of
commodification and to convey internationalism rather than to index particular groups and sociolinguistic
communities. In a similar study Ross (1997) investigates the use of foreign languages for instrumental purposes
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of commodification in the linguistic landscape of Milan, Italy. Ross states that up to 50% of the blocks were in
English only in which American English spelling is used and that was due to the appeal associated with
American popular culture (films, pop music) and technology. The author states that the use of English in the
streets of Milan is not playing the role of lingua franca nor is it used to address tourists; instead, it is used as an
attractive and fashionable language having a kind of prestige in spite of the fact that it is not widely understood
by the local population. Ross concludes that the use of non-local languages such as English in Milan is not used
to index a particular ethno linguistic group but for instrumental purposes of commodification.
3. Methodology
This research focuses on the foreign language presence in business sector in Aqaba city in general and on shop
signs in particular. Thus, the purpose is to analyze shop signs in terms of language choice (Arabic or English).
By ‘sign’ is meant all the linguistic material written to draw attention to a shop, whether on a typical sign, a shop
window, or on a moving door. All that relates to the same store or shop is seen as a single sign. These signs are
analyzed according to the type of foreign influence they exhibit. The spelling of the English material on these
signs is kept as it is whenever referred to throughout this article. Following these considerations, the four
questions that this paper attempts to address and give reasonable answers to are:
1) Which functions are performed by English on shop signs of Aqaba?
2) Does the language choice depend on the type of shop?
3) Are these foreign words used elsewhere in the colloquial Arabic of Aqaba or they are specific to this business
context?
4) What is the attitude of shop owners towards English as a foreign language?
For the purpose of this study, commercial signs of 278 businesses were randomly selected from different streets
in Aqaba, and a number of interviews were carried out with shop owners to know the reason why they used
English language on their shop signs. These two techniques are used to assemble the sample of the present study.
Aqaba was selected for its location and it is not being the capital because previous studies suggest that shop signs
in capitals are more Anglicized than those of other cities (cf. Friedrich, 2002; Schlick, 2003; Thonus, 1991). The
types of business in the sample area include (but are not limited to) car rental, jewelries, minimarkets, boutiques
(shoe shops, clothes shops), liquor stores, restaurants, banks, Internet cafés, grocery shops, pharmacies,
souvenirs and gift shops, and stores for furniture and electronic appliances. The signs were initially divided into
two broad groups: signs that have Arabic language only and signs that have either English only or English with
Arabic. Signs with Arabic language only constitute 38% of the total number of signs collected. They are not
dealt with in this research as the aim of the research is to investigate the English language status on shop signs.
Thus, the second group is the focus of the research; however, they are divided into four language use groups:
English only, English and Arabic, English in Arabic script, and Arabic in Roman script.
4. Analysis and Results
As mentioned earlier the aim of this research is to investigate the linguistic material on shop signs, so the whole
data are organized into categories. Shop signs available in this research fall into four categories according to the
nature of the linguistic item found on each sign. They include: Arabic in Roman script (22.6%), English and
Arabic (58.1%), English in Arabic script (5.2%), and English only (14%) (See Figure 1 below).
Figure 1. Signs major categories
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4.1 Arabic in Roman Script
This category includes Arabic words that are orthographically represented in Roman script. These Arabic words
are classified into two groups: personal names and lexical words (see Figure 2). The orthographic representation
is a kind of transliteration in which Arabic sounds are represented by their English equivalents in which few
changes are made in cases where Arabic sounds have no English equivalents. For example, the Arabic ع (a
voiced pharyngeal fricative sound) is represented by the English letter ‘a’ as in Alawneh ﻪﻧوﻼﻌﻟا, or by an
apostrophe as in SA’AD ﺪﻌﺳ and NA’EEM SAQER ﺮﻘﺻ ﻢﻴﻌﻧ. Another important alternation is the omission of
the Arabic definite article as in Alawneh ﻪﻧوﻼﻌﻟا and KHATIB ﺐﻴﻄﺨﻟا in which it appears in the Arabic word on
the sign; however, the definite article is retained in other transliterations.
Figure 2. Distribution of Arabic in Roman script signs
The second group includes words that have cultural values and they lose their meaning if translated; so they
retain their Arabic pronunciation such as Mansaf in Lamb Mansaf ‘a popular Jordanian dish’, and Sayadeh in
Fish Sayadeh ‘a Jordanian fish dish’, and SHEKH-ALHARA ‘chief or head of the district’ in SHEKH-ALHARA
Restaurant (see Figure 3). As the meaning suggests, these words are found on a restaurant sign.
Figure 3. Arabic in Roman script sign
4.2 English and Arabic
The presence of English and Arabic on the same sign is the most common feature in the selected sample of the
study; it constitutes 58.1% of the total sample (see Figure 1). However, according to the linguistic material on
these signs, the following groups are identified (see Figure 4):
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Figure 4. English and Arabic signs
a) Translation
The majority of English-Arabic signs belong to this subcategory. The presence of English is nothing but a partial,
if not complete, translation of the Arabic material such as تاﺮهﻮﺠﻣ: jewelry, رﺎﺤﺒﻟا: sailor, ﻦﺘﺑﺎﻜﻟا ﻢﻌﻄﻣ: Captain’s
Restaurant, ﻪﻳﺮﺤﺑ تﻻﻮآﺄﻣ: SEAFOOD, ﻴﺴﻠﻟ ءاﺮﻀﺨﻟا جوﺮﻤﻟ ﺮﻔﺴﻟاو ﻪﺣﺎ : GREEN MEADOWS TRAVEL &
TOURISM, ﻪﻠﻜﺸﻣ يوﺎﺸﻣ: Mixed Grill, ﺮﻔﺴﻟاو ﻪﺣﺎﻴﺴﻠﻟ ﺎﻴﻧﺪﻟا ﺐﺋﺎﺠﻋ: 7 Wonders Travel & Tourism, ﺖﺤﺗ صﻮﻐﻠﻟ ﻪﺒﻘﻌﻟا ﻼها
ءﺎﻤﻟا: ahlan Aqaba Scuba Diving Center, ﻪﻴﺣوﺮﻟا تﺎﺑوﺮﺸﻤﻠﻟ ﺮﻣﺎﺳ: SAMER LIQOUR STORE, ﺺﻤﺤﻣ: ROASTER,
ﻪﻴﻟﺪﻴﺻ: PHARMACY, ﻪﺒﺘﻜﻣ: LIBRARY, ﺞﻴﻠﺨﻟا ﻒﺤﺗ: Gulf Souvenirs, ﺞﻴﻠﺨﻟا تاﺮهﻮﺠﻣ: Gulf Jewelry, and ﻪﻣﺎﻋ ﻩرﺎﺠﺗ:
GENERAL TRADING. As it can be seen from these examples, the literal translation is made to give the
customer a clear idea about the nature of the goods and services provided by each shop or center. It also indicates
that their customers are not only local but foreigners as well.
b) Arabic Names
According to frequency, this subcategory comes after Translation under English-Arabic signs. It includes Arabic
personal names written in Arabic and English such as Talhaodeh, Samer, GHASSAN, ALZGHOOL, KHAMIS
AL DEEB, FAWZI RADWAN, KHATER, Taher Abdeen, HAMADAH, ALZATARI, AL-DWEEK, HILLAWI,
RAWAN, and Al Ibraheeme. Usually, it is the name of the shop owner which is included in the commercial name
of the business, so it is presented in English to keep the name of the shop official in both languages as much as
possible; however, some names have gone under modification to adapt English spelling, or pronunciation.
c) Mix
The signs of this subcategory include both languages but this category differs from the previous ones in the sense
that on the same sign English is used to indicate some of the services or goods provided by the shop and Arabic
is used to indicate other services or goods provided by the same shop. For example, on one sign we find SILVER
& CARPET and نﻮﻠﻤﻟا ﻞﻣﺮﻟا ﻪﺌﺒﻌﺗ. The Arabic linguistic material is ‘filling coloured sand’ which has nothing to do
either with silver or carpet. Instead, it provides another service the shop provides. Another example is ‘Coffee
Shop’ in English and ﺮﺋﺎﺼﻌﻟا ﺔﻨﻳﺪﻣ ‘the juice city’ in which Arabic and English materials have nothing to do with
each other except that they are different services provided by the snack shop.
4.3 English in Arabic Script
This category includes English words written in Arabic letters. In Figure 5, the word PIZZA is written in English
and in Arabic spelling.
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Figure 5. English in Arabic script sign
Other examples include: رﻮﺘﺳ رﻮﻜﻴﻟ: LIQOUR STORE, ﻦﻴﻠآ يارد : Dry Clean, and ﻦﻜﺸﺗ ﺎﻜﺗ: TIKKA CHICKEN.
Such method of presentation is used in few cases when either the Arabic equivalent is not available or not
common. For instance, the words pizza, tikka and dry clean are used as they are in the local dialect in Jordan in
general and in Aqaba in particular; their presence in English is more common than the presence of their Arabic
equivalents, a fact that influences the shop signs’ linguistic style.
4.4 English Only
English is to some extent familiar in Aqaba as some shop signs are found to be in English only. In this category
most shops have their business intended for tourists. Such businesses include: car rental, minimarket, liquor,
souvenirs, gifts, photo shops, hotels, computer, shoe shops, internet, book shop, and jewelry.
5. Conclusion
It can be concluded that most of the shop signs of the selected sample are found to be in both Arabic and English;
they constitute more than half of the total number of signs investigated (58.1%) as shown in Figure 1. In most of
them the author translates the Arabic name into English to make information about the goods and services they
provide available for non-native speakers of Arabic. As stated by some shop owners, English is used on their
shop signs in order to attract foreign customers’ attention. However, other shop owners stated that they use
English beside Arabic because the former is associated with globalization, modernity, prestige and for decorative
purposes. Thus, English receives a positive attitude as a foreign language since it improves their business. Arabic
in English spelling signs occupies the second position according to frequency as a result of a tradition of naming
shops, restaurants, etc. in Jordan and in the Arab World in general; in such tradition the owner’s name is included
in the name of the business; thus, in translation it is transliterated using English spelling. Arabic spelling is used
to represent English words and phrases on some signs. The reason for such representation is the fact that the
English word(s) is already used in the local dialect of the city as the case of dry clean, pizza and chicken tikka
discussed above. In a few cases English only is used on shop signs; in most of these businesses the target
customers are foreigners as mentioned by shop owners.
The frequent use of English words in this business context indicates that these items are eventually going to be
loanwords into Arabic sometime in the future as they might be more familiar to local people and be regulated
according to the local dialect linguistic system. English is a favorable language that receives a positive attitude
and becoming more familiar language in the city as it is a means of attracting tourists’ attention at least in this
business context. More research is needed in similar contexts such as street signs, billboards, local newspapers,
radio programmes and TV stations in order to see the overall presence of the foreign element in the city.
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