Medium and domains in the linguistic landscapes of the Grand Mosque in Mecca

Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic landscape (LL) of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and shows how this religious site contains within it different domains, each with their own LL and preferred mediums of display. We illustrate this by exploring the LL of five domains within the mosque: Holiness, Education, Workplace, Local Governance and the Public Sphere. We show how Arabic is omnipresent across the domains. In the Holiness domain, we can sense both the permanence of Islam through the Classical Arabic inscriptions on the architecture and the transient nature of the pilgrim's passage through their postings of temporary stickers. In other domains, monolingual signs in Modern Arabic co-exist with monolingual English signage. While the medium of the Arabic signage varies to convey different types of messages, the status of English on monolingual signage is singular, displayed through temporary medium alone. In domains that permit multilingual signage, electronic signs convey equivalent messages in multiple languages, a reflection of the diverse linguistic backgrounds of the pilgrims and the fleeting nature of their pilgrimage. The findings point to the importance of religious sites as LLs and the need to consider language and medium in their overall construction.

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