Multilingualism in the linguistic landscape of the ancient city of Jerash

Abstract

This article examines multilingualism in the linguistic landscape (LL) of the ancient city of Jerash with a concentration on the use of English on signs. The analysis of monolingual and multilingual practices is based on a corpus of 68 signs collected from the historical sites of Jerash. The LL items identified include two main types of signs: official and unofficial tokens. What is remarkable is a high extent of bi/multilingualism with three main languages in use (Arabic, English, and to a lesser degree French). Although Arabic is the official language of Jordan, English enjoys higher visibility than Arabic on unofficial signs and other languages on official signs. The results suggest that English has emerged as the lingua franca in the official tourism discourse.

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