A lexical study of coffee shop signs in Jordan

Abstract

Shop signs are essential because potential customers see signs before they use the service that a business offers. This study investigates how the promotion of goods or services is lexicalized in commercial café signs in the trendy Jordanian society. It investigates the linguistic material of café signs in a sample of 142 café sign boards in Irbid-Jordan. The signs were photographed and 20 cafés’ owners were interviewed to better understand the factors that affect their use of café signs. The study employed the qualitative approach to analyse the observation and interview data. The results revealed that the café signage was largely dominated by the English language due to its vitality, globalization, economic motivations, and the customers’ positive attitudes toward English. The study also revealed the lexicalization of trendy café names, lexical modernization, foreign cultural and pragmatic referents, such as superiority, religious, emotional, ethical, physical strength, color, historical, floral, celebrity reference which aim to heighten prominence. Different linguistic strategies including politeness strategy, personification, and metaphor were found in the signs to attract customers. The study would contribute to a better understanding of the use of English in lingua franca contexts in Jordan, and utilizing these commercial signs as a realistic source of learning linguistic strategies and pragmatics.