Abstract
This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL henceforth) of a southern Jordanian town, Petra. It also attempts to display how English is used by both commercial shops and companies in the local tourist industry to construct and shape touristic visual Jordan. All linguistic signs were photographed by using a digital camera and coded according to function (e.g., government and commercial signage) and language (e.g., English, Arabic, French, Spanish, etc.). The current article has already taken into account ethnographic developments in LL methodology and directly involved with individuals from the foreign tourist population and local residents (e.g., shopkeepers, restaurant workers and owners, and so on) to identify how the English language has been negotiated and used as the lingua franca of the local and foreign tourist populations and a symbol of linguistic globalization in the LL of touristic Jordan. Although many languages have found a relatively long-lived niche in the LL of Jordanian cities in previous LL studies (Alomoush, 2015), the current study results indicate that the touristic public space is largely dominated and controlled by the English language in the sense that there is much higher vitality of English than other languages, including Arabic in the LL. This is closely associated with the reciprocal relationship between English and globalization, communicative and economic motivations, and the participants’ positive attitudes toward English.
Highlights
Based on Kachru’s (1986) ‘concentric circles’, many linguists, including but not limited to Bolton (2005, 2012), Yano (2001), and Rubdy & Saraceni (2001) have started to assess the relative status of their own English
Careful investigation of the remaining signs used in Petra’s LL and the information provided on signs suggests considerable linguistic and social information about the country; apparently all the non-government signs were in full use with predominantly commercial functions associated with the industry of tourism, Jordan’s cultural life, and even the long history of Jordan itself, as detailed below: 1. Promotion of touristic services: which provided foreign tourists with information about the tourist services in Petra but in other parts of Jordan such as Wadi Rum, Aqaba, and Wadi Araba
The current study results confirm that the notable aspect of the data is the pervasiveness of monolingual English signs in the LL of Petra, which suggests that the social and economic ramifications of this omnipresence are enormous
Summary
Based on Kachru’s (1986) ‘concentric circles’, many linguists, including but not limited to Bolton (2005, 2012), Yano (2001), and Rubdy & Saraceni (2001) have started to assess the relative status of their own English. We believe that English has recently become an important contributor to the development of nations nationally and internationally, but it might be linked to forms of cultural homogenization and Western values. This does not mean that other languages cannot be a global medium of intercultural communication, social and economic advancement, but the current social, economic, and political circumstances have made English the best linguistic code in visual tourist destinations. As other countries in the Arab Middle East, the state of Jordan came under Western colonial rule. After the death of King Abdullah I, his eldest son Talal, who later left the throne for his son King Hussein in 1953, succeeded him
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