Abstract
Linguistic landscape (LL) is a representation of language(s) visibility in public space. This study aims to draw a comprehensive profile of LL as adopted by private firms on billboards alongside the main streets of Kuwait, shedding light on the status of Kuwaiti vernacular, Standard Arabic (SA), and English in the country. The study utilises a quantitative approach through which billboards on the main streets of Kuwait were photographed, categorised based on the language of the script, then quantified to assess the popularity of the language. Billboards representing the main displayed language varieties were presented to a heterogeneous sample of respondents to assess their views across the two dimensions of status and solidarity through a digital questionnaire. The study also utilised a qualitative approach through informal interviews to gain the language specialists’ perspective on the issue. The results indicate that Kuwaiti vernacular has a growing positive attitude because of its perceived charisma and promotion of solidarity. When SA is mixed with English, or when English is transliterated into SA orthography, it tends to appeal to the public eye. Kuwaiti sociolinguists reflected a strong rejection of the trendy Kuwaiti vernacular over SA. Yet, English has not been viewed as a threat to SA.
Highlights
The language on billboards is constantly changing worldwide
Three key questions were used to lead the interviews: 1) What do you think of the language on each billboard? 2) Do you sense a trend of using Kuwaiti or English over the Standard Arabic in today’s street billboards? 3) What could be the future consequences of billboard trends on the Kuwaiti community? Generally speaking, the views of the participants reflected a moderate stance towards billboards with an English script, so long as a billboard of the same content is displayed in SA
There is a continuous agreement by the general public acknowledging the prestige and respect of SA as the H variety, the general popularity, and dominance of the Kuwaiti vernacular, which is used in print form in public spaces, seems to paint a different picture
Summary
The language on billboards is constantly changing worldwide. In Kuwait, for example, the language used on billboards is more dominated by the Kuwaiti dialect than it used to be. The researchers aim to draw a comprehensive profile of the linguistic landscape as adopted by private firms and institutions on billboards alongside the main streets of Kuwait. Such a profile, we hope, would shed light on the rising status of Kuwaiti vernacular as opposed to Standard Arabic (SA) and English in the country through the former’s growing utilization in public. We hope, would shed light on the rising status of Kuwaiti vernacular as opposed to Standard Arabic (SA) and English in the country through the former’s growing utilization in public Another objective of this study is to point out how private firms and businesses are challenging the dominating ideology of pushing the population towards utilizing SA and ensuring its high status over Kuwaiti.
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