الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Language contact is prevalent in cities. This contact has its own implications on language choices and preferences. Many linguistic practices consequently take place, e.g. borrowing, coinage, transliteration, code-mixing and most recently linguistic landscape (LL), a term markedly encompassing a plethora of sociolinguistic phenomena. LL is a term coined by Landry & Bourhis (1997) referring to public signs exploration in a city seeking co-existence and co-variation of languages in contact. It reveals how these linguistic practices are influenced by social factors, such as social class, regional affiliation, economic status, identity, power, etc. Henceforth, this study aims to analyze the linguistic landscape of Mansoura city, Egypt, from a sociolinguistic perspective, by focusing on three vital commercial streets: Mashaya (MS), Port Said (PS) and Tera’a (TR). A total of 1480 pictures were gathered and systematically analyzed. Findings show major sociolinguistic differences in all survey areas on main two levels: (a) between bottom-up (non-official) signs and top-down (official) signs and (b) among bottom-up signs themselves. Study findings also reveal tendency to monolingualism and dominance of Arabic language in Mansoura’s LL. In addition, this study highlights the major role English plays as a widespread language all over the world and documents the influence of other foreign languages in Mansoura’s LL. |