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Part of
Applied Linguistics in the Middle East and North Africa: Current practices and future directions
Edited by Atta Gebril
[AILA Applied Linguistics Series 15] 2017
► pp. 115–160

Chapter 6
The linguistic landscape of Cairo from the Rosetta Stone to the Ring Road billboards: Signs of their times

| The American University in Cairo

Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies, i.e. the study of multi-lingual signage in public places, move our understanding of multilingualism and linguistic diversity beyond spoken forms of languages in contact into a realm blending social interaction with semiotics. The paper analyzes tokens from four categories of Cairo’s contemporary linguistic landscape: (1) vestiges of bygone eras, (2) signage in multi-ethnic neighborhoods, (3) emerging appearance of chat script in public signage, and (4) symbolic uses of English on billboards. The paper thus portrays Cairo less as an urban center displaying signs of a new-found super-diversity than as a city already rich in multilingual signage, but a city in which new patterns displayed in the LL reflect ongoing changes in the contemporary social context.

Keywords: Linguistic Landscape, multilingualism, linguistic diversity, linguistic vitality, semiotics of signs in public spaces, Egypt
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Egypt as site of a multilingual written landscape since antiquity
  • Introduction to linguistic landscape studies
  • Scope of the study
  • Features of Cairo’s linguistic landscape
    • Cairo’s multi-ethnic, multilingual legacy observable in the linguistic landscape
    • Contemporary multi-ethnic, multilingual neighborhoods: Maadi and Nasr City’s 10th District
    • Maadi
    • Nasr City, 10th District (Hay al Asher)
    • Emergence of romanized Arabic chat script (franco-arabe/arabizi) into public usage domains
    • Tokens of English used for aspirational and symbolic purposes on advertising billboards on major roadways (Ring Road and 90th Street in New Cairo)
  • Conclusion
    • Future lines of investigation
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aals.15.06plu
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