Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Landscape
Vol. 5:1 (2019) ► pp.1–27

YaskoT 7OKM EL3aSKaR

Variable code choice in post-revolution Egyptian protest signs

| Georgetown University

This paper presents an analysis of the linguistic contents of political protest signs that were erected at sit-in sites in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, during the summer of 2011. Sign authors employed a wide variety of linguistic codes and symbolic visual resources to subvert state authority, urge fellow citizens to action, and advocate a number of other political goals. Drawing on the methodology of Linguistic Landscape (LL) studies, the current effort investigates the relationship between linguistic code and factors such as sign location, medium, length, and thematic content. Multinomial logistic regression analysis reveals a significant relationship between sign code and medium, for example, as handwritten signs show more linguistic diversity than printed signs. Qualitative analysis focuses on sign authors, use of the symbolic and semiotic resources associated with these codes. This study of the ephemeral, transitory LL of Egyptian sit-in sites demonstrates the many and varied ways in which citizen sign authors manipulate concepts of formality, code choice, and imagery to encourage audiences to take up their messages as resources for social action in their own worlds.

Keywords: Arabic, Linguistic Landscape, Egypt, Colloquial Arabic, Arabizi, political protest, sign, code, semiotics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Linguistic Landscapes
    • 1.2Operationalizing code choice
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Context of the study
    • 2.2Description of the data
    • 2.3Data coding
    • 2.4Thematic categories
      • 2.4.1Criticism of the state
      • 2.4.2Justice for the martyrs
      • 2.4.3Exalting the revolution and Egypt
      • 2.4.4Invocation of religion
      • 2.4.5Demands of the revolution
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Regression analysis
  • 4.Examples
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1“Formal” vs “informal” writing
    • 5.2Symbolic role of MSA
    • 5.3Social functions of ECA and Arabizi
    • 5.4Physical positioning of codes
    • 5.5Informational role of English
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 March 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.18003.rai
References
Abdel Haleem, M. A. S.
trans. (2005a) The Family of ’Imran. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from [URL]Google Scholar
trans. (2005b) Battle Gains. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from [URL]Google Scholar
Backhaus, P.
(Ed.) (2007) Linguistic landscapes: A comparative study of urban multilingualism in Tokyo (Vol. 1361). Multilingual matters.Google Scholar
Bassiouney, R.
(2006) Functions of code switching in Egypt: Evidence from monologues (Vol. 461). Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ben Said, S., & Kasanga, L. A.
(2016) The Discourse of Protest: Frames of Identity, Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity. In R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, & H. Woldemariam (Eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes (pp. 71–83). Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Blommaert, J.
(2013) Ethnography, superdiversity and linguistic landscapes: Chronicles of complexity (Vol. 181). Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J., Muyllaert, N., Huysmans, M., & Dyers, C.
(2005) Peripheral normativity: Literacy and the production of locality in a South African township school. Linguistics and Education, 16(4), 378–403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D.
(2006) Linguistic Landscape and Minority Languages. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 67–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chick, K.
(2011, August 1). Egyptian Army empties Tahrir Square. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from [URL]Google Scholar
Chun, C. W.
(2014) Mobilities of a linguistic landscape at Los Angeles City Hall Park. Journal of Language and Politics, 13(4), 653–674. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dabbour, K.
(2017) The Linguistic Landscape of Tahrir Square Protest Signs and Egyptian National Identity. Studies in Linguistics and Literature, 1(2), 142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dawaghreh, A. M.
(2016) Facebook as a mode of communication among Jordanian university students. English Language and Literature Studies, 6(4), 37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
El Amrani, I.
(2011, July 14). Egypt: Tahrir Protests Cheat sheet [Blog post]. Retrieved 7 February, 2018 from [URL].
Fahmy, Z.
(2011) Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the modern nation through popular culture. Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
France24
(2017, November 8). a-aqīqa.. luʕba jadīda taġzū l-ʔaswāq al-mariyya w-yuθīr ġaab as-suluāt. Accessed 13 February, 2018, from [URL]
Franco-Rodríguez, J. M.
(2009) Interpreting the linguistic traits of linguistic landscapes as ethnolinguistic vitality: methodological approach. RAEL: revista electrónica de lingüística aplicada, (8), 1–15.Google Scholar
Høigilt, J., & Mejdell, G.
(Eds.) (2017) The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World: Writing Change (Vol. 901). Boston: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iskandar, A.
(2013) Egypt in flux: Essays on an unfinished revolution. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaffe, A.
(2009) Stance in a Corsican school: Institutional and ideological orders and the production of bilingual subjects. In Alexandra Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 119–145). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnston, J.
(2016) Democratic walls? In Baker, M. (Ed.), Translating Dissent: Voices From and With the Egyptian Revolution, 1781.Google Scholar
Kasanga, L. A.
(2014) The linguistic landscape: Mobile signs, code choice, symbolic meaning and territoriality in the discourse of protest. International journal of the sociology of language 2014(230), 19–44.Google Scholar
Khatib, L.
(2007) Television and Public Action in the Beirut Spring. In Sakr, N. (ed.), Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life, pp. 28–43. London: I.B. Tauris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kingsley, P., & Doss, L.
(2013, March 14). Egyptian police “killed almost 900 protesters in 2011 in Cairo.” The Guardian. Retrieved from [URL]
Lim, M.
(2012) Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional Movements in Egypt, 2004–2011. Journal of Communication, 62(2), 231–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Makse, T., & Sokhey, A. E.
(2014) The displaying of yard signs as a form of political participation. Political Behavior, 36(1), 189–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mamdūḥ, A.
(2011, July 8). hunā fi-l-ʔiskandariyya: nif milyūn mutaẓāhir yaʃtarikūn fī jumaʕat al-ʔirār. Al-ʔiʃtirākiyy. Accessed 7 February, 2018, from [URL].
Morayef, S.
(2016) Pharaonic Street Art: The Challenge of Translation. In Baker, M. (Ed), Translating Dissent: Voices From and With the Egyptian Revolution. London: Routledge, 194–207.Google Scholar
Nunes, P. A. L. D., Onofri, L., Gorter, D., & Cenoz, J.
(2008) Language Diversity in Urban Landscapes: An Econometric Study. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Working Papers, (Paper 1991), 1–28.Google Scholar
Olesen, T.
(2013) “We are all Khaled Said”: Visual Injustice Symbols in the Egyptian Revolution, 2010–2011. In N. Doerr, A. Mattoni, & S. Teune (Eds.), Advances in the visual analysis of social movements (1. ed, pp. 3–25). Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pandey, A.
(2017) When size matters. Linguistic Landscape, 3(1), 25–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Papen, U.
“Commercial discourses, gentrification and citizens’ protest: The linguistic landscape of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 16, no. 1 (2012): 56–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plumlee, M.
(2017) The linguistic landscape of Cairo from the Rosetta Stone to the Ring Road billboards: Signs of their times. In A. Gebril (Ed.), Applied Linguistics in the Middle East and North Africa: Current Practices and Future Directions (pp. 115–160). John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rennick, S. A.
(2018) Politics and Revolution in Egypt: Rise and Fall of the Youth Activists. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salamey, I., & Pearson, F. S.
(2012) The Collapse of Middle Eastern Authoritarianism: Breaking the barriers of fear and power. Third World Quarterly, 33(5), 931–948. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salih, K. E. O.
(2013) The Roots and Causes of the 2011 Arab Uprisings. Arab Studies Quarterly, 35(2), 184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W.
(2003) Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seals, C. A.
(2017) Analyzing the linguistic landscape of mass-scale events. Linguistic Landscape, 3(3), 267–285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shehab, B.
(2016) Translating Emotions: Graffiti as a Tool for Change. In Baker, M. (Ed.), Translating Dissent, Routledge. 163–177.Google Scholar
Shohamy, E. G., Rafael, E. B., & Barni, M.
(Eds.) (2010) Linguistic landscape in the city. Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simpson, P.
(2003) On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a stylistic model of satirical humour. John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soukup, B.
(2016) English in the linguistic landscape of Vienna, Austria (ELLViA): Outline, rationale, and methodology of a large-scale empirical project on language choice on public signs from the perspective of sign-readers. Views, 251, 1–24.Google Scholar
Sperrazza, L.
(2014) “ Arabizi: From Techno-lution to Revolution.” In Golson, E., Youssef, L., & Fields, A. (Eds.). Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Emerging Expression of Egyptian Identity. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 31–40.Google Scholar
Suleiman, Y.
(2003) The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology. Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A.
(2015) Critical Discourse Analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 466–485). John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Waksman, S., & Shohamy, E.
(2016) Linguistic Landscape of Social Protests: Moving from “Open” to “Institutional” Spaces. In R. Blackwood, E. Lanza, & H. Woldemariam (Eds.), Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes (pp. 85–98). Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Warren, T.
(2014) “I Was Here: A history of graffiti in Egypt, from ancient to modern.” In Golson, E., Youssef, L., & Fields, A. (Eds.). Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Emerging Expression of Egyptian Identity. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 51–64.Google Scholar
Warschauer, M., Said, G., & Zohry, A.
(2002) Language choice online: Globalization and identity in Egypt. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7(4). Retrieved May 5, 2012 from [URL]. DOI logo
Wee, L.
(2016) Situating affect in linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2), 105–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yaghan, M. A.
(2008) “Arabizi”: A Contemporary Style of Arabic Slang. Design Issues, 24(2), 39–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
yasqu ḥukm il-ʕaskar
n.d.). In [URL]. Retrieved February 6, 2018, from [URL]
Youssef, L. A.
(2014) “ Balagha or Rhetoric? The language of the Tahrir Square revolution”. In Golson, E., Youssef, L., & Fields, A. (Eds.). Toward, Around, and Away from Tahrir: Tracking Emerging Expression of Egyptian Identity. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 9–30.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Volvach, Natalia
2023. Manoeuvres of dissent in landscapes of annexation. Linguistic Landscape. An international journal 9:2 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.