Is English on mobile linguistic landscape resources no longer viewed as a linguistic threat to Arabic in Jordan?

Abstract

Linguistic landscape (LL) research has been subject to a great deal of attention since the publication of the well-known research paper by Landry and Bourhis (1997), whose most quoted definition of LL covers diverse linguistic tokens, including but not restricted to government-related inscriptions, street-name signs, commercial signs, and noticeboards. There is an increasing number of contributions on the use of English in many LLs worldwide. However, there are relatively few LL publications on the use of English in the LL in Arabic-speaking countries (but see Al–Naimat & Alomoush, 2018; Alomoush, 2019). The vast majority of previous LL studies in non-Arabic contexts (e.g. Backhaus, 2007; Griffin, 2004; Hasanova, 2010; Jaworksi & Thurlow, 2010; Lanza & Woldemariam, 2014; Ross, 1997; Schlick, 2003) focus on analysing language on fixed or relatively stable signs, such as shop names.