Linguistic Landscape in Yemen [Archives:2008/1130/Education]
Dr. Anwar Al-thwary
[email protected]
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Faculty of Education
Sa'ada
Sana'a University
The speech community in Yemen, generally speaking, is monolingual in Arabic. Arabic is the native and official language in Yemen where standard Arabic and other Arabic colloquials are used in, what is known as, a diglossic situation. Language minorities hardly exist. Mehri and Soqotri are two non-Arabic languages which descended from the ancient Sabaen Kingdom and which are in use till date. They, however, have no significant linguistic role, since they are used in restricted places, by limited number of people and for limited number of functions: Mehri language, with 70,643 speakers in Al-Mahra governorate, and Soqotri language, with an estimated 43,000 speakers in the Socotra archipelago (2004 census, see Wikipedia Encyclopedia). Both are spoken only at home. Jews, as a religious minority, communicate in Arabic, their mother tongue, either among themselves or in the society. Hebrew has a marginal role of being used in the religious rituals1.
Like other parts of the world, Yemen has been influenced by the process of modernization and globalization in the last couple of decades. Foreign languages, particularly English, are gaining growing importance in the country. All Yemenis believe that foreign languages are necessary if they want to catch up with the movement of modernization which is essentially based on western models. In the late twentieth century English has emerged as a major international language of science and technology as well as a significant additional language all over the world. It is “the medium of the Second Industrial Revolution; and international science and information, international business world organization and diplomacy, international tourism, aviation and shipping, entertainment such as sports, cinema, television and pop music, 60% of the world's radio broadcast, and 70% of its mail are encoded in English” (Loveday 1996:91)2. As a result, English has been given a special attention and is employed in many spheres like education, mass media, internet and commercial and business activities.
Although English is neither a national nor an official language and still occupies the status of a foreign language in Yemen, it is considered the most important foreign language. The prestigious status that English has in Yemen is noticeable in the emphasis on English in the educational system and the market place. Formal foreign language education in Yemen begins with English when a student reaches grade seven. In other words, English is the only foreign language taught in public schools for at least six years, i.e. the last three years of the essential stage plus the three years of the secondary stage. English is also taught from the first grade in the private schools. Foreign language, mainly English, institutes and centers are scattered in almost all Yemeni cities and towns. Moreover Ministry of Education is now working on a plan, which allows the introduction of English from the 4th grade. In fact, the plan has been already applied in some primary schools of the capital city of Sana'a.
Private schools have also started to teach French alongside Arabic and English. At the university level, besides being taught as a major subject in the departments of English, English is the medium of instruction in Medicine, and Engineering. Other foreign languages like Persian, Italian, and German are taught only in some of the language colleges as a major specialization.
Due to the increased exposure to English language, especially after the advent of TV space channels and the use of computer and the Internet, the new generation feels curious about the use of this language to appear more fashionable and up to date. Internet, as one form of information revolution, has recently become the most powerful driver of globalization. The access to Internet has been made easy by the numerous internet cafes that appear in major population centers. Furthermore, a large number of shops, restaurants, hotels, and firms in the public space have their signs and price lists in English.
All these facts represent a language contact situation which leads to some interesting linguistic phenomena such as multilingualism, language mixing, code-switching and lexical borrowing.
The concept of Linguistic landscape:
The topic of signs in the public space has received scant attention till the late 1990s. Now, there's an increasing interest in what's known as the “linguistic landscape”. It is a new sociolinguistic approach to multilingualism. The concept of LL was first introduced by Landry and Bourhis (1997) who defined it as “the visibility of languages on public and commercial signs in a given territory” and more precisely “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings which combine to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (as quoted by Backhaus 2005: 104)3. Terms like “linguistic market”, “linguistic mosaic”, “ecology of language”, diversity of languages, etc., though highlight different aspects of LL, usually are used to refer to the social context where more than two languages are used either in speech or writing (see Gorter 2006:1)4. At the same time, Gorter (2006:2) suggests that the term “linguistic cityscape” can be used instead of LL when we describe the shopping areas in cities. After all, the term “linguistic landscape” is the most common convention in the literature. Written texts on signs do not only provide us with information of everyday urban life, but also symbolize the social and linguistic identity of a given region. LL is a rich empirical area of study which addresses the topic of language and space and really brings to the forefront a number of related topics such as multilingualism, globalization, language dominance, language contact, lexical borrowing, demographic change, language mixing and so on.
It is a well-known fact that the public space in the Yemeni cities, particularly in the capital city of Sana'a, has become increasingly decorated with all sorts of written discourse: shop and office signs, public and government signs, neon advertisements, stickers, traffic and direction guidance, street and zone names and so on. LL like that of Yemen is much less divergent in comparison with those of Tokyo, Bangkok, Palestine, etc. which seem to be much more diverse and complex.
This short article represents only an introductory statement of a wider sociolinguistic research on the linguistic landscape in Yemen.
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