Bilingualism in Kuwait – a linguistic landscape approach

Abstract

Abstract: This paper examined the linguistic landscape of the Governorate of Farwaniya, the biggest governorate in the State of Kuwait, by means of public and private signs displayed in the city center and side streets. A corpus of 150 photos of diverse signs, both official and non-official, was collected, categorized, analyzed and discussed. The results point to an undeniable representation of the Arabic language in both public and private spheres of life as well as to a substantial presence of the English language on a wide range of signage therefore confirming the imprint the process of globalization has made on this EFL context. The findings also indicate that some other world languages, namely Bengali, Hindi, and Chinese, are represented in the linguistic landscape of Kuwait but rather poorly