Rethinking Linguistic Landscapes through Translanguaging: A Critical Analysis of Multilingual Shop Signs in East Jerusalem

This article suggests that translanguaging is a methodology that represents a new conceptual lens that can encourage a number of important analytic shifts: moving away from language as (abstract) codes to meaning-making and sense-making: it requires us to consider a wider range of multi-semiotic resources and to not privilege modes and methods over others: and it encourages us to consider the expansively integrated experience of translanguaging. This methodological lens encourages us to ask different questions and to find different ways to think and talk about our data, as well as methods of data collection and data analysis. Moreover, this article restates motivations for Moment Analysis that allows spur-of-the-moment actions to be regarded as meaningful temporal and spatial data points in understanding the rhythm and meaning of social life. It has been noticed that there are three languages that are used rather frequently on the shop bards in east Jerusalem: Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Shop boards also support a variety of sociocultural values embodied by Palestinian identity, language, symbolism, politics, economy, community, and community relations. Ideas represented in shop boards are influenced by the historical, political, and religious context of the region represented by ideologies of nationalism and colonialism, religion and capitalism and consumerism, and globalization and cosmopolitanism, and solidarity and resistance and peacebuilding. Finally, many factors, including politics, socioeconomic conditions, multilingualism and the social relations, cultural identity, urban conditions, education and exposure, and globalization factors such as media, technology and English language, highlight translanguaging among Arab entrepreneurial business owners and shopkeepers in east Jerusalem.