Exploring the Dynamics of Power through Language of Road Signs: An Exploratory Study of the Top-Down Signboards in Islamabad

Abstract

The linguistic landscape is the visibility of languages on public and commercial signboards in a territory or region. The language policy of a region and, in this case, the language policy of Pakistan has a strong link with the linguistic landscape of Islamabad. A lot of research has been carried out on the linguistic landscape of Pakistan but only a few studies focused on the manifestation of power through the language. This study attempted to investigate the top-down signboards in different areas in Islamabad which is a rich resource for investigation. The study in hand is an interpretivist exploratory study which employed Ben Rafael’s framework proposed to analyze the power relations in the linguistic landscape of Islamabad. This study will help in creating awareness of the true nature of the utilization of language on the signboards. Ninety-eight (n=98) signboards from 6 areas of Islamabad were selected and the results showed that the languages on the signboards were not used for informative purposes. The findings of this study reported that the English Language was promoted, not for global or commercial purposes, rather, it continued to serve imperialist goals by maintaining the already existing superior and dominant position of the English language in the society at the expense of erasure of the indigenous languages.