Abstract

This study aims to explore the use of language in 70 Egyptian billboards located in Greater Cairo in an attempt to investigate how Egyptian social identity is reflected in such billboards. The study proposes three research questions where the first one deals with the type of discursive strategies and grammatical structures that are mostly preferred by advertisers. The second research question seeks to investigate the pattern of code choice that are used by advertisers in relation to the type of product and the location of the billboard. The third research question investigates how Egyptian social identity is reflected through the use of language and the displayed images. The study utilizes the frameworks of discourse analysis, linguistic landscape (Landry and Bourhis, 1997), and multimodality (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2013) to investigate 70 billboards located in five different locations in Greater Cairo. The findings of the study show that advertisers depend on certain discursive strategies, such as presupposition, parallelism, dialogicality, and intertextuality to convey their messages to their customers. In addition, advertisers tend to rely on particular code choices to target different segments of the community. Egyptian social identity is reflected differently depending on the location of billboards and the type of product or service being advertised.

School

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department

Applied Linguistics Department

Degree Name

MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Graduation Date

5-22-2019

Submission Date

May 2019

First Advisor

Bassiouney, Reem

Committee Member 1

Agameya, Amira

Committee Member 2

Gebril, Atta

Extent

151 p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Rights

The author retains all rights with regard to copyright. The author certifies that written permission from the owner(s) of third-party copyrighted matter included in the thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study has been obtained. The author further certifies that IRB approval has been obtained for this thesis, or that IRB approval is not necessary for this thesis. Insofar as this thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study is an educational record as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 USC 1232g), the author has granted consent to disclosure of it to anyone who requests a copy. The author has granted the American University in Cairo or its agents a non-exclusive license to archive this thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study, and to make it accessible, in whole or in part, in all forms of media, now or hereafter known.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Not necessary for this item

Download

Share

COinS