The prominence of English in the linguistic landscape of two localities in Malta

Abstract

The aim of this study was to see how present the English language is when compared to Maltese within the linguistic landscape of two localities in Malta: Żabbar and Saint Paul’s Bay. It also aimed to highlight the distinction of language use between the two localities from where the data was collected. To do so, images of signs present in a distance of 750m in each locality were taken and were categorised by context as well as by governmental and nongovernmental domain. Through this study it was found that English is the more prominent language in the areas where the fieldwork took place. Although English is more prominent, as is evident by the non-governmental domain in Żabbar, the Maltese language is still seen in more instances than it is visible in Saint Paul’s Bay. This is possibly due to Żabbar being a more traditional type of village where Maltese is more likely to be spoken. On the contrary, the occurrence of Maltese in Saint Paul’s Bay is almost negligible when compared to the high amount of occurrences of English. Thus, this study deals with the difference in the use of the two official languages while trying to find the reason behind the use of language in specific contexts.