Email this article 
Hide
Show all
'Discourse on the Go': Thematic Analysis of Vehicle Graffiti on the Roads of Egypt
Abstract
This paper investigates graffiti drawn on vehicles in Egypt as an expression of their authors' social values, religious ideologies and political affiliations. Little research has been done in Egypt on these meaning-loaded messages. This paper gives further evidence that graffiti are a very powerful mode of expression for groups that feel disenfranchised by the wider society. The data comprise (614) written graffiti taken from both highway and in-city vehicles from different parts of Egypt. This paper employs Fairclough's (1995) post-structuralist model of discourse analysis which extends the concept of discourse from the traditional and natural 'language in use' to be a social practice per se. One of the aims of this study is to explore the various discourse domains of vehicle graffiti in Egypt through thematically analyzing their patterns of usage. For this aim, the authors have devised a four-pronged thematic classification of such graffiti. The paper also tackles some of the lexical features of graffiti and addresses the language and language variations used. Results show that religious expressions constitute more than half the data. It is also shown that graffiti about the self or car are positive whereas statements about 'the other' are negative. The analysis reveals a strong positive inclination in the social and philosophical expressions with almost nonexistent political graffiti.
Keywords: Graffiti, post-structuralist model, Discourse Analysis, discourse domains, Egypt
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Adams, K. L., & Winter, A. (1997). Gang graffiti as a discourse genre. Journal of sociolinguistics, 1(3), 337-360.
Ali, A. Y. (1975). The Glorious Quran: Translation and commentary. Eduright4all.
Basthomi, Y. (2009). Truck graffiti: The rhetoric of emulation. Dialogue Analysis XI, 217.
Best, C. (2003). Reading graffiti in the Caribbean context. Journal of Popular Culture, 828-852.
Bloch, L. R. (2000). Mobile discourse: Political bumper stickers as a communication event in Israel. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 48-76.
Brown, G. and Yule, G. (1983). Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bunting, A. M. (2012). A sociological study of graffiti in Seville, Spain. Journal of Student Research, 1(2), 51-54.
Cameron, D. (1985). Feminism and linguistic theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Case, C. E. (1992). Bumper stickers and car signs ideology and identity. The Journal of Popular Culture, 26(3), 107-119.
Chiluwa, I. (2008). Religious vehicle stickers in Nigeria: A discourse of identity, faith and social vision. Discourse & Communication, 2(4), 371-387.
Divsalar, F., & Nemati, A. (2012). Social pathology of trust in car written manuscripts. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3 (3) 363-462.
Emmison, M., & Smith, P. (2000). Researching the visual: Images, objects, contexts and interactions in social and cultural inquiry. London: Sage Publications.
Eweis, S. (1971/2000) Hutaaf l-samiteen: THahirat l-kitabah ?al hayakil l-markabaat fi l-mugtama? L-misri l-mu?aasir. [The Chants of the Silent: The Phenomenon of graffiti on Vehicles in the contemporary Egyptian society]: Maktabat l-?srah
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. London: Longman
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Farnia, M. & Tohidian, I. (2013). A thematic analysis of truck graffiti in Iranian context. Paper presented at the first national conference on research in teaching English, translation and linguistics (RTELT), 2-3 March, Islamic Azad university of Khorasgan, Iran.
Farnia, M. (2014). A thematic analysis of graffiti on the university classroom walls: A case of Iran. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 3(3), 48-57.
Ferguson, C. (1959). The Arabic koine. Language, 35(4), 616-630.
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of knowledge. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In R. Young (ed.) Untying the text: A poststructuralist reader, pp. 48–78. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Gadsby, J. M. (1995). Looking at the writing on the wall: A critical review and taxonomy of graffiti texts. Unpublished MA thesis. Boston: USA.
Grider, S. A. (1975). Con safos: Mexican-Americans, names and graffiti. The Journal of American Folklore, 88(348), 132-142.
Gröndahl, M. (2012). Revolution graffiti: Street art of the new Egypt. American University in Cairo Press.
Gross, D. D., Walkosz, B., & Gross, T. D. (1997). Language boundaries and discourse stability: 'Tagging' as a form of graffiti spanning international borders. et Cetera, 54(3), 275.
Hanauer, D. I. (2004). Silence, voice and erasure: Psychological embodiment in graffiti at the site of Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 31(1), 29-35.
Hendrickx, S., Darnell, J. C., & Gatto, M. C. (2012). The earliest representations of royal power in Egypt: The rock drawings of Nag el-Hamdulab (Aswan). Antiquity, 86(334), 1068.
House, S. (2007). "Too pretty to do math": The effect of negative, positive, and neutral bumper stickers on math performance in women. Unpublished M.A. dissertation, Chicago University.
Hunt, M. B. (1996). The sociolinguistics of tagging and Chicano gang graffiti. Unpulbished Ph.D., University of Southern California.
Jankowska, K. (1999). Próba klasyfikacji napisów graffiti. Literatura Ludowa, 3, 17-26.
Kalerante, E., & Mormori, P. (2005). Graffiti as a form of social and cultural conflict. International Journal of the Humanities, 3(4).
Lennon, J. (2014). Assembling a revolution: Graffiti, Cairo and the Arab spring. Cultural studies review, 20(1), 237.
McGlynn, P. D. (1972). Graffiti & slogans: Flushing the Id. The Journal of Popular Culture, 6(2), 351-356.
Mirzaalikhani, S. (2011). Iranian graffiti during political transformation: A semiotic analysis of graffiti before and after revolution. Ph.D. dissertation, Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU).
Moonwomon, B. (1995). The writing on the wall: A border case of race and gender. In K. Hall & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self, pp. 447–468. New York/London: Routledge
Mwangi, F. G. (2012). Graffiti writing and its likely influence on English language learning in selected secondary schools in the larger Laikipia East District, Laikipia County, Ph.D. dissertation, Kenyatta University.
Nayef, H., & El-Nashar, M. (2014). Dissecting the poisoned honey: Sexist Humor in Egypt: A linguistic analysis of sexism in Colloquial Cairene Arabic jokes. Anàlisi, (50), 131-146.
Nwoye, O. G. (1993). Social issues on walls: Graffiti in university lavatories. Discourse & Society, 4(4), 419-442.
Obeng, S. G. (2000a). Doing politics on walls and doors: A sociolinguistic analysis of graffiti in Legon (Ghana). Multilingua, 19(4), 337-365.
Obeng, S. G. (2000b). Speaking the unspeakable: Discursive strategies to express language attitudes in Legon (Ghana) graffiti. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(3), 291-319.
Peiris, D., & Jayantha, K. (2015) A Case study on emotion types of graffiti writers in jogging paths, Sri Lanka. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 20(7):2279-0845
Rains, S. A., Tumlin, G. R., & Knapp, M. L. (2009). Electronic bumper stickers: the content and interpersonal functions of messages attached to e-mail signatures. Discourse Studies, 11(1), 105-120.
Reisner, R. (1971). Graffiti: Two thousand years of wall writing. Cowles Book Company.
Russell, E. (2008). Writing on the wall: The form, function and meaning of tagging. Journal of Occupational Science, 15(2), 87-97.
Salamon, H. (2005). Haʿam in the turbulent discursive sphere of Israeli bumper stickers. Hebrew Studies, 197-234.
Sheivandi, L., Taghinezhad, A., Alishavandi, A., & Ranjbar, S. (2015). Exploring linguistic aspects in Iranians’ graffiti. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2(5), 62-73.
Szpila, G. (2003). Co mur, to mądrość narodu–przysłowie w graffiti po polsku. [Every wall has its folk wisdom–Proverbs in Polish graffiti.]. Literatura Ludowa, 3, 35-42.
Szpila, G. (2012). Regulating the reality? Proverbs in Polish graffiti. Estonia and Poland. Creativity and tradition in cultural communication, 1, 269-284.
Van Dijk, T. (1985) Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 4 vols. London: Academic Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. The handbook of discourse analysis, 349-371.
van Dijk, T.A. (2006). Racism and the press in Spain. In J. Blas, M. Casanova, M. Velando, & J. Vellón, (Eds.), Discurso y Sociedad II. Nuevas contribuciones al estudio de la lengua en un contexto social, pp. 59-99. Castelló de la Plana: Universitat Jaume I.
Yieke, F. (2003). Graffiti: Vandalism or expression of academic freedom and intellectualism at universities in Kenya. In Conference on Canonical Works and Continuing Innovation in African Arts and Humanities at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra, 17th-19th September.
Younes, M. (2006). Integrating the colloquial with Fusha in the Arabic as a Foreign Language Classroom. In K. Wahba, Z. Taha, & L. England, Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals, pp. 157-166. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.