Linguistic Landscape in the face of Kumasi - Kajetia

Abstract

This ethnographic paper investigated the linguistic landscape of Kumasi, the capital city of the Ashanti region of Ghana in West Africa. The paper looks into the languages used on the writings on stores on the streets, the mode of writing either with paint or stickers, the size of the writings and the colours used for that. Data collected for this study were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Primarily, the data was from the public writings on stores which is a bottom-up approach. The results proved that the local Asante vernacular were highly represented as compared to the English language. English has a substantial impact on the Kumasi landscape confirming its status as; English is more of an index of globalization than a means of communication. The use of multiple scripts was another dimension of this diversity and this study addressed it. In some cases, there were a combination of different languages represented on the same store. The languages were only the vernacular that’s the Twi and the Standard English language.