Commercial signage and the linguistic landscape of Oman

ABSTRACT This study examines how the promotion of goods and services is lexicalized in commercial signs on shops in contemporary Omani society. The analysis of lexical features is based on data drawn from a corpus of over 1,600 signs photographed nation‐wide. Processes identified include the lexicalization of cultural concepts, lexical innovation and borrowing, foreign cultural referents, and the use of repetition, attributes, and generalization and specification strategies to enhance salience and explicitness. This study contributes to our understanding of the use of English in lingua franca contexts in a region of pronounced ethnolinguistic diversity. English is used to reflect localized cultural values and practices and may display the influence of Arabic and South Asian English dialects. Evidence for the stabilization of particular innovative lexemes is found in their extensive use country‐wide, which suggests their widespread acceptance and emergent nativization within this genre.