Figure 1: Sarah (in black) and Anna (in purple) at Abrahamic Family House

As friends and fellow sociolinguists, we, Anna and Sarah, have discussed almost every topic under the sun (literally!) on our balmy afternoon walks in our home/second home of Abu Dhabi. However, one topic we hadn’t discussed until recently was languages used within religions. Our visit to the Abrahamic Family House on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island changed this (Figure 1).

Linguistic and semiotic harmony across religions

It’s not often that you see Arabic, Hebrew and English represented together in the same space, but that’s exactly what the Abrahamic Family House does. This cultural and religious centre contains a mosque, synagogue and church as places of worship, linked together by ‘the Forum’, a secular and yet multi-faith connecting space or third space. One of the first features you are drawn towards is the Forum’s water fountain, which highlights the importance of water as a symbol of purity and ablution in Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

Figure 2: Trilingual signage at Abrahamic Family House (picture taken by authors)

All the top-down permanent signage in the Abrahamic Family House is trilingual (Arabic, English, Hebrew), and produced in such a way that the languages are equal in size and are represented on an even footing (Figure 2), with order of languages being alphabetical. This ethos mirrors the design of the mosque, church and synagogue themselves, which are represented equitably – with each building being a 30m x 30m square (Figure 3).

The numerological landscape also holds meaning in this space, with the number seven being significant in all three religions, and therefore represented in the architecture. The gardens add another dimension to the semiotic landscape, within serene courtyards dotted throughout as well as the central raised garden which links all three houses of worship. Here, olive trees are significant in all three religions and are planted throughout, again symbolizing the collective and shared history of the faiths, and with regional trees and plants also indicating the shared regional origin of all three religions.

Language choices for religious signs

Figure 3: The church, mosque and synagogue at the Abrahamic Family House (pictures taken by authors)

As we headed back to the Forum from the gardens, we witnessed an interesting lingua-cultural turn in relation to the signage in one of the darkened rooms. Each corner of the room was lit up in turn by a gobo, with a crescent representing Islam, a cross for Christianity, and a menorah symbolizing Judaism (Figure 4).

Where the crescent was, a verse from the Holy Quran was printed in English and Hebrew only (not Arabic), while where the cross was, a verse from the New Testament in the Bible was printed in Hebrew and Arabic. By the menorah, a verse from the Holy Torah was printed in Arabic and English, and not Hebrew. Some very interesting linguistic choices were made in this room. Here, the emphasis is on sharing values across linguistic groups. Multilingual linguistic landscapes here serve as a pedagogical tool for learning not only about languages, but in this case, religions too.

Abandonment of trilingual values on bottom-up and temporary signage

Figure 4: Religious gobos in the Forum (pictures taken by authors)

When looking at the temporary and bottom-up signage in the space, however, trilingual patterns wavered. For example, if you wanted to attend a sign language course which was being offered as part of the community outreach program, the story told was in Arabic and English, and not Hebrew. In the gift shop, while the main signage was in all three languages, the descriptions of the items were given in English only. Similarly, if you wanted to borrow an abaya to follow the dress code, the directions were given in English only. This reminds us of similar patterns found in Covid-scapes in Abu Dhabi, where bottom-up temporary signage tended to be in English only, in an otherwise bilingual linguistic landscape. Furthermore, the digital linguistic landscape seen via the website of the Abrahamic Family House, is bilingual (English and Arabic), with Hebrew not being a language option. Here, we see, as in other multilingual global contexts such as Canada, trilingual efforts are imbalanced across spaces.

The wall of intentions

Figure 5: Multilingual wall of intentions (picture taken by authors)

Having explored the three places of worship and experienced the immersive light show (Figure 4), we came across a wall of tessellating triangles, again speaking to the significance of the number three: three languages, three religions, and echoing the shape of the simple triangular fountains found throughout the complex. We quickly realized that the purpose of this ‘wall of intentions’ was for visitors to write their own messages of intention. From 120 messages on the wall, we could understand the 60 messages written in English, eight in French, five in German, four in Spanish and one in Italian. A further six were written in Arabic, 25 in East Asian languages, and 18 others which we have yet to fully translate. Pictures appeared on 24 of the messages in addition to text, with only one intention including a picture without words, which was three people holding hands together, symbolizing togetherness.

Of the 78 intentions we could understand, 11 of them referred to God and only one indicated a prayer of any kind. Love was mentioned in 24 intentions, sometimes more than once to emphasize it. Peace was mentioned in 22 intentions. Other sentiments expressed included luck (five times) and happiness (seven times). Intentions were sometimes made in general, other times for oneself, for example ‘to be stress-free’, while sometimes they were made for the world (ten times), and for family in general or specific family members (12 times) (Figure 5).

Figure 6: Our intention for further research (picture taken by authors)

Although the wall of intentions is temporary with today’s intentions being different from tomorrow’s, a major takeaway on the day we visited, October 21, 2024, was the focus on love, peace, the world, and family, rather than on religion itself. There is no doubt that further analysis which includes specific and detailed translations will reveal more nuanced truths, but that’s for another day. Suffice to say that there is a lot to get excited about in this multi-faith, multilingual and interculturally rich space. As our hand-written intention states (Figure 6), we plan to delve deeper into this rich landscape and add to the growing research on religious linguistic landscapes and semiotic religious landscapes in the Arab Gulf States and beyond.

Author bios:

Anna Dillon is an Associate Professor at Emirates College for Advanced Education in Abu Dhabi. She is a teacher educator in the UAE, and has research interests in early childhood education, teacher education, language and literacy education, multilingualism and translingualism in education and within families.

Sarah Hopkyns is a Lecturer at the University of St Andrews and a visiting research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Her research interests include language and identity, language policy and linguistic landscapes. Sarah is author of The Impact of Global English on Cultural Identities in the UAE (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Linguistic Identities in the Arab Gulf States (Routledge, 2022).

Figure 1: Multilingual sign in Abu Dhabi with power disparities indicated through order and size of text

In the critically acclaimed Barbie movie, released in cinemas in mid-2023, Barbie and Ken depart from their fictional utopia of Barbie Land for the ‘real world’ of California, USA. When they arrive, they are very much outsiders observing their environment with new eyes.

It does not take long for a strong message to sink in: their new urban landscape reflects power dynamics between groups of people.

White men dominate, from appearing on banknotes, being carved into mountains, and holding the lion’s share of high-powered and lucrative positions. Ken thus believes it will be easy for him to find a job as he fits the profile of ‘the powerful’ based on race and gender alone. Barbie, on the other hand, finds her identity as a strong, independent, and ambitious woman suddenly out of sync with her surroundings and social interactions. Their reflexive positioning, or the way they view their own identities, shifts according to interactive positioning, or the way they are viewed by others, which in turn is influenced by societal norms and the social construction of reality.

Gender hierarchies parallel linguistic hierarchies

Upon leaving my local independent cinema in the Cotswold town of Chipping Norton on a rainy July day, I contemplated, in particular, one of the many strong messages embedded in the movie. This was the direct interconnectedness of semiotic landscapes, symbolic power, and identities. While the movie focused on challenging the dominance of the patriarchy in society, as a sociolinguist, the parallels with language hierarchies leapt out, particularly in relation to the omnipresence of English, or linguistic imperialism, in many global contexts.

Figure 2: Inclusion of Musqueam on signage at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

In a similar way to Barbie and Ken’s experience of gendered power dynamics being all-encompassing, in multilingual settings, the languages we see in public places not only impact language ideologies and linguistic hierarchies but also affect levels of belonging in a space. In linguistically diverse cities across the globe such as Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) or Vancouver, Canada, official language(s) and English as a global language tend to dominate. While there may be attempts to ‘welcome’ speakers of other languages, such attempts often fall short of true inclusion. For example, greetings in as many languages as will fit onto a sign can often be seen outside tourist attractions and money exchange stores. However, meaningful and balanced multilingualism on signage in public spaces is less common.

English on top

While select second or third languages are strategically included in ‘sticky places’ or spaces which evoke feelings of cultural belonging such as ethnic grocery stores, cafes and restaurants, or where linguistic minorities gather, such multilingual signage is often skewed in favour of dominant languages such as English.

Linguistic hierarchies, in this sense, not only relate to lack of second or third languages but also the order of languages, size, and amount of text. For example, the inclusion of bilingual Indigenous language / English books in Canadian stores is a positive move toward representation and decolonization but at present these books represent a tiny portion of stock sold in stores and they are usually displayed as a special feature.

Figure 3: Dominance of English on signage at an EMI university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

In Abu Dhabi, the inclusion of three languages for a social distancing sign related to the COVID pandemic also sends a message about linguistic hierarchies by placing English at the top, Arabic second, and Filipino (in smaller print) at the bottom (Figure 1). Here power disparities which relate to language and social position (many nannies in the UAE are from the Philippines, whereas the English and Arabic text is directed at parents) can be seen in the linguistic landscape in terms of ordering and size of text.

Language hierarchies in education-scapes

Particularly in English-medium education in multilingual university settings, which are on the rise globally, English-only or English-dominated signage and language objects tend to overshadow not only instruction but also education-scapes, or the linguistic and semiotic landscapes of educational settings. To take Canadian universities as an example, efforts to include Indigenous languages in education-scapes have been made from the east coast to the west coast, in Cape Breton and Vancouver (Figure 2).

Such initiatives are important in terms of decolonizing education-scapes. However, the representation of languages on many Canadian campuses, which host linguistically diverse student populations, is heavily weighted in favour of monolingual English practices. In the Arab Gulf cities of Abu Dhabi, UAE and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, English-medium universities, bilingual (English/ Arabic) signage shares space with many monolingual (English only) signs, sending out a message about the symbolic power of English in these settings (Figure 3). Even when the target readers’ first language is Arabic, as in the case of signs about Islamic dress codes (Figure 3), the chosen language for the text is still English.

Looking at multilingual signage with new eyes

If we imagine that ‘new eyes’ were viewing these global multilingual cities, what message would be received? Similar to Barbie and Ken’s perception of patriarchal dominance and power in California, English-dominated landscapes send out a message about which languages, and speakers, are valued or devalued in a space. In this sense, issues of access, inclusion and belonging, not only relate to gender and race, but also language use and linguistic identities. As Nicholas (2023) states, a main take away from the Barbie movie is that ‘hierarchy and rigid gender benefits nobody’. Through a language lens, greater thought and planning needs to be given to ensuring neither metaphorical ‘Barbies’ nor ‘Kens’ feel excluded, under-represented, or devalued in the real world’s linguistic and semiotic landscapes.

Figure 1: Bilingual Squamish and English placard in West Vancouver’s Park Royal shopping village

As the Covid-19 pandemic heads toward its third year, with the Omicron variant in full swing, there is an ongoing need to reflect on language practices in multilingual contexts.

During my spring/summer 2021 research sabbatical in my West Vancouver home, I observed signs of the pandemic in every public space. As a sociolinguist, my ‘process of noticing’ centered around ‘language in use’ and social context. While the representation of multilingualism in globalized spaces is important to explore in ordinary times, Covid-induced disruptions to habituated social practices and familiarized communication patterns have shone a spotlight on linguistic diversity, access, inclusion, and social justice.

The City of Worlds – linguistic diversity in West Vancouver

Figure 2: Bilingual (English and Persian) bakery sign with monolingual (English) Covid-19 signs

Metro Vancouver, in which West Vancouver is one of its 21 municipalities, has many nicknames such as ‘Hollywood North’, ‘Lotusland’, ‘Raincouver’, ‘City of Glass’ and ‘City of Worlds’. The latter is perhaps the most apt owing not only to the area’s geographical diversity but also its highly multicultural and multilingual ecology. In West Vancouver, 41 percent of its population are immigrants. The two most commonly spoken languages other than English are Chinese and Persian with approximately 34 percent of recent immigrants to West Vancouver coming from China and 22 percent coming from Iran.

While English dominates West Vancouver’s linguistic landscape, languages other than English can also be seen, particularly in ‘sticky places’ or spaces which evoke feelings of cultural belonging and emotions such as ethnic grocery stores, cafes, or clubs. Bilingual signs in Canada’s two official languages, French and English, are also commonly seen in Federal spaces such as post offices or in national parks.

Initiatives to revitalize indigenous languages such as Squamish/Skwxwú7mesh have led to further representation of linguistic diversity on some street signs and on placards (Figure 1).

Linguistic diversity on Covid signage lagging behind

Despite the presence of languages other than English on a variety of non-Covid signage, when observing the proliferation of Covid signage in the pandemic’s second year, linguistic diversity was notably limited. For example, Covid signage in a Persian bakery (Figure 2) is monolingual (English only) despite the fact that non-Covid signage is bilingual (English and Persian).

Figure 3: Monolingual (English only) municipality-produced Covid-19 sign

In public spaces such as Ambleside Park, which runs parallel to West Vancouver’s seawall, municipality-produced Covid signage is in English only, with the use of local wildlife incorporated into signs, as seen by the eagle’s wingspan symbolizing the required two-meter social distancing rules (Figure 3). The use of wildlife to localize Covid social distancing signage has also been found in other areas of North America such as bear images in North Vancouver, ravens in the Yukon, and alligators in Florida. While such signage promotes inclusion of other living beings in the community, extensions to other languages are not evident.

Bilingual and trilingual Covid signs are rare, and consist of either Federal government-produced English/French signage such as the sign in transit on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van (Figure 4) or parts of English signs having been translated by community members as in library signage.

Figure 4: Bilingual (English and French) sign on a Canada Post/Poste Canada van

Even though only part of the large English Covid poster in the West Vancouver Memorial Library has been translated into Chinese and Persian (Figure 5), this translation effort stands out as important not only for accessing information in languages other than English but also for reinforcing spaces of belonging for linguistic minorities. To develop this practice further, the full poster could be translated rather than only the top part and attention could be given to making the languages on bilingual or trilingual signage equal in size and prominence. While some of the symbols used on the English poster communicate the message effectively without the need for words, other symbols are more ambiguous.

The right to write: Covid-19 care and resistance

More common than bilingual or trilingual Covid signs in West Vancouver are handmade artifacts indirectly related to Covid, containing symbols together with English slogans, known as ‘language objects’. While people in many places around the world displayed pictures of rainbows and hearts in their windows or on front doors, West Vancouverites tended to create signs of care, solidarity and hope in public spaces rather than in private homes. Slogans such as ‘smile’, ‘love’, ‘you’re the best’ appeared on objects in the environment, like stones or trees. The ‘language objects’ in Figure 6 serve no informational or utilitarian purpose, rather they portray messages of care, hope, positivity and solidarity during difficult times.

Figure 5: Trilingual signage (English, Chinese, and Persian) at the West Vancouver Memorial Library

Such language objects were monolingual (English only) with symbols such as hearts and smiles.

Another way in which the public interacted with the linguistic landscape of West Vancouver, was through grassroots homemade signs in the form of monolingual (English only) posters taped to trees, lamp posts or walls in public places. Such posters tended to voice political or philosophical viewpoints on the pandemic, as seen in Figure 7.

Concerns for freedom were expressed openly by ‘talking back to the linguistic landscape’, whereby residents felt they had the ‘right to write’ in public spaces. Such voices of resistance to Covid-related safety measures and restrictions seen in the West Vancouver linguistic landscape stood in sharp contrast the Covid linguistic landscapes in Abu Dhabi (where I had spent the first year of the pandemic) in which signs of resistance to Covid safety rules were notably absent.

Toward Covid signage accurately reflecting multilingual ecologies

Figure 6: Language objects in Ambleside Park showing care, positivity, and solidarity

In studies conducted during the onset of the pandemic in 2020, lack of access to information in minority languages was reported in a wide variety of international contexts. Those not proficient in the dominant language of a given context were often found to be excluded from receiving safety information in public spaces.

During the onset of the pandemic, the immediate need for swift assemblance of safety signage led sign-makers to use the linguistic resources they had at hand, often resulting in English being the default choice. However, a year later, Covid signage remains heavily skewed in favor of monolingual signage in dominant languages such as English, in the case of West Vancouver. Only federal Covid signs are bilingual (English and French), and there appear to be few efforts by community members to translate English Covid signs into commonly spoken languages.

Figure 7: Monolingual (English only) grassroots sign voicing resistance to Covid-19 restrictions

For inclusivity goals to be better met, language on signage needs to match languages spoken in specific speech communities. Especially during a crisis, the importance of addressing the mismatch between the language chosen for public communication and the language repertoires of the target audience is amplified with regard to safety as well as a sense of belonging and value during difficult times.

Lessons learned from the pandemic’s first two years include the need for language on Covid signage to accurately reflect multilingual ecologies in highly diverse contexts for greater safety, care, and inclusion, especially amidst current Omicron concerns.

More on Covid-19 crisis communication

Keep up with all our Covid-19 crisis communication coverage on the Language on the Move Covid-19 archives.

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Figure 1: The Year of Tolerance Pillars

Jogging along the Abu Dhabi coastline at sunrise, I see small groups of two or three people wearing masks. They are expatriates walking dogs, Emiratis in national dress strolling, fellow joggers escaping lockdown inactivity, and transnational workers clearing fallen date palm leaves from the path. Cautiously wary as I pass each group, I hear snippets of multiple languages being spoken. This is a typically diverse Abu Dhabi scene in highly atypical times.

While Arabic is the official language of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and English is the de facto lingua franca, such labels ‘hide more than they reveal’. Rather, multilingualism and translingual practice is the norm due to its highly diverse population of approximately 200 nationalities, speaking over 100 languages as well as various dialects within diglossic languages such as Arabic. However, power attributed to these languages is far from even. Arabic and English are the most visible in society as reflected in their side-by-side presence on public signage, in education, official channels, and technology. Such a situation results in those proficient in English and Arabic having more access to information than those without. While communication barriers are important to challenge in general, in emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of linguistic inclusion is amplified.

Superdiversity and the year of tolerance in the UAE

In multilingual contexts globally, increasing attention has been given to social justice via the prevalence of the words ‘inclusion’ and ‘tolerance’. Inclusion can be defined as ‘ensuring access for all’ across many sectors. Several inclusion-based government-led initiatives have occurred in the UAE recently. One prominent initiative was the naming of 2019 as the ‘Year of Tolerance’, where all languages, backgrounds, ethnicities and abilities were to be valued. Figure 1 shows the ‘Year of Tolerance Pillars’ prominently displayed on a shopping mall billboard.

Figure 2: Bilingual COVID-19 safety sign

The seven pillars advocate tolerance in the areas of education, community, workplace, culture, legislation, and media as well as establishing the UAE as a model of tolerance. Here, the message of inclusivity as an ethical and moral value is loud and clear. However, even with carefully implemented awareness campaigns on diversity and inclusion, an unprecedented crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic can disrupt such efforts, and rather shine a spotlight on pre-existing societal and linguistic inequities. In addition, a crisis leads to priorities shifting from ideal values to emergency messaging, where instinctual and on-the-spot decisions are made with the resources available. This is often the case with linguistic choices in public spaces where English monolingualism seems to be the preferred or default choice in a moment of crisis.

Linguistic inequalities in a crisis context

In the UAE, top-down government communication relating to the COVID-19 pandemic is suitably multilingual and inclusive. Guidelines and announcements appear in Arabic, English, Hindi, Tagalog, French, and many more languages. Neighboring Gulf states such as Qatar and countries further afield such as China have also ensured that official communication is linguistically diverse. However, it is often the bottom-up ad hoc messages in public spaces which are most visible. This is especially the case for the UAE’s large migrant worker population who may not have access to mobile devices like laptops and smartphones.

Linguistic landscaping, or the analysis of language on signage in public spaces, can tell us a lot about how languages are used and about the power certain languages have over others. ‘Every sign tells a story about who produced it, and about who is selected to consume it’, as Blommaert (2018) points out. Public signage tracks local practices as well as contributing to the COVID-19 era’s zeitgeist. In this sense, locally-produced impromptu thrown-together messages are indeed authentic ‘signs of the time’. Such signs act as sociolinguistic evidence of power dynamics existing between languages and their speakers.

In the UAE, while municipality-issued COVID-19-related messages appear in the country’s two dominant languages, Arabic and English (Figure 2), in many cases make-shift or hand-written signs appear in English only. This is similar to other English-dominant multicultural and multilingual contexts such as London and Sydney.

Figure 3: Bilingual working hours sign and monolingual COVID-19 sign

It is easy to see a contrast between permanent signs with English and Arabic side-by-side, such as a working-hours sign in a pharmacy window (Figure 3), and an impromptu COVID-19 sign which appears only in English. In Figure 3, the latter is typed in large capital letters which fill the page, without the use of other languages, perhaps due to the urgency needed in communicating quickly. The pharmacy owner or clerk who created the sign most probably did so with a sense of emergency where lack of time and resources did not allow for consideration of the society’s linguistically-diverse population.

A further example of a make-shift monolingual COVID-19 sign can be seen in Figure 4. Here, lifeguards at an Abu Dhabi beachside community have written a message in the sand warning residents to ‘stay home, stay safe’. The manager who instructed the sign to be made on a scorching mid-March afternoon, decided to use English only. Was this perhaps due to limited space on the beach? Was it deemed impractical to write the message in several languages considering the size of the letters? Whatever the reasoning, the space which could have been used for another version of the message (e.g. Arabic), was instead given to a set of images including a house, heart and the ‘sun cross’ symbol (circle with cross inside) meaning eternity or the spiritual whole.

While the use of ‘English only’ may be appropriate in compounds renowned for ‘Jumeirah Janes’ (pampered British housewives living in English-speaking bubbles), since 2008 such monolingual communities have become less common. The beach community featured in Figure 4, for example, is linguistically diverse with Australians living next to Koreans, and Emiratis neighboring Swedes, as well as many dual nationality families, including my own (UK/Canada). Recently, nationalities which had not previously been drawn to the UAE are arriving for work opportunities. Accompanying family members sometimes have only basic English. For example, the number of Koreans living in the UAE has grown to 13,000 residents in what is known as the ‘Korean wave’. With most expatriate households being double-income, live-in nannies, who are usually from the Philippines, are also part of such communities. Despite the multilingual composition of residents, English is often the sole language used for communication in emergency contexts (Figures 3 and 4).

Inclusivity in crisis communication

Although the beach community shown in Figure 4 is home to mainly mid to high-income professionals, it is also the workplace of hundreds of laborers who are now called ‘essential workers’. Arriving on buses from the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, they spend their days working on the upkeep of existing buildings or on constructing new residential towers whose owners have deadlines to meet in order not to lose certain incentives. Figure 5 shows essential workers cleaning apartment windows while wearing masks but not perhaps social distancing, as is a government mandate. They do not have the ‘luxury’ of self-isolating, as many residents do, and it is clear that the message on the beach (Figure 4) was not intended for their eyes.

Figure 4: Covid-19 warning sign written in the sand (Photographer: Genevieve Leclerc)

Nevertheless, as laborers spend their days at their worksite, the make-shift monolingual signs in shops, lifts and  other public spaces represent their main way of accessing safety warnings. Monolingual communication in contexts of disasters or crisis has been named ‘disaster linguicism’, where linguistic minorities (not necessarily in number, but in power or prestige) are particularly vulnerable due to language-based discrimination at multiple levels.

Concerns over the lack of access laborers may have to COVID-19 warnings have been voiced on community Facebook pages as well as in national newspapers. Such concerns have led some residents to try and bridge the communication gap. For example, Indian expatriate teenager, Suchetha Satish, composed COVID-awareness songs in 21 Indian languages including Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Assamese. The songs urge people to social distance and wash hands. Such efforts are perhaps aimed at offsetting the prominence of monolingual (English) or bilingual (Arabic/ English) signs in public spaces. However, the potential success of such initiatives is debatable, due to many laborers having limited access to certain mediums. Besides, even with access to such songs, social distancing is not often an option in essential worker contexts, as seen in Figure 5.

Linguistic landscaping: An eye-opener for future action

Figure 5: Essential workers wearing masks during COVID-19 times

For those without access to official multilingual COVID-19 warnings, gaining accurate information about the crisis through a minority language can be a challenge. This highlights linguistic inequality in relation to crisis communication, as well as putting into sharper focus class divides. In top-down initiatives promoting tolerance, there is a danger of glossing over hidden exclusions in favour of celebrating ‘linguistically flexible neoliberal urbanites’. As most sociolinguistic research in the UAE focuses on the language choices and experiences of Emiratis, transnational linguistic experiences are under-researched, especially those from less privileged groups. In this exceptional time when the slogan ‘We are all in it together’ or ‘#TGether’ (as seen in Figure 2) is advocated, it is important to draw attention to the incongruities between slogans of inclusion and the reality on the ground. As Jones (2020) states, ‘Coronavirus is not some grand leveler: it is an amplifier of existing inequalities, injustices and insecurities’ or as Hurley (2020) puts it, ‘Coronavirus exacerbates the fault lines’. Although this is a time of reflection on what a new normal may look like, ‘often these seemingly revolutionarily happenings ultimately result in retrenchment of a status quo defined by durable inequalities’.

The Year of Tolerance supports including all, even those who speak languages other than English and Arabic. However, the pragmatic choices made at the height of the COVID-19 crisis show English is often the default choice. By excluding some, there are significant ramifications for the spread of the virus. Concerned looks on the faces of the diverse groups described in the opening coastline scene of this blog show us this is an issue affecting society as a whole. Thus, the need to ‘include the reality of linguistic diversity into our normal procedures and processes, including disaster preparation’ is pressing. Going forward, a critical look at the signage and warning messages in our landscapes can be eye-opening, with the goal of substantiating the priority of tolerance and inclusion.

Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic

Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.