The Analysis of Sociolinguistic Landscape of Commercial Shop Signs in Ahvaz

Used as a highly effective promotional medium; shop signs and graphics are essential to all businesses which are visible to pedestrians and the public. They can make a lasting first impression and can easily turn a passerby in to a customer. The goal of a commercial shop sign is to provide an easy to recognize and remember name that evokes a positive response in consumers. In different area of a country, commercial shop signs, reflects somehow, the cultural and historical background of residence of that city or the owners' beliefs. They fit the concepts, can be pronounced easily and are durable and elastic across time, cultures and categories. In the present study, the linguistic landscape will be established as a field of sociolinguistic inquiry. The focus will be on one aspect of urban language contact on written medium: the language of Iranian shop signs. The broad objective is to investigate the current status of foreign in relation and in contrast with Farsi. In order to do this research, 210 commercial shop signs were gathered by means of observation and taking pictures. Then they will be divided into different groups based on functional and semantic viewpoint