Differential reading positions: language choice and reception in Arabic linguistic landscapes

Linguistic landscape (LL) research in the Arab world has mapped which languages appear on public signs, but how readers evaluate those choices remains understudied. In an online survey, 235 L1 Arabic readers from four countries rated controlled sign stimuli across six language conditions and three institutional domains on dimensions including competence, comfort, professionalism, and accessibility. Mixed-effects models showed a systematic divergence between competence and comfort, with English-dominant signs scoring highest on competence and lowest on comfort and bilingual Arabic-dominant signs the most balanced. The study introduces the concept of differential reading positions, the idea that one sign may occupy different semiotic positions for different readers depending on their translinguistic decoding ability. Tested through a naturalised versus opaque transliteration distinction, decoding moderated evaluations of opaque transliterations (marginal R² = .38) but not naturalised ones (R² < .01), only on comprehension-linked dimensions and independently of general English proficiency, consistent with a lexical-familiarity rather than a script-level effect. The findings carry implications for signage policy and LL reception theory.