Language planning in an Egypt tourism marketplace: evidence from the linguistic landscape of Khan el-Khalili

This study aims to examine the linguistic landscape of Khan el-Khalili, Egypt, from a language planning perspective. Specifically, it explores patterns of language use, the planning orientations reflected in shop signs, and the underlying logics of de facto language planning as perceived by shop owners and tourists. Drawing on mixed-methods design, the study analyses 1,015 shop-sign photographs and semi-structured interviews with 40 shop owners and tourists. The findings show that the shop signs in the market are characterised by a highly uneven distribution of languages, with Arabic forming the dominant code, followed by English. Analysis of shop signs reveals five planning orientations: Arabic as the core language of legitimacy, English as a de facto working language, the functional allocation of Arabic and English, symbolic multilingualism and global appeal, and targeted multilingualism and audience-specific communication. Interview data further identify four interrelated logics of de facto planning: stratified functional allocation of languages, market-driven language choice, planning without explicitly designated planners, and tourists’ active interpretation of language choices as signals of authenticity and accessibility. This study extends understandings of de facto language planning and highlights the value of linguistic landscape research for examining planning as a practice-based social process in tourism-driven contexts.