How pilgrims engage with the multilingual landscape of the Grand Mosque of Makkah: shared recognizability and stratified accommodation

The Grand Mosque of Makkah gathers millions of pilgrims from across the world into a sacred space where they must read signs, move through dense crowds, and perform rites, frequently in a language other than their first. Existing studies document its linguistic landscape but do not establish how pilgrims use, interpret, or evaluate it. The current study addresses this gap through a two-part qualitative design: a 2026 signage corpus and photo-elicitation interviews conducted in Arabic or English with twenty-three male pilgrims of diverse linguistic repertoires. Corpus analysis identifies the signage’s communicative strategies, and hybrid thematic analysis examines participants’ reported use, interpretations, and evaluations of them. Participants’ accounts indicate shared recognizability of selected Arabic-origin ritual terms across different reported repertoires, although recognition, comprehension, and preferences for sign wording do not necessarily coincide. Arabic terms that circulate across Muslim repertoires generally carry the ritual core, whereas English supports navigation and services. Elicited preferences generally correspond to rendering practices, while participants report uneven access and inclusion despite some shared Arabic or English resources. Communicative access can therefore be co-produced through signage and pilgrims’ own resources, including strategies that compensate for gaps in institutional provision.