Kuwaitis ’ Attitudes towards Vehicles ’ Stickers in Kuwait : A Sociolinguistic Investigation

Language attitudes cover a wide variety of emphases, and the reasons for studying language attitudes attract sociolinguists. Language attitudes may well tackle issues extend to all sociolinguistic and social psychological phenomena, such as how we locate ourselves socially and how we relate to other individuals and groups. They may also shape our behaviors and experiences. This study investigates Kuwaitis’ Attitudes towards vehicles’ stickers in Kuwait. Data were collected from responses to 17 items questionnaire and 1 open-ended question aimed at investigating Kuwaitis’ attitudes towards the content (political, religious, aesthetic, etc. and the shape (size, color, etc.) of vehicles’ stickers. Findings were analyzed statistically. Means, Standard deviations, T-tests, and ANOVA were utilized. Results show that Kuwaitis, in general expressed negative attitudes towards both the content and the shape of the stickers. The open-ended question data provided inclusive data as to the reasons behind such a negative attitude.


Introduction
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines a sticker as 'a small piece of paper or plastic with a picture or writing on it that you can stick on to something'.A vehicle sticker is viewed by sociolinguists as a discourse marker, and discourse is viewed as language in use (Brown & Yule, 1983;Mirhosseini, 2005).Discourse is constructed as oral or written texts and functions in social contexts, occurring naturally and spontaneously (Chalon, 1985;Coulthard & Montgomery, 1981;Onadeko, 2000).We all come across, on daily basis, combinations of words and images of all kinds.We take them as given, we use them to communicate and interpret information (Wodak, 2012).Vehicles' stickers together with all kinds of graffiti, are usually used as a platform for social communication.Moreover, they exhibit some sexual or political contents; a lover's pledge, proposition, or obscene words (Chiluwa, 2008).Many studies, such as, EL-Nashar and Nayef (2016), Chiluwa (2008), Farnia and Tohidian (2013), and Divsalar and Nemati (2012) that analyzed vehicles' stickers adopted Fairclough's (1995) post-structuralist model of discourse analysis.However, investigating peoples' attitudes towards vehicles' stickers is scare.Therefore, this study investigates the attitudes of Kuwaitis towards vehicles' stickers as posted on drivers' cars in Kuwait.

History of Vehicles' Stickers in Kuwait
As a matter of fact, literature does not show the emergence of vehicles' stickers in Kuwait since, as a discourse marker, they have not been dealt with in academic research in Kuwait.The first appearance of vehicles' stickers in Kuwait dates to the eighties of the last century.Kuwaiti graduates from overseas universities (especially British and American universities) and out of prestige, began to stick on their cars stickers showing their schools there; stickers such as 'University of Colorado', 'UCLA', or something like 'baby on board.These stickers were mainly in the English language.Then people in Kuwait started to stick stickers that show a lover's vow in a form of few words or a poetic verse.Most of these love stickers appeared in the Arabic language or in Kuwaiti Arabic.Right after the liberation of Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion in 1991, cars were roaming Kuwaiti streets with political insinuations, such as 'Free Kuwait', 'Kuwait for Kuwaitis', 'I love Kuwait', etc.Some of these stickers were in Arabic and others in English.Recently, some stickers display drivers' email, Instagram, and Kik accounts.Others display stickers that express Kuwaitis' peoples' religious or tribal affiliations.Stickers are not generally designed or written by the individuals who stick them on their vehicles; rather, they are designed by graphic artists and some specialized organizations that produce several types of stickers.Individuals simply buy the types that appeal to them or that best express their thoughts and situations.Vehicles' stickers in Kuwait are also noticed to be posted on transportation buses, different company mini-vans showing for example, home delivery restaurants, furniture deliveries, flowers deliveries, plumber companies, etc.These kinds of stickers are mostly colored and posted all over the buses and vans.Vehicle stickers in Kuwait are also posted on drivers' owners' cars, however, these are posted on the rear window and not on car bumpers (see Bolch, 2000;Newhagen & Ancell, 1995).Some of the car stickers in Kuwait are in black and white, and some are colored and they usually come in varied sizes.This paper is concerned with those stickers posted on drivers' cars rather than those posted on buses.

Theoretical Framework & Literature Review
Reasons for studying language attitudes attract sociolinguists.For sociolinguists, one important goal has been to construct a 'record of overt attitudes towards language, linguistic features and linguistic stereotypes' (Labov, 1984, p. 33).However, language attitudes may well tackle issues extend to all sociolinguistic and social psychological phenomena, such as how we locate ourselves socially and how we relate to other individuals and groups.They may also shape our behaviors and experiences.Language attitudes researchers are keen in exploring how attitudinal judgments are influenced by the social contexts in which the language occurs.Language attitudes may also vary according to ethnic, regional and social and professional groups, (Garret, 2010).Beautifully, Thomas (2004: 194) states that "people usually assign various attributes to language forms; they may feel that a language or variety of a language is 'elegant', 'expressive', 'vulgur', 'guttural' or 'musical, or that one language form is 'more polite' or more 'aesthetically pleasing or displeasing' than the other".Language also serves instrumental and symbolic purposes.In this vein, language is an 'indicator of identity…group affiliation by means of stereotypes and identity manifestation is a matter of relative choice, "relative" because group membership is a social process involving the individual member and the group" (Coulmas, 2013, p. 171).Moreover, sociolinguistics' means are being smeared to examine the growth of linguistic forms and their social uses in social media.The online world has also changed the ways in which linguistic identity is shaped and managed, and how the sense of self is constructed, not to mention how we now go about contacting others, constructing messages, and carrying out conversations (Danesi, 2016).
Scholars studying graffiti or stickers on various vehicles used a variety of terms to refer to this phenomenon: Bumper stickers (Bloch, 2000;Case, 1992Salamon, 2005, House, 2007) vehicle stickers (Chiluwa, 2008), truck graffiti (Basthomi, 2009;Farnia & Tohidian, 2013) or car written manuscripts (Divsalar & Nemati, 2012).It is worth noting that the term 'bumper stickers' was used by Rains et al. (2009) to refer to sayings that are included in an e-mail signature file following personal identifiers such as one's name, phone number, and postal address.For the purposes of this study, we opt for the term 'vehicles' stickers'.Literature reveals that different approaches to the study of graffiti were applied by academic scholars.These approaches range from the linguistic, ethnographic, cultural, aesthetic, to the contents and meaning of stickers (Gadsby, 1995).Heider (2012: 4), in the Egyptian post-revolution situation, portrays graffiti as a true replication of 'the beat of the street.' Alonso (1998) analysed graffiti in the urban area.He found out that graffiti serves as an excellent tool in the understanding and appreciation of behaviours, attitudes and social process of certain segments in society.The study of Grider (1975) appears to be one of the earliest studies of graffiti who studied it from a linguistic approach.She (ibid) investigated the cultural and linguistic functions of con safos graffiti within the Mexican-American community.Some scholars have seen graffiti as a means of language learning (Mwangi, 2012), as discourse of religious identity (Chiluwa, 2008), as political discourse (Mirzaalikhani, 2011;Obeng, 2000aObeng, , 2000b;;Bloch, 2000;Case, 1992;Salamon, 2005), and as a gendered discourse (Moonwomon, 1995;House, 2007).Newhagen and Ancell, (1995), for example, believe that content analyses of bumper stickers through ethnographic methods and approaches in social psychology show that stickers are discursive means of expressing emotions and social status whereas Bloch (2000) believes that they are a spontaneous medium of protest evolving into a routinized form of public discourse.He (ibid, p. 1) claims that in Israel, for instance, 'political bumper stickers have become a ubiquitous medium of communication, expressing complex national-ideological messages that reflect individual opinions on a mass scale.Endersby and Towle (1996) and Salamon (2001) claim that individuals use bumper stickers, in general, to display their support to an organization and to stretch the message of interest groups, and communicate candidate preferences in a political campaign.Following Fairclough's (1995) post-structuralist model of discourse analysis, El-Nashar and Nayef (2016) investigated vehicles' stickers in Egypt, through thematically analyzing their patterns of usage, to see if they act as an expression of social values, religious ideologies and political affiliations.The authors claimed that graffiti is a very powerful mode of expression for groups that feel marginalised by the wider society.Their data comprised (614) written graffiti taken from highway and in-city vehicles from various parts of Egypt.In addition, the paper also threw light on some of the lexical features of graffiti and addressed the language and language variations used.Results showed that religious expressions constituted more than half the data.It is also shown that graffiti about the self is positive whereas statements about 'the other' are negative.The analysis revealed a strong positive disposition in the social and philosophical expressions with almost non-existent political graffiti.Mangeya (2014) investigated educational graffiti writing on toilet walls, durawalls as well as road signs in three Zimbabwean urban areas (Harare, Chitungwiza, and Gweru).Among the issues, he investigated was participants' attitudes towards the practice of graffiti.His subjects displayed negative attitudes towards grafitti and considered them as disgusting.His findings also revealed that some attitudes were partly influenced by the participants' ages, gender as well as levels of education and maturity.
Another study within the framework of the post-structuralist model of discourse analysis is carried out by Chiluwa (2008) in Nigeria.The aim of the study was to analyze the ways in which vehicle stickers form individual and group identities, people's religious faith and social vision in the context of religious beliefs.For the sake of data collection, 73 vehicle stickers were collected in Lagos and Ota and, hence, analyzed.The study arrived at the conclusion that through stickers Nigerian people may well label their individual and group identities within religious institutional rituals, and accordingly, they pledge social security.Bloch (2000) investigated the use of political bumper stickers in Israel.He states that bumper stickers began as a spontaneous protest medium, evolving into a routinized form of public discourse, taking place throughout the year, independently of national elections.Adopting an ethnographic approach, he identified the rules of interaction of this nontraditional means of political communication and the complex relationships between the messages within their social situation.The analysis showed how this political discourse reflects social norms peculiar to Israel and how its use has become an affirmation of cultural identity.

Objectives
Studies on vehicles' stickers mostly focused on the importance of vehicles' stickers as a means of social communication.However, studies of this kind and studies investigating people's attitudes towards vehicle stickers in Kuwait have not been academically approached.To the knowledge of the researcher, this study is the first to investigate such a sociolinguistic phenomenon in Kuwait.The objective of this study therefore is primarily to investigate peoples' attitudes in Kuwait towards vehicles' stickers.The data was analysed quantitatively.Descriptive analysis including means, standard deviations, T-tests, and One way ANOVA, were utilized.

Research Questions
The paper seeks to answer the following questions: 1) Do Kuwaitis in general, favor seeing vehicles' stickers?
2) Do Kuwaitis favor vehicles' stickers that show patriotism?Do they believe that such stickers increase Kuwaitis solidarity?
3) What color, shape, size, and language do Kuwaitis prefer?Do they favor those displaying pictures of celebrities?
4) Do Kuwaitis consider vehicles' stickers as one of the social media devices?If so, are they useful?In what sense?
5) Do Kuwaitis favor vehicles' stickers that talk about love and passion?Do they believe that such stickers attract girls' attentions? 6) Do Kuwaitis favor seeing religious vehicles stickers?Do they believe that such stickers are acts of religious identity?
7) Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers reflect peoples' political identity?8) Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers reflect peoples' educational levels?9) Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers may well cause car accidents?

Statistical Analysis
To find answers to the research questions, a quantitative analysis was carried out.First, the reliability (Alfa Cornbrash) for all the items is (.871) as shown below: To answer question 1, we needed to look at item 1. *p<.05.
Question 2: Do Kuwaitis favor vehicles' stickers that show patriotism?Do they believe that such stickers increase Kuwaitis solidarity?
To answer question 2, we needed to look at items 2 and 3. *p<.05.
Question 3: What color, shape, size, and language do Kuwaitis prefer?Do they favor those displaying pictures of celebrities?
Question 4: Do Kuwaitis consider vehicles' stickers as one of the social media devices?If so, are they useful?In what sense?
To answer question 4, we needed to look at items 8 and 9. Table 5 below shows the results.*p<.05.
Question 5: Do Kuwaitis favor vehicles' stickers that talk about love and passion?Do they believe that such stickers attract girls' attentions?
To answer question 5, we needed to look at items 10 and 11. *p<.05.
Question 6: Do Kuwaitis favor seeing religious vehicles stickers?Do they believe that such stickers are acts of religious identity?Do these stickers strengthen Kuwaitis solidarity?
To answer question 6, we needed to look at items 12, 13 and 14.Table 7 below shows the results.*p<.05.
Question 7: Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers reflect peoples' political identity?
To answer question 7, we needed to look at items 15. *p<.05.
Question 8: Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers reflect peoples' educational levels?
To answer question 8, we needed to look at items 16.Table 9 below shows the results.*p<.05.
Question 9: Do Kuwaitis believe that some vehicles' stickers may well cause car accidents?
To answer question 9, we needed to look at items 17.As far as gender variable is concerned, an independent samples t-test (Table 11) was conducted to see if differences between males and females' replies were statistically significant.*p<.05.
Table 11 above shows that all items are significant in favor of males, where the means of the males are higher than those of the females except for items 11, 12, 13 and 14.
To investigate the age variable, a one-way between subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the replies of the participants of different ages.The findings show that the differences between the subjects as far as age are statistically significant when measuring the total mean for all the items as Table 12 below shows: Table 13 shows that the mean for those aged 18-25 is 3.75, those aged 26-39 is 3.23, those aged 40-55 is 4.12, and those aged +60 is 3.80.This indicates that the higher the age of the participants, the more they disapprove vehicles stickers.
Finally, investigating the students' level of education, the findings show that most of the questionnaire items are statistically significant except items, 1, 3, 6, 8, and 17.Table 13 below shows the findings of the ANOVA for total mean for students' major: Tukey analysis to figure out where the differences come from was carried out.Table 15 shows that the mean for the participants who got a degree less than secondary level is 3.00, those who obtained a secondary level degree is 3.49, those with a university degree is 3.76, and those with a postgraduate degree is 3.70, English major is 2.94.Likewise, this indicates that the participants with higher degrees are more likely to disapprove of vehicles stickers than those with lower degrees.

Discussion
The statistical analysis above shows that the questionnaire's respondents exhibited negative attitudes towards vehicles' stickers in Kuwait, which corresponds with studies of Nashar and Nayef (2016), Mangeya (2014) and Chiluwa (2008).The participants' means of all the questionnaire's items are higher than 3.00 (5 in the scale is strongly disagree).The data show that the respondents do not favor seeing vehicles' stickers posted on vehicles (M:3.64).They not only disapprove of those vehicles' stickers that show patriotism, but the majority also disbelieve that such stickers increase Kuwaitis' solidarity (M:3.31,3.19 respectively).They dislike seeing vehicles' stickers written in English, those in black and white, those in big sizes or even those which display pictures of celebrities (M:3.58,3.96, 4.14, and 4.09 respectively).They also do not believe that vehicles' stickers are social media devices.They don't see that they are useful in any sense (M:3.71,3.78 respectively).Moreover, they dislike vehicles' stickers that talk about love and passion and they don't believe that such stickers attract girls' attentions (M:4.38,3.55 respectively).They do not favor seeing religious vehicles' stickers.Even though language is an indicator of identity, Coulmas (3013) our respondents don't believe that vehicles' stickers as a form of language are acts of religious identity (M:3.38)M:3.38, political identity (M:3.12) or they strengthen Kuwaitis solidarity (M: 3.77).They do not believe that some vehicles' stickers reflect peoples' educational levels (M:3.67).Finally, they do not believe that some vehicles' stickers may well cause car accidents (M:3.31).
To verify the questionnaire's findings the open-ended question provided invaluable feedback.Light will be shed on the respondents' negative comments followed by the positive comments.Many respondents claimed that vehicles' stickers prevent drivers from seeing the blind spots clearly, especially the generous size stickers, and hence, lose focus.They also disperse the attention of other drivers.Some claimed that vehicles' stickers distort the beauty of the vehicle outer shape; they are ugly and silly, some said.This corresponds with Thomas' ( 2004) definition stated earlier and with Mangeya's (2014) findings.Others claimed that stickers express childlike behavior; they are mostly posted by teenagers when they undergo certain psychological or personal problems.This corresponds with Chiluwa' findings (2008).Some respondents claimed that they reflect an uncivilized behavior; Posting stickers is a new trend in Kuwait, they said.;they also claimed that civilized countries refrain from posting stickers; they are hazardous and life-threatening.Some stickers, they said post impolite language which indicates that the people who post them are not very well-bred.Some insisted on the idea that a vehicle is a means of transportation, not a means for social media; they should be banned by the government.The police must issue a ticket to whoever posts stickers on his/her vehicle.Others went beyond that saying that they should pay around 2000 dollars fine. Several participants believed that vehicle stickers reflect a show-off personality, especially among the young generation.It is worth mentioning that most young Kuwaitis post stickers during parliament election' campaigns which display pictures of some candidates.They hope if the candidate wins and becomes a member of the parliament, they would, then, get some personal gains through his/her power.This corresponds with ideas of Endersby and Towle (1996) and Salamon (2001).Few participants said that the question is what do these stickers say about the person's thought or the way this person thinks.They believe that posting stickers is a kind of hypocrisy.If people have positive attitudes towards their country, their religion, or even towards politics, these feelings must be kept in their hearts, and not posted on cars.At the end of the day, those stickers that talk about patriotism will be thrown in the bin.The participants believed that those who post religious stickers are hypocrites; those who post stickers showing their usernames are uneducated.Many were strongly against stickers which show racism; they create discrimination between Kuwaitis, they said.Finally, a considerable number of respondents claimed that luxury, opulence, and young Kuwaitis' unemployment are behind the spread of this phenomenon.
As to the positive comments, most respondents claimed that vehicles' stickers are suitable and useful if they post stickers that say 'handicapped', 'child on board', those that post their telephone numbers in case you want to complain about the driver's driving behavior, those that encourage optimism like 'Smile please', or those on buses as a kind of advertisement.Some favored the stickers on companies' vehicles which advertise their products, such as furniture, flowers, sweets and deserts, plumbing and so on.Some also favored stickers on home delivery restaurant's' vehicles.Others favored the stickers posted during the national day of Kuwait which they believe strengthens Kuwaitis' solidarity provided the wording is not racist.As to religious stickers, even though the majority was against posting them, a few believed that the small and concise stickers which may remind you of the existence of God and the JUDGMENT day are valuable.Others believed that people are free to post stickers if the wording or the pictures respect others' feelings; teen agers, for example, when posting stickers, they just want their vehicles to look pretty; it has nothing to do with their beliefs.Some favored only the small stickers with few words and those posted in English.One, surprisingly said that 'it is silly to give police tickets to drivers who post sticker'.
As far as the gender variable is concerned, the statistical analysis has shown that the means of the males are higher than those of the females except for items 11, 12, 13 and 14 which revolve around stickers displaying religion on one hand, and love and passion on the other.As far as religion, Kuwaiti females are known to be more devout than men.This is because females, especially, young females are more superintended by their parents from a very early age, to carry out their daily religious rituals than men.As far as love and passion, this might be explained in the light of the fact that females are usually more affectionate than males.Furthermore, even though Kuwait is an open society, compared to other Arabian Gulf societies, yet, females have less freedom to express their feelings towards men.Hence, they might feel secure when they express their attitudes towards stickers that display love and passion in a questionnaire that does not reveal their identity.As far as age and the education variables, the statistical analysis above indicated that the higher the age or the level of education of the participants, the more they disapprove vehicles' stickers.This seems to be self-explanatory since older age people and more educated people are more mature and self-confident, while younger people always feel that they are the kings and queens of their domains and, hence opt to show their feelings and attitudes through any means of communication.

Conclusion
This paper investigated Kuwaitis' Attitudes towards vehicles' stickers in Kuwait from a sociolinguistic perspective.A questionnaire was utilized and quantitively analyzed.The data were examined across sociolinguistic parameters, mainly, gender, age, and level of education.The results showed that Kuwaitis, in general, expressed negative attitudes towards vehicles' stickers as displayed on vehicles, and some statistical differences as far as gender, age, and level of education were also unrevealed.A comprehensive discussion behind such a negative attitude was provided.The researcher hopes that this study contributes to the scares existence of similar studies and adds empirical data to literature.

Recommendation for Future Research
It is recommended that scholars should think of carrying out research on discourse analysis to linguistically and socially analyze vehicle's' stickers.It is also recommended that similar studies be researched in other Arab countries, especially the Arabian Gulf countries to see if people there share the same negative attitudes, and at the same time add their findings to the existing literature.

Table 1 .
10) Are there any statistical significance in Kuwaitis' attitudes towards vehicle' stickers regarding gender, age, and educational background?Research question 8 covered item 16 and research question 9 covered item 17.The questionnaire was first given to four academic professors for their feedback and all their invaluable comments were considered.Table 1 below shows the demographic distribution of the participants as far as gender, age, and level of education.Distribution of demographic factors

Table 2 .
Table 2 below shows the T. test and compare means for items 1. T. test and compare means for item 1 Table 3 below shows the results.
Table 4 below shows the results.

Table 5 .
T. test and compare means for items 8 and 9.
Table 6 below shows the results.

Table 7 .
T. test and compare means for items 12, 13, and 14 Table 8 below shows the results.

Table 9 .
T. test and compare means for item 16 Table 10 below shows the results.Table 10.T. test and compare means for item 17

Table 11 .
Independent Samples T. test and compare means for gender

Table 12 .
ANOVA for total mean for age

Table 13 .
Tukey analysis for the differences between the items and age

Table 14 .
ANOVA for Total Mean for level of education

Table 15 .
Tukey analysis for the differences between the items and level of education