Graffiti in Public Spaces in the City State of Setif, Algeria

Noura Bitam; Rajai Rashead AL-Khanji

doi:10.35516/hum.v52i2.5813

Authors

Noura Bitam Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2109-8687
Rajai Rashead AL-Khanji Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2006-3098

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v52i2.5813

Keywords:

graffiti, public spaces, Setif City, communicative categories, qualitative and quantitative content analyses framework.

Abstract

Objectives: The present study aims to discover the themes or categories that characterize graffiti writings in public spaces in the City State of Setif, Algeria. It is worth mentioning that Setif City - the state of Setif - is an eastern city in Algeria; it is near to the state where one of the researchers resides. This fact made data collection an easy task.

Methods: Using photographing, the researchers collected 330 graffiti tokens from public spaces in six townships of Setif City. However, among the total number of graffiti only 191 graffiti works had writings, and thus, they were selected as the study sample. The researchers relied on the qualitative and quantitative content analyses framework for data analysis.

Results: The analysis showed that graffiti in public spaces of Setif City expressed 19 communicative themes or categories, namely society, politics, resistance, peace, education, history, heritage, sports, motherland, art, personal thoughts and sentiments, expressiveness, commerce, prevention, awareness and guidance, embellishment, health, environment, and finally miscellaneousness. Moreover, the study showed that some of graffiti writings have more than one theme or communicative category.

Conclusions: The study concludes that the graffiti of Setif City was used to transmit various messages about many different issues in life.

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