WC or Toilet: Should We Consider Proairetic Decoding and Signgeist in Writing Toilet Signage for Indonesian Islamic Kindergartens?

Abstract

Toilet writing in the schoolscape context of Indonesian Islamic kindergartens is unique in nature since the schools have to negotiate between the ideology and identity they bear. The negotiation revolves around whether the toilet writing should accommodate Arabic praying and toileting procedures in Bahasa Indonesia to enhance the geist or the learning purpose of a sign or not. Departing from this issue, we attempt to formulate a typology of toilet writing which addresses and adheres to proairetic decoding reading and signgeist by examining twenty kindergartens in Indonesia. These two elements are crucial for any signs involving children as the sign recepients with the first referring to an easy reading and the second to learning environment. Employing linguistic analysis of linguistic landscapes by Huebner, children as social actors in linguistic landscapes by Dagenais, Moore, Sabatier, Lamarre, and Armand, semiotics of toilet signs by Iio, language and message content by Reh, signgeist by Dressler and schoolscape by Gorter, we formulate three types of toilet writing. They are ungeist, monogeist, and polygeist. These types serve one of the two functions of toilet writing namely decorative and iterative functions. The first function refers to the alignment between toilet writing with the school branding while the second to learning environment the schools attempt to build.