Foreign Languages in Advertising
Summary
Part I
Chapter 1
What role does foreign language comprehension play in advertising? How do consumers
evaluate foreign language in advertisements? Why do brands use a foreign language to
communicate with their customers? These are question that this book will adress.
1.1 – Academic interest in Foreign Languages in Advertising
In the early use of foreign language in advertising, foreign loanwords where used most often.
Think of the ‘spanification’ of English words the the suffix “o” and the determiner “el”. There
seems to be a purist bias in early work on FLA (e.g. Wustmann saying that business people
should use less English words - because they think they sound more prestigious - and more
German words. The focus on foreign loanwords continues until the 1980’s. in the meantime
a different interest emerges on studying these foreign words in the context of advertising.
Research was done on the understanding of English words in German advertising and how
age and educational background influenced this understanding. Evalutation of these phrases
was also studied. Haarman conducted research on the frequency with which foreign
languages are used in advertising. He argued that foreign languages are used to associate
the product with stereotypes from the language’s country (e.g. French for elegance and
style). All of the above is a historical analysis by Piller on academic interest in foreign
languages in advertising. The authors of a book extended this analysis till later. An
observation was that while before the 1980’s this interest was limited to the field of
linguistics, later more disciplines had interest in foreign language use in advertising, take
marketing, consumer research, advertising, sociolinguistics, etc.. Another observation is that
six different areas of foreign language in advertising could be distinguished:
1. Frequency of occurrence of foreign language in advertising
The focus here is then mainly on English, however some studies have looked at other
languages (e.g. a study that looked at 1200 advertisements in Greek and how often foreign
languages are used: English but also French and Italian).
2. Effects of foreign language in advertising
For example attitude towards the ad, comprehension of the ad, etc.
3. Foreign language use as an element of advertising standardization
Is an ad meant/appropriate for international audiences? A big focus is on westernization.
4. Connections of foreign languages with products, countries and characteristics
E.g. German language being associated with engineering quality.
5. Foreign branding
Different things around foreign branding have been studied. The impact of foreign branding
on attitude towards a brand or an ad for example. The starting point of that study was the
notion that foreign branding connects a product to stereotypes of the country of the used
language (e.g. French for more hedonistic products as opposed to utilitarian products)
6. English vs Spanish for US Hispanics
,Important areas are: comprehension of esp vs eng, attitudes towards and recall of ads, and
the role of acculturation.
There is some overlap in these areas, which can be seen above. Despite this it is clear that
there are different areas of interest when it comes to foreign language research after the
1980’s as opposed to before that, where it was purely linguistic. Since 2000 interest in
foreign language research has continued to flourish. All these different perspectives haven’t
successfully been integrated, causing research to slow down.
1.2: Starting Point: Consumer Culture Positioning
A first step in integrating the various areas of interest was by Snyder et al (1991). They
looked at ads from different European countries and assessed them based on the following
measures: language used in the ad, mention of location, nationality of people depicted,
cultural symbols and product origin. They then created a framework with 5 categories
related ot the internationality of the ad: (1) local or domestic, (2) foreign European, (3)
foreign non-european, (4) pan-european or European wide and (5) culturally neutral. Snyder
et al’s research is important for understanding foreign languages in advertising because it
places it in a strategic marketing context. They convey that language, as well as other cues,
can be used to convey foreignness or an ads national character. This complements the
perspective put in other papers that show a third use: globalization of an ad.
In more recent advertising research by Alden et al (1999) they state there are three
positioning strategies when it comes to globalization:
1. Local Consumer Culture Positioning (LCCP)
a. Brand associations with local cultural meanings.
2. Foreign Consumer Culture Positioning (FCCP)
a. Brand associations with a specific foreign culture (italian for pasta
commercials)
3. Global Consumer Culture Positioning (GCCP)
a. Identify the brand as a symbol of a given global culture.
There are then three components to an ad, to identify what positioning strategy is used:
- Language
- Aesthetics
- Story theme
Language seems to be the most important in all three of the positioning strategies.
The book uses the consumer culture positioning strategies as a framework because it is
comprehensive and overarching (every advertising goal with regard to language is
mentioned, and it isn’t too specific).
The role of language in LCCP seems simple: use the native language. This however is very
simplistic as many countries have multiple official languages and almost all countries host
immigrants. This will be explored in chapter 5
The role of language in GCCP is to connect the brand with globalness, this is generally done
through English and will be explored in chapter 4.
The role of language in FCCP is relating a brand to a specific foreign country and it’s culture.
This will be explore more in chapter 3.
, Chapter 2: Theoretical Perspectives
In order to understand FLA, we need to understand the relevant models and theories. That’s
what is discussed in this chapter.
2.1: Defining advertising and foreign languages.
Advertising
Advertising = ‘any paid, non-personal communications through various media by an
identified company, non-profit organisation or individual’
There isn’t a specific goal mentioned in the definition because of something called the
hierarchy of effects stating that an ad can have different goals based on what the consumer
knows. The hierarchy goes from awareness – attitude – purchase intention. Advertising
research has focused on the following effects ads have on consumers: recall, attention,
product and brand attitude, ad attitude and or purchase intention.
Advertising research is mainly experimental. Some characteristics of these experiments are:
Show a group an ad and ask to evaluate. It’s important that confounding variables are
controlled while the ad copy stays realistic. Besides that high internal validity is very
important, this can be achieved by having copy where only the variable differs.
Foreign languages
L1 = Mother tongue
L2 = Foreign language
Some people have referred to third, fourth, etc. foreign languages as L3, L4, etc.. This
book Does not. If someone is raised bilingual, the most dominant language is L1.
Foreign language can only be defined based on the receiver (a Spanish ad is foreign language
for german speakers but not for Spanish speakers). Ways studies decide if a language can be
defined as foreign are: using a non-official language of a country, self reported proficiency of
proficiency tests.
In short the definition of a foreign language is ‘a language that is not the mother tongue of
the receivers’. This is very broad and does not account for degrees of ‘foreignness’ which
one can do through ‘identifiableness’ and ‘comprehensibility’.
2.2: Manifestations of Foreign Languages: Types of Code-Switching
There are a few different words to define switching or combining the use of multiple
languages: code-switching, code-mixing and borrowing. Code here refers to any linguistic
variety (language or dialect). Switching often means switching between sentences while
mixing means switching within sentences. These definitions aren’t agreed upon per se. One
vaguer definition that is somewhat agreed upon is: ‘code-switching is the act of using
multiple languages in one conversation.’. Code switching is a more used term in general.
Research on code-switching is often focused on linguistics constraints to code switching and
motivation to code switch. Much of this research is based on speech, however in advertising
it has been applied to text, albeit usually under the term ‘foreign language’ as opposed to
code switching.
Motivations for advertisers to ‘code-switch’/use a foreign language (not comprehensive):
- FCCP: Evoke the country of origin and associations.
- GCCP: Evoke a sense of internationalism, modernity and prestige.
- LCCP: Belongingness
A lot of advertising research around code-switching is focused on the effects on consumers
in terms of comprehension, associations, attitudes and purchase intention.
