Foreign Language in Advertising - Lecture 1
From (loan)words to discourse. They analyzed words in a context (sentences, texts).
Literature review
1980-2000
Journals from Communication Abstracts database
(Communication, Linguistics, Marketing)
It covers dozens of journals related to communication, marketing and linguistics and look
which articles were related to advertising of foreign languages. Understand what the common
topics were of 50 articles. There were six topics identified.
Six topics identified
1. Frequency of occurrence of FL – mostly corpus studies
Example: FL in Greek advertisements, mainly English (Sella, 1993)
2. Effects of FL – logical question of researchers was to identify what effect foreign
languages evoke in the minds of consumers.
Example: English and French on attitudes, intention, recall (Petrof, 1990)
3. FL as part of standardization – mainly interested in identifying how different brands in
different countries used strategies (adaptation vs. standardization). How advertising in Asia
is using western ideas/strategies about advertising. People from Asia cannot read the letters
because they have a different alphabet.
Example: English is main instrument in Westernization in Japanese ads (Mueller, 1992)
4. Connections with products and countries – researchers realized that the typical study is the
German study who identified 4 languages works and saw that French was typically related to
different products. French was used more often with fragrance products, products typical for
the French. Thus, we generated associations between products and countries. Many
linguistics have made a connection between languages and products.
Example: German associated with engineering quality (Ray et al., 1991)
5. Foreign branding – marketing topic. The brand name that is either in own language or
other language.
Example: Larient better evaluated with French pronunciation that the English for hedonic
products (Leclerc et al., 1994)
, 6. English versus Spanish for US Hispanics – Hispanics very large group thus often appealed
to them via advertisements, question whether to target in English or Spanish. Spanish felt
culturally sensitive as it focusses on their roots. Their personal preference is of influence.
Example: Spanish is culturally sensitive (Koslow et al. 1994)
Consumer Culture Positioning Strategies
1. Global Consumer Culture Positioning
“Identifies the brand as a symbol of a given global culture (..) featuring the idea that
consumers all over the world consume a particular brand or appealing to certain
human universals might invest the brand with the cultural meaning of being a conduit
to feeling at one with global culture.”
2. Local Consumer Culture Positioning
“A strategy that associates the brand with local cultural meanings, reflects the local
culture’s norms and identities, is portrayed as consumed by local people in the
national culture, and/or is depicted as locally produced for local people.”
3. Foreign Consumer Culture Positioning
“A strategy that positions the brand as symbolic of a specific foreign consumer
culture; that is, a brand whose personality, use occasion, and/or user group are
associated with a foreign culture.”
Cognate = book and boek
Foreign Language in Advertising - Lecture 2
Defining and studying advertising
“Any paid, non-personal communications through various media by an identified company,
non-profit organization or individual.”
Studies reviewed in this course
Two or more versions (FL or not) presented to participants asked to evaluate in terms of:
- Ad attention
- Recall
- Product and brand attitude
- Ad attitude (ad liking)
- Purchase intention
From (loan)words to discourse. They analyzed words in a context (sentences, texts).
Literature review
1980-2000
Journals from Communication Abstracts database
(Communication, Linguistics, Marketing)
It covers dozens of journals related to communication, marketing and linguistics and look
which articles were related to advertising of foreign languages. Understand what the common
topics were of 50 articles. There were six topics identified.
Six topics identified
1. Frequency of occurrence of FL – mostly corpus studies
Example: FL in Greek advertisements, mainly English (Sella, 1993)
2. Effects of FL – logical question of researchers was to identify what effect foreign
languages evoke in the minds of consumers.
Example: English and French on attitudes, intention, recall (Petrof, 1990)
3. FL as part of standardization – mainly interested in identifying how different brands in
different countries used strategies (adaptation vs. standardization). How advertising in Asia
is using western ideas/strategies about advertising. People from Asia cannot read the letters
because they have a different alphabet.
Example: English is main instrument in Westernization in Japanese ads (Mueller, 1992)
4. Connections with products and countries – researchers realized that the typical study is the
German study who identified 4 languages works and saw that French was typically related to
different products. French was used more often with fragrance products, products typical for
the French. Thus, we generated associations between products and countries. Many
linguistics have made a connection between languages and products.
Example: German associated with engineering quality (Ray et al., 1991)
5. Foreign branding – marketing topic. The brand name that is either in own language or
other language.
Example: Larient better evaluated with French pronunciation that the English for hedonic
products (Leclerc et al., 1994)
, 6. English versus Spanish for US Hispanics – Hispanics very large group thus often appealed
to them via advertisements, question whether to target in English or Spanish. Spanish felt
culturally sensitive as it focusses on their roots. Their personal preference is of influence.
Example: Spanish is culturally sensitive (Koslow et al. 1994)
Consumer Culture Positioning Strategies
1. Global Consumer Culture Positioning
“Identifies the brand as a symbol of a given global culture (..) featuring the idea that
consumers all over the world consume a particular brand or appealing to certain
human universals might invest the brand with the cultural meaning of being a conduit
to feeling at one with global culture.”
2. Local Consumer Culture Positioning
“A strategy that associates the brand with local cultural meanings, reflects the local
culture’s norms and identities, is portrayed as consumed by local people in the
national culture, and/or is depicted as locally produced for local people.”
3. Foreign Consumer Culture Positioning
“A strategy that positions the brand as symbolic of a specific foreign consumer
culture; that is, a brand whose personality, use occasion, and/or user group are
associated with a foreign culture.”
Cognate = book and boek
Foreign Language in Advertising - Lecture 2
Defining and studying advertising
“Any paid, non-personal communications through various media by an identified company,
non-profit organization or individual.”
Studies reviewed in this course
Two or more versions (FL or not) presented to participants asked to evaluate in terms of:
- Ad attention
- Recall
- Product and brand attitude
- Ad attitude (ad liking)
- Purchase intention
