Reasons for using Foreign Languages in Product Advertisements.
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2017-08-15
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en
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Abstract
Foreign languages (FLs) are used in product advertisements (ads) in the Netherlands. In the research overview on Foreign Language Display in advertising by Hornikx and Van Meurs (2015), the psycholinguistic claims explain how an FL is mentally processed: focusing on comprehensibility, associations, attention and recall. In addition to the psycholinguistic claims, the sociolinguistic claims explain how the FL links to the characteristics of the country where the language is spoken, focusing on ethnocultural associations, product-country congruence and comprehension. These earlier studies have primarily taken the perspective of consumers and researchers. Although ad makers could gain unique insights unavailable to researchers, no study so far has investigated the reasons for using FLs by ad makers in product ads in comparison with the literature. Therefore, the current qualitative study fills this gap by investigating the reasons for using FLs by ten Dutch ad makers in their product ads.
Firstly, it was investigated to what extent the ad makers considered the Foreign Language Display claims as reasons for using FLs. The results showed that most claims were considered by at least half of the ad makers as reasons for using FLs in product ads. The pyscholinguistic claims were considered by ad makers as reasons for using COO languages and English. The sociolinguistic claims of ethnocultural assocations and product-country congruence were considered only as reasons for using COO languages. Comprehension was considered as a reason for using COO languages as well as English. In conclusion, the psycholinguistic claims seemed to apply to all FLs while the sociolinguistic claims mainly seemed to apply to COO languages as reasons for using FLs in product ads.Secondly, it was investigated to what extent ad makers used COO languages (Italian, French and German) to refer to the COO and used English as an exceptional case of Foreign Language Display that evokes associations with internationalism. As suggested by earlier studies, the ad makers in the current study intended to refer to the COO to evoke the COO effect. It can therefore be concluded from the current study that the reasons for using FLs by ad makers in practice align with reasons found in earlier studies. In contrast to the literature, this study’s ad makers did not use English as an exceptional case of Foreign Language Display that evokes associations with internationalism, which is in contrast to the literature.
Thirdly, this is the first study that describes the different types of research, organisational communication and decision-making that play a role in the process leading to the use of FLs in product ads from the perspective of ad makers.
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