Foreign-Language Effect?: The influence of language choice and L2 proficiency on message persuasiveness.
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2023-05-30
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en
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This study investigated the effect of language choice and L2 proficiency on message persuasiveness. One research question and three hypotheses were formulated to conduct the research. The research question was: What is the influence of language choice (L1 versus L2) and L2 proficiency (low versus high) on the persuasiveness of the message (behavioral intent)? The relevance of this study is that it contributes to more knowledge about the optimization of message persuasiveness concerning language choice. An online survey involving 114 Dutch respondents was conducted. Respondents were shown a campaign message in either the Dutch language (L1) or the English language (L2). Subsequently, they had to answer some questions about perceived emotionality and behavioral intention regarding the message. Furthermore, the L2 proficiency of all respondents was measured by means of an objective vocabulary test called LexTALE. Based on the obtained score for this test, respondents were assigned to either the low L2 proficiency group or the high L2 proficiency group. The experiment was situated in a persuasive context, as the message was part of a fictitious government campaign. The results showed that there was no difference in perceived emotionality between respondents processing the message in L1 and respondents processing the message in L2. In other words, the Foreign-Language Effect was not present. Moreover, no difference was found in perceived emotionality between respondents with a relatively low L2 proficiency and respondents with a relatively high L2 proficiency. Additionally, perceived emotionality was not related to message persuasiveness (behavioral intent). All in all, it can be concluded that both language choice and proficiency have no effect on the perceived emotionality of a message and that perceived emotionality, in turn, does not affect the persuasiveness of the message either.
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