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This paper reports on a quantitative investigation into the occurrence of English in product advertisements in Dutch-speaking Belgium, French-speaking Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. For each country six issues of Elle in 2004 were collected and all ads of half a page or larger were analyzed, for a total of 2,384 different ads. More than two-thirds of those ads contained one or more English words. The actual occurrence of English was low, since 90 per cent of the ads with English were partly in English and partly in the local language, and only 13 per cent of the total amount of the text in those ads was in English. English was especially used for advertising products that can be associated with modernity. Our results regarding the amount of English used and the position of English in the ad do not completely corroborate those of other studies. This could indicate an increase in the use of English in product ads, but it could also be due to the fact that we applied a different research method than had been previously used. The countries we investigated differ considerably in the amount of English used. These differences shed new light on earlier theoretical studies that have compared European countries on the use and status of English.

Studies have demonstrated frequent use of English in international advertising, but little is known about people's preference for English versus local languages. This article empirically investigated the difficulty of the English language as a possible determinant of people's preference for English or the local language. In an experiment, Dutch participants judged a number of car ads with English slogans that were pretested as easy or difficult to understand. They were subsequently asked to express a preference for either the English slogan or the Dutch equivalent. Results showed that easy-to-understand English slogans were appreciated better than difficult-to-understand English slogans. Moreover, the degree of difficulty in comprehension of the English slogans affected participants' preference for English. English was preferred to Dutch when it was easy to understand; when it was difficult to understand, English was appreciated as much as the Dutch equivalent. In conclusion, the experiment provides empirical support for the role of comprehension in the preference for and appreciation of English in international advertising.

In a verbal guise experiment, 178 listeners with three nationalities (58 French, 59 German and 61 Spanish) listened to samples recorded by female speakers with three degrees of accentedness (strong/slight accented-Dutch and native) in English, French, German and Spanish. Findings indicate that a strong accent had a detrimental effect on understanding and attitudinal evaluations, while a slight accent hardly led to negative effects. A speaker with a strong Dutch accent in English was evaluated as less competent than speakers with a slight or native accent. Speakers with a strong Dutch accent in French, German or Spanish were evaluated as less friendly and less competent than speakers with a native accent.Keywords: foreign accent, ELF, attitudes, accent strength, comprehensibility En un experimento que midió el efecto de la acentuación utilizando la técnica de verbal guise, 178 participantes de tres nacionalidades (58 franceses, 59 alemanes y 61 españoles) escucharon unas muestras grabadas de hablantes femeninos con tres grados de acentuación (con acento holandés muy marcado, ligeramente marcado, y con un acento nativo) en inglés, francés, alemán y español. Los resultados indicaron que un acento muy marcado tenía un efecto negativo en la comprensión y evaluación de actitudes, mientras que un acento ligeramente marcado casi no tuvo efectos negativos. Un hablante con un acento holandés muy marcado en inglés fue evaluado como menos competente que los hablantes nativos o los hablantes con un acento ligeramente marcado. Los hablantes que hablaban con un acento holandés muy marcado tanto en francés, alemán como español fueron considerados como menos amables y menos competentes que los hablantes con un acento nativo.