Attention to multilingual job ads: an eye-tracking study on the use of English in German job ads

Abstract

In many non-English-speaking countries, English loanwords in job ads seem to be very common. The question is whether this linguistic choice is advantageous, especially when the job advertised does not involve working in an international environment. Previous research of English loanwords in job ads has revealed that their effect in terms of the evaluation of the company, the job and the ad is limited if effects can be shown at all. Suggestions that English loanwords draw readers’ attention because this language choice deviates from what readers expect and, in addition, take more processing time (because they are foreign) lack empirical evidence. The eye-tracking and behavioural data of our experiment did not provide any empirical evidence for the attention-drawing function of English loanwords nor an influence on their effectiveness in job ads geared to graduate students in Germany. We suggest that loanwords need a certain amount of processing to be identified as foreign. This means they are different from other salient cues that were shown to draw readers’ attention because they are not subject to automatic processes. In addition, our participants were sufficiently proficient in English so that differences in processing time were not reflected in their eye-movement data.