English-only job advertising in the Low Countries

Abstract

This paper presents a multifactorial quantitative corpus-based analysis of the distribution of English-only ads in the Low Countries. The dataset consists of approximately one thousand job ads, published in Vacature (a Belgian Dutch job ad magazine) and Intermediair (a Netherlandic Dutch job ad magazine) in 2007 and 2008. About one in seven ads are written entirely in English. Using logistic regression analysis, we find that the occurrence of English-only advertising is mainly linked to occupational contexts where English plays a practical role: the phenomenon is typical for companies with headquarters located outside of the Low Countries (specifically US/UK-based companies), for companies with English-oriented corporate communication and for companies that are recruiting for IT and technical staff. Finally, more English-only ads are published in Flanders than in The Netherlands. Keywords: job advertising; Dutch; English as a lingua franca; English as a foreign language; corporate language use; English-only advertising 1. From English in the workplace to English-only advertising 1.1 Background Resulting from the interplay between (economic) globalization and advances in communication technology, the linguistic ecosystem of current workplaces has become increasingly complex (Angouri, 2014). More often than not people from different nationalities and from different cultural backgrounds have to work together and communicate, at least occasionally. Over the past decades, English

Non-nativeness in communication

“…In this special interest section, we bring together original, empirical work on non-nativeness in advertising for jobs (Van Meurs, Korzilius, & Bergevoet, 2015;Zenner, Speelman, & Geeraerts, 2015) and for products (Hornikx & Mulder, 2015;Raedts & Dupré, 2015). In the first paper, Zenner et al (2015) investigate factors that determine the likelihood that job advertisements published in a Belgian and a Dutch job ad magazine targeted at Dutch-speaking readers are entirely in English.…”

“…In the first paper, Zenner et al (2015) investigate factors that determine the likelihood that job advertisements published in a Belgian and a Dutch job ad magazine targeted at Dutch-speaking readers are entirely in English. The results of their quantitative corpus analysis show five determinants.…”