Multilingualism and Web advertising: addressing French-speaking consumers

Abstract

Drawing inferences from both quantitative and qualitative data, this study examines the extent to which American companies tailor their Web advertising for global audiences with a particular focus on French-speaking consumers in North America, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and French Polynesia. Explored from a sociolinguistic and social semiotic perspective, advertising is seen as being strongly rooted in symbolic and cultural codes that are designed to have an emotional impact on consumers. This analysis also draws on the notion of 'language display' to explore strategies involving English borrowings used to appeal to French-speaking audiences and the indisputable link between language and identity. By analysing the latest trends in international e-marketing practices, this research underscores the cultural differences among global consumers and the importance of tailoring corporate websites to audiences in different markets.

Global marketing translation and localization for French‐speaking countries

“…Studies of this nature have spanned the globe, focusing on different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas (Akinyi, ; Alm, ; Baumgardner, , ; Baumgardner & Brown, ; Cheshire & Moser, ; Friedrich, ; Gerritsen et al., ; Hsu, ; Kamwangamalu, ; Martin, ; Martinez, ; Masavisut, Sukwiwat, & Wongmontha, ; Meraj, ; Mutonya, ; Pétery, ; Rosendal, ; Ruellot, ; Shooshtari & Allahbakhsh, ; Takashi, ; Ustinova, , ; Vaičenonienė, ; Vettorel, ). Although the bulk of this research pertains to print advertisements, this phenomenon has also been investigated in other media, including television (Dimova, ; Lee, ; Martin, ; Raedts, Dupré, Hendrickx, & Debrauwere, ; Tajolosa, ; Ustinova & Bhatia, ; Zhang, ), radio (Pavlou, ), and Internet advertising (Lee, , ; Martin, ). Researchers have also been examining consumers’ attitudes towards various code‐mixed patterns in advertising and, subsequently, the impact of language mixing on advertising effectiveness (Ahn, La Ferle, & Lee, ; Hsu, , , ; Koslow, Shamdasani, & Touchstone, ; Luna & Peracchio, ).…”

“…Borrowing is another common translation technique used in international advertising. The syntactic and morphological integration of English borrowings into French for marketing purposes has been extensively documented (Martin, , , ). This linguistic phenomenon is observable in the advertisements collected in France for the present study.…”

“Choose your language!” Categorisation and control in cyberspace / “Wählen Sie Ihre Sprache!” Kategorisierung und Herrschaft im Cyberspace / « Choisissez votre langue! » Catégorisation et contrôle dans l’espace cyber

“…Cheshire and Moser 1994 in relation to Switzerland; see Park and Wee 2012 for an extensive discussion of other contexts) or even globality (cf. Martin 2011, Kelly-Holmes 2005. Wee (2010: 424) highlights that "a language may … be considered neutral because it represents the language of an Other", i.e.…”

5. Linguistic fetish: The sociolinguistics of visual multilingualism

“…English appears in a number of places on the site, indexingin instrumental and symbolic ways -Toyota's global presence. For example, terms such as "Hybrid", "Pick Up", and the homogenising slogan "Find us on Facebook", create the "global village" feel, alluded to by Martin (2011). The use of English in advertising by a Japanese company for a Japanese market is a good example of visual English and its associated fetishes of globality.…”

“…Elizabeth Martin (2011) sums up the "display" functions of English as follows: "… superior technology, chic and modern lifestyles, adventure, international and … the sense of belonging to a "global village" (Martin 2011: 267). The example reproduced in Figure 2 illustrates many of these features.…”