Offline advertising, the symbolic meaning of code-switching

This chapter mostly focuses on a research done by Kelly-Holmes (2005) on symbolic functions of code-switching in advertising language. First, code-switching needs to be defined. There are multiple related phenomena, such as code-mixing and code choice and they have slightly varied definitions. Kelly-Holmes (2005: 10) uses the term code-switching adopted from Gumperz (1996:

365). Code-switching means using a different speech variety or varieties within the same speech event. In different genres or contexts code-switching takes place for different reasons (Kelly-Holmes 2005:11). In the subsequent paragraphs in this chapter, the reasons for advertising code-switching are discussed.

Kelly-Holmes (2005) discusses extensively the symbolic meanings of language choice, mainly English, in bilingual advertising contexts. She suggests that the language choice in advertising is never fully arbitrary (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 138). This connects well to the argument for advertising functions discussed earlier: Advertising has a specific, in Hymesian terms, end to its function such as the three goals (cognitive, affective and conative) discussed in 2.2. Other scholars have come to similar conclusions as Lavidge & Steiner (1961). There is an attempt to persuade or win the target over (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2004: ix), in order to attain a new customer or to retain an old one. Drawing on these arguments, language choice influences the effectiveness, or persuasion of advertising. In other words, the symbolic functions of foreign language discussed in this chapter are used to enhance the persuasive effect of advertisements.

Kelly-Holmes (2005) argues that English as language choice in foreign advertising carries a strong symbolic meaning. Currently, English is considered as a global lingua franca, thus giving it a special quality. Whereas German as a language choice in American advertising is an ethnic (expertise in engineering, precision, effectiveness) stereotype, English holds a more abstract cultural meaning (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 68). Instead of creating a mental link between the advertised product and Englishness, there seems to be a link to superiority in a technical, cosmopolitan or a modern sense.

Also, English is claimed to have connotations to neutrality, being “cool”, fetishizing English as lingua franca and to purity. Next, let us consider two examples given by Kelly-Holmes (2005)

12 relating to English being connected to technical superiority. The German car manufacturer Audi has used the following slogan in global and domestic marketing:

(3)Vorsprung durch Technik

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the whole advertisements associated to the examples given in this section. However, this slogan is not elaborated further upon in Audi advertising, be it an American or German context. It holds purely symbolic value about the Germans being competent in engineering and car-making (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 47.). On the other hand, let us consider the following Toyota car advertisement published in Germany:

(4)Für die Konkurrenz war es ein schwarzer Freitag. Der Toyota Yaris. Sieger im Crash-Test.

In this example the English term “crash test” is nativized to the German language context. It is much more subtle than the previous example, and it holds different connotations. Instead of being an explicit element connected to stereotypes of Englishness or that of being American, there is argued to be a link to the general field of technic instead (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 70).

In addition to this theme, the next example from Kelly-Holmes shows the English-modern/cosmopolitan link. Like with the previous category, the phenomenon is best exemplified by drawing on Kelly-Holmes (2005: 71):

(5)METRO Group The Spirit of Commerce

Metro is a German retailer. The ad was posted in a German magazine, Der Spiegel, and it contained English only in its slogan. Furthermore, upon closer inspection, it is revealed that Metro uses English in the headings in their web site (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 71). All the other texts, such as technical descriptions, product info and so on, are both on the advertisement and the web site in German. Thus, English is used in visible places in order to create the symbolic effect of modernity.

The next usage of English in advertising is quite different. Kelly-Holmes (2005: 72) exemplifies neutralitywiththe following:

(6)Die brand neue L.U.C. Quattro Tourbillon

This is an advertisement by a Swiss watch manufacturing company, Chopard. In this example, four different languages are present. The overall framework of the sentence is German, brand is borrowed from English, quattro from Italian and Tourbillon from French. Switzerland’s official languages are all of the previously mentioned ones except for English. Consequently, English is

13 used to create a unifying effect (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 72). Furthermore, the language choice overrides the linguistically challenging situation of choosing one language to present the brand: All are utilized, and English is thrown in to the mix to further cultivate the atmosphere of neutrality (ibid.).

As the third last category for English usage in foreign advertising, Kelly-Holmes (2005: 73) discussed English being a cool choice. Here, the example discussed is a Volkswagen advertisement designed for a German audience (ibid.):

(7)Hello Sunshine. Das New Beetle Cabriolet.

Here, the coolness association is quite easily identified. Volkswagen is an iconic German car manufacturer, and the advertisement in question targets a German reader. The Cabriolet in the advertisement is yellow, and sun is just about to shine after rainfall (ibid.). The wordplay here is nothing too sophisticated, but it seems to have been designed in order to make the product in question appear more trendy, or cool.

The second last category of the Kelly-Holmes (2005) research is English as a symbol for internationality. This category involves the juxtapositioning of texts within an advertisement. The symbolic function of internationality is argued to come from having a brand name and a slogan in English, whereas the rest of the advertisement content is highly localized to the target audience.

Let us, once again, consider this proposition by looking at an example (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 75):

(8)Der neue Honda Accord Tourer. Du hast freie Hand.

In this Honda car advertisement this is the most visible part of the advertising text. However, above the graphic is the company slogan “The Power of Dreams”, which is obviously in English.

The rest of the content, such as product info, is in German. Therefore in this category, English does not serve a communicative, informative or a persuasive function. As Kelly-Holmes (2005: 77) argues, English just needs to be present to tell the audience that the company is a global player.

Moreover, this is a standard policy across the advertising field, which is by quantity a solid argument for the existence of this particular category. Although many companies decide to translate or to localize their marketing message to target cultures, slogans are often left untranslated. In effect a covert, subtle language choice gives out a strong message to the viewer.

14 The last category of English usage in foreign language advertising presented in Kelly-Holmes (ibid.) is the absence of English as a symbol of purity. In short, when addressing to a local, non-English speaking audience omitting English is argued to be a symbol of purity (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 79).

Having a fully monolingual advertising text, including slogans and punchlines, the advertiser places themselves closer to the viewers. It is most likely that this sort of text works best with brands that originate from the target country, in order to be authentic and appear sincere. When English is left out, there is often an attempt to promote local and national qualities, which can be an effective tactic especially in food advertising. Promoting locality in food advertising signifies green values due to simple logistics, since importing increases shipping distance, which in turn creates more pollution. Though the argued function is dissimilar to the one proposed in this thesis this category is used as the basis for the proposed symbolic function of creativeness further discussed in 4.5.4 and 5. The material in this thesis suggests that due to their likeness to the English texts, English is the creative language of the online poker advertisements whereas Finnish is used to replicate the same mental space. Conversely to the purity (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 79) category, the influence of English does not promote local or national qualities; the English texts create a multinational, culturally independent synthetic you (Fairclough 1989: 204) which is subsequently translated to Finnish.

These categories are one of the many suggested roles of English in foreign language advertising.

Kelly-Holmes (2005) opens an interesting avenue of linguistic inquiry, since the suggested roles for English in foreign language advertisements are quite abstract in nature. Furthermore, it is important to investigate what types of stories associated with the ethos of winning are built in English and Finnish online poker advertising, and whether the discourses are similar.

In chapter 2.5.3 further research based on Kelly-Holmes’ (2005) findings in Finnish context are discussed. Findings from different cultures seem to build a strong case for her results, thus giving them solid credibility. The studies discussed in this thesis have quite similar approaches to the topic. This thesis has a different approach by utilizing the mental spaces method combined with linguistic analysis. Next, the differences in traditional, offline advertising (print media) research and new, internet based advertising research are discussed. This study investigates the language of online advertising, and therefore the differences to traditional advertising research must be made clear.

15 2.4.3 Online advertising in gaming

The online context, due to its fast pace of development provides multiple angles to approach the study of language in general. As an illustration, online advertising offers a multitude of techniques that would be impossible to implement in traditional, print advertising which raises methodological questions. Choosing online advertisements for research material is problematic with ad tailoring, which means that there is a hidden method behind the advertisement shown for the user. The phenomenon is best exemplified by an ad posted via advertising network behavioral targeting. Advertising networks consists of a series of websites that share their user data (Srimani

& Srinivas 2011: 57). Individual user data sharing allows the sites that belong to the advertising network to display tailored advertising by tracking user online behavior whilst on the network sites. As it would be extremely interesting to inspect these tailored advertisements, it unfortunately is quite difficult. The problem lies within the method of delivery and accessibility.

Since the advertisements posted are based on my personal browsing history, the data-set would only contain advertisements chosen and tailored just for me. I deemed circumventing this issue to be outside the scope of a master’s thesis. Therefore, I chose to look at static, non-tailored advertising texts. The texts chosen for this thesis are embedded to the poker sites, and thus they are displayed to every user identically.

Kelly-Holmes’ (2005) research focuses on traditional advertising, though she discusses the online environment briefly. At the time of writing in 2005, web-based advertising was on a rather primitive level compared to today. Online advertising has been a growing field of business ever since the dawn of Internet, and increasing competition leads to more elaborate techniques to gain competitive advantage. Kelly-Holmes (2005) argues that reputable businesses do not engage in aggressive, pop-up advertising. Modern lightweight platforms, however, allow aggressive advertising without disrupting the user experience. In Kelly-Holmes (2005: 80), there is a discussion of interest concerning the online as a medium for advertising. In contrast to traditional advertising, this field has a closer relation between the advertiser and the target. The McMullan et al. (2011) research mentioned earlier supports this notion. It is argued that due to the user being in control of the information flow, online brand positioning becomes more of a mission statement by genre than traditional advertising text (Kelly-Holmes 2005: 80). Texts that resemble mission statements were indeed found in the data of this thesis. Most of the sites had, usually towards the bottom of the main page, a text element which, in this study, is called the persuasion text which

16 attempts to persuade the potential customer while providing conceptual distance to the actual risks of gambling. The persuasion texts contain are a major finding in this thesis, which contain the other rhetorical devices found in this research. The main characteristics of this finding are that it contains the most linked textual elements forming a narrative revolving around winning and how it addresses the viewer in an intensive, second person narrative in both English and Finnish.

The current paper also wishes to see whether there is a difference in English language advertising and Finnish advertising for the same product. The former advertisements are meant for a monolingual (English-speaking) and multilingual audience at the same time, whereas the latter are meant solely for a Finnish audience. The first problem that occurs is to identify a product group which has enough data in both languages. English advertisements are easy to locate, but the Finnish counterparts are more difficult. Hence, I decided to look at a product group that is solely based in the online domain so that there is plenty of data available.

McMullan et al. (2011) examine the online gambling phenomenon from various perspectives. In their discussion (McMullan et al. 2011: 641) it becomes clear that the target audiences include the youth. Many gambling sites are interconnected with popular social media among minors. The advertising techniques are also multi-channeled and interactive. To create a sense of community amongst fellow gamblers and the platform sites often provide incentives to recruit friends and offer bonuses if they successfully attain new customers (ibid.). Moreover, the sites often offer

“play money tourneys” and other, if taken at their face value, free services. This form of advertising is aggressive and unethical. International law is lagging behind, and while there are etiquette rules in the business, they are followed rather leisurely (ibid.). Thus, it can be concluded that there are few limits to online advertising for gambling services. It creates a need to look deeper in to the phenomenon, to see what type of a mental space the service providers attempt to make.

McMullan et al. (2011) conclude that there is often an attempt to dissociate the prospective customer from the money spent and emphasize winning. Moreover, the prospect of not succeeding is not even entertained and gambling is a way to fulfill fantasies, have good time and most of all to win. The study established that this sort of landscape is created by elements such as design of the web page, easy availability and on-going exposure to the marketed product. The scope of the study was impressive, and it covered other, gambling related topics as well. The paper introduced many themes, but it was more of a general article on online gambling discourse

17 and it did not discuss the specifics such as how the different functions mentioned above are created. However, for this research, an important aspect was revealed. McMullan et al. (2011) describe winning as a multimodal construct, which sparked the idea for this study to take a closer look at the text elements found in gambling, and in poker advertising. The results of the current study agree with the McMullan et al. (2011) study. There indeed is an attempt to distance the prospective customer from the money flows via conceptual distancing, which I further discuss in chapter 5. Next, the discussion shifts to the linguistic environment in Finland, in order to establish the context for the Finnish language part of this thesis.

2.5 English in Finland and Finnish advertising research 2.5.1 The concentric circles of English

English is spoken globally. The spread of English has been examined by developing different models. One of the most influential models is Kachru’s (1985: 11-30) concentric circles model.

Kachru (ibid.) divides the English-speaking world into three concentric circles: the inner circle, the outer circle and the expanding circle. The first consists of the traditional bases of English, such as the UK and the USA. The outer circle includes countries which have not always had English as their native tongue. English has had a significant role due to historical reasons, and it plays a part in the institutions of the nation. In outer circle countries English is an official language and it has affected the way the country has developed. For example, English was introduced to India by the British, and it was one of the factors which shaped the country into its contemporary form. Lastly, in the expanding circle countries, English has been introduced via the educational system. Although English is not an official language, it can be deeply embedded in the society. Finland is an expanding circle country. There are many fields in which English is used, and yet it is not an official language. Furthermore, these fields are prominent in a contemporary society, like business, academia and advertising.

Kachru’s model, however, is not perfect. The concentric circles model divides the English-speaking world by nation states. By forcing all the different English-speaking countries into their respective circles, the model neglects internal variation within the countries (Leppänen et al. 2008: 16).

Furthermore, the context in which it discusses the role of English is outdated: The contemporary

18 world is more united due to cultural and economic globalization. There is a new domain of intercultural contact, namely the Internet, which was not present at Kachru’s (1985) time of writing. As the focus of the current study is to shed light on the modern role of English in Internet advertising, this approach does not suffice.

2.5.2 English in Finland

Even though the setting of this thesis is virtual, there is a need to discuss cultural backgrounds. In order to discuss the processes behind language choice in the localized advertisements knowledge about the linguistic environment of the target culture is required. The status of English in Finland has changed dramatically in the last 90 years. Finland established English as a core subject in elementary schools in 1918 (Leppänen et al. 2011: 18). Subsequently, the status of English has anything but declined through the decades due to several different factors, e.g. societal changes, such as globalization, urbanization and technologization of the society as a whole (Leppänen et al.

2011: 17). For instance, in a survey conducted by Leppänen et al. (2011: 141) in 2007 the strong presence of English in Finland is confirmed. The survey was sent out to 3000 Finnish nationals between the ages 15 and 74 and the response rate was 49.92% (1495). The results show that Finns have a positive and pragmatic attitude towards English and it is not considered a threat to the Finnish language and culture. In fact, the results of the survey are quite the opposite: The Finns value English as an important resource. Also, English is used in almost all domains of society. For example, Finland has not, unlike many other European countries, dubbed TV-programs (ibid.). In Finland, most of the foreign programs are subtitled. This has led to exposure to English on a daily basis and thus shaped Finns’ attitudes towards foreign languages, most of all English. Furthermore, English has had an optimal linguistic base to root itself in Finland. Although there are two national languages in Finland, the foundation of the society is mostly monolingual. Unlike in many other officially bilingual countries, there is no need for a vehicular language between the two speaker groups, as most of the Swedish speaking Finns are also fluent in Finnish (Leppänen et al. 2011: 17).

2011: 17). For instance, in a survey conducted by Leppänen et al. (2011: 141) in 2007 the strong presence of English in Finland is confirmed. The survey was sent out to 3000 Finnish nationals between the ages 15 and 74 and the response rate was 49.92% (1495). The results show that Finns have a positive and pragmatic attitude towards English and it is not considered a threat to the Finnish language and culture. In fact, the results of the survey are quite the opposite: The Finns value English as an important resource. Also, English is used in almost all domains of society. For example, Finland has not, unlike many other European countries, dubbed TV-programs (ibid.). In Finland, most of the foreign programs are subtitled. This has led to exposure to English on a daily basis and thus shaped Finns’ attitudes towards foreign languages, most of all English. Furthermore, English has had an optimal linguistic base to root itself in Finland. Although there are two national languages in Finland, the foundation of the society is mostly monolingual. Unlike in many other officially bilingual countries, there is no need for a vehicular language between the two speaker groups, as most of the Swedish speaking Finns are also fluent in Finnish (Leppänen et al. 2011: 17).