English in Italian advertising. Issue 2 (22nd May 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: VETTOREL, PAOLA
• Is Part Of: World Englishes. Volume 32:Issue 2(2013)
• Page Start: 261
• Page End: 278
• Publication Date: 2013-05-22
• Subjects: English language -- Foreign countries -- Periodicals; English language -- Study and teaching -- Foreign speakers -- Periodicals; English language -- Variation -- Periodicals; Intercultural communication -- Periodicals; 428.2407
• DOI: 10.1111/weng.12023
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0883-2919

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>ABSTRACT</title> <p>Language mixing in advertising, particularly with the English language, has been a widely researched area. English is generally used to connote products with a cosmopolitan, international, modern and 'cool' hue, and is increasingly mixed with local languages to combine global with local appeal. This paper provides a qualitative investigation of print advertisements selected from a corpus collected in 2009/2010, which discusses processes of language creativity exploiting both English, and English and Italian language mixing. The findings suggest that English is occurs frequently in print adverts addressed to Italian readers/consumers. While slogans and headlines still represent the main areas where English is employed as an authoritative, dominant voice, language mixing with English appears not to be limited to isolated lexical borrowings. English is exploited as an attention‐getter, as a marker of cosmopolitan and international values, but also as a resource upon which to draw in terms of linguistic and cross‐linguistic creativity.</p> </abstract>