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600 Elizabeth A. Martin

FURTHER READING

Bhatia, Tej K. (2000) Advertising in

World Englishes in
A Narrative of Cultural Change.
Rural In~ia: ~anguage, Marketing
Commumcatzon, and Consumerism.
London: Trentham Books.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, Ruquaiya
Global Advertising
Tokyo: Institute for the Study of
(1985) Language, Context and Text:
Languages and Cultures of Asia
and Africa, Tokyo University of
Aspects of Language in a Social-
Foreign Studies. Semiotic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford TEJ K. BHATIA
University Press.
Bhat~a, Tej K. (2001) Language mixing
Hermerén, Lars (1999) English for Sale: A
11: global advertising. In The Three Study of the Language of Advertising.
Czrc!es of English. Edited by Edwin
Thumboo. Singapore: UniPress, Lund, Sweden: Lund University
Press.
pp. 195-216.
Yuen-Ying, Chan (2000) The English-
Gokul~ing, K. Moti and Dissanayake,
language media in Hong Kong.
W1mal (1998) Indian Popular Cinema:
World Englishes, 19(3), 323-35.
Introduction
Theodore Levitt, the Business Guru from Harvard, predicted in the 1980s that
"The era of multinational companies customizing their products and adver-
tising ... is over." The assumption was that in the era of rapid globalization
and super-branding, advertising messages all over the globe will conform to
extreme homogeneity in terms of the use of language, the display of logo,
and the content of the message. English will naturally be the chosen lan-
guage of global advertisers. Two decades later, although English is the most
favored language of global media and advertising and its use is skyrocketing,
creative needs of global advertisers are rarely met by the consideration of
global homogeneity and language conformity. Thus, with super-branding and
hyper-globalization going hand in hand with diversity marketing, the cross-
fertilization of world Englishes and other languages in advertising is also
becoming more prominent than ever before.

2 English Users and Advertising

Since the pioneering publication of Leech (1966), there has been a proliferation
of studies devoted to advertising in English. Following Leech's model, a bulk
of linguistic studies concerned themselves with the linguistic and literary de-
vices (phonology, morphology, lexis, borrowings, clause and sentence struc-
ture, puns, metaphors, simile, and alliteration, etc.) used by advertisers. Recent
works mark a point of departure in a number of ways: (1) Scope: In addition to
works devoted to advertising in the Anglophone countries - United States,
Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia - a body of research devoted to ad-
vertising in Asia, European Union, and South America is growing rapidly.
In typological terms, following Kachru' s Three Concentric Circles model of
English users, research since the 1980s has crossed the threshold of the Inner
 Studijní text je určen pouze pro použití ve výuce pro ilustrační nebo vědecké účely.
602 Tej K. Bhatia
Circ~e and has enter~d into the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. (For
details about Kachru ~ model (1981), see Chapter 25 in this volume.) Notable
works from the three cirdes are as follows: Inner Circle - Cook (1992) Forcevill
(1_998), Gei~ (1982), Goddard (1998), Hermeren (1999), Myers (1999); Oute~
Circle - Hilgendorf and Martin (2001), Martin (1998, 2002a, 2002b); and
Expanding Circle - Haarmann (1984), Hsu (2001), Jung (2001), Lee (2003)
MacGregor (2003). !h: boundary between the Outer and the Expanding Circle~
b~comes rath:~ flu~d m the case of European countries. (2) Context: The Inner-
~ircle adverhsmg is grounded in the monolingual context while the advertis-
mg .from the other two cird~s capitalizes ?n the bilingual and multilingual
en~ironment of those countnes. (3) Theoretical and Analytical Orientation: The
~nmary focus of the Inner-Cirde studies is the syntactic interface with seman-
hcs and. pra?ma~ics (Geis, 1982; Vestergaard and Schr0der, 1985), while
contac~ situation. is key to Outer- and Expanding-Cirde studies. (4) Discourse
Analysis: !Ile uni~ of analysis has shifted from sentence Ievel to discourse. (5)
Compai:a~ive ~tudzes: Works such as Tanaka (1994) exemplify a comparative
adverhs.mg discourse of Inner- and Expanding-Cirde English. (6) Topical focus:
The topics. addressed by the research indude but are not necessarily limited to
the foll?'.'vm~: Speech ~cts, .coi:versation Maxims, semantic notions (e.g. pre-
supl?osit~on~ ~erence, i~ph:ahons), p~rsuasion, manipulation, and deception
receive sign~fi:ant attention m !1111er-Cirde advertising studies; topics such as
language ~uxmg, l~nguage athtu~es, linguistic innovations, group targeting,
and d?mam allocation are the pnme focus in the other two circles. Content
analys~s of ads form~ a .com~?n core of monolingual and bilingual ads.
Inspired ~y t~e soc10lmgmstic and socio-psychological research on one hand,
a1'.d. glo?ahza~10n ~nd marketing forces on the other, the treatment of the
~ixmg m. vanous lmguistic and media forms has gained several new dimen-
s10ns durmg the past two decades. This chapter will focus primarily on these
two latest trends with special reference to world Englishes.
3 Key Issues
Alth?ugh ~ number of issues confront global advertisers (choice of medium,
medi~ buymg, etc.), fr~m the perspectives of the topic at hand, the following
three issues are the mam concerns of international advertisers.
3.1 Standardization versus adaptation
One of the central concerns of globalization for international advertisers is
ho': to ~esolve the paradox of globalization and localization (national and
r:gio~a~ mtere~ts, appeals, affiliations, etc.) in terms of formal and functional
lmgmshc manifestations (see. Friedman, 1999; and Berger and Huntington,
2002. on the. gene:al and vanous types of globalizations). This concern has
manifested itself m the form of the "standardization" versus "adaptation"
World Englishes in Global Advertising 603
debate in international advertising, media, and marketing (see Heileman, 1997;
Bite and Fraser, 1988; Kanso, 1991; Kujala and Lehtinen, 1989; Mueller, 1992;
Onkvisit and Shaw, 1987; Ryans and Ratz, 1987, among others). Such issues of
debate include: Should logo, colors, and other iconic representations be sub-
jected to monolithic norms or should they be adapted to regional norms, tas~es
and sensitivities? Should models/actors in an ad represent a fused style with
universal appeal or mark specific Western and non-Western id~nti~ies? These
dichotomies are driven by the consideration of the standardizahon versus
adaptation issue.
3.2 Language choice and language attitude
The linguistic aspect of the standardizatioi:- versus adap~ati?n debate is the
question of the most suitable linguistic vehicle for globahzat~on ~nd cu~tom­
ization. There is no doubt that the question of language cho1ce 1s pra~hcally
resolved. English is the choice of global advertisers and marketers. Enghsh ~as
effectively dethroned its competitor languages, such ~s French and ~ussian,
and continues to do so with more vigor and dynam1cs, thus becommg .the
single most important language of globalizat~on. Indeed a cursory. examma-
tion of world advertising reveals that ad wnters and marketers either con-
sciously or unconsciously subscribe to bilingualisn:· .Englis~ is viewed as the
most suitable linguistic tool for promoting global b1hi:-guahsm. . .
Although the language choice is settle~, the qu~stl?n of wh1~h vanety ~f
English is appropriate is still very much ahve. Enghsh 1s undergomg ~ynam1c
changes in the process of engendering ~nd shafing global i:n~rket dis~ourse;
this has important ramifications for mternatlonal adverhsmg media and
marketing on one hand and world Englishes on the other.
3.3 Audience reach and modality choice
One of the serious challenges that confront international ~dvertisers is
how to tap "new emergent hot markets" in internat~onal bus1i:-e~s, dubbed
B2-4B (Business to 4 Billion). The hot new market 1s the 4 bill:on people
worldwide. With the saturation of traditional urban and domestlc markets,
marketers are in search of new markets. Rural and semi-rural areas in coun-
tries such as India, China, and Brazil are potential "hot markets." The urgent
problem for advertisers then is how to reach the target new consumers, who
are linguistically and geographically dispersed. How do you r~a~h a target
audience which lives in 637,000 villages and speaks scores of offic1ally r~cog­
nized different languages? The simple solution is to make use of convent~onal
mass media (television, radio, and print). However, the re~ch of conventional
media is limited in a number of ways due to the skyrocketmg cost; geograph-
ical, linguistic, and social barriers; and li:Uited ?r ~ack of reach (signal towers
and frequent power failures) of electromc media m some parts of the ~o~ld.
This issue requires an unconventional approach to modes of communication
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World Englishes in Global Advertising 605
604 Tej K. Bhatia

and message transmission. Bhatia (2000) details non-conventional mediua (e.g., • mixing of world Englishes,
wall advertising, video van and other such non-conventional advertising forms) mixing of world English accents,
which are used by global advertisers in India and other developing countries • mixing of English with other language~,
to reach the new audience. The issue of local language choice and/ or national/ mixing of English with non-Roman scripts.
world varieties of Englishes in unconventional media gives a new perspective
on the overall debate on standardization versus adaptation. S.1 Mixing of world Englishes
'ti'sh and American advertising on global advertising is so
4 Approaches
The influence of Bn . .
. ificant that Inner-Circle Englishes seem to be exerc1sm? a me mg
~fect on global Englishes. In addition to the common lex1con (drawn ro~
" lf
ro t"

In addition to the linguistic and semantic/ pragmatic approaches, theoretical fashion, entertainment, beverages, food, sports, mu.sic, a;d otherh~~~:~(~~k
ular culture) the use of structures such as a string o noun p
and analytical frameworks for advertising analysis are as diverse as fields
concerned with the interaction of language and society: sociolinguistics ~~d Furniture Éxpress), negative structures (no ha.ssleal, ndo' payment,,,~~~J' c:71~
. 1 (e informationalization, promotion iscourse,
(Halliday, 1978; Kachru, 1981; Labov, 1972), ethnography of speaking (Hymes, dis~o~rse sty es d.g., d G ddol 1996: 141-57) reflect the important ways
scnptmg· see Goo man an ra ' d . h o
1974), sociology of language (Fishman, 1972), critical discourse analysis (van
. h
hi the ualitative aspects of global advertising are un ergomg om -
Dijk, 1985), semiotics (Barthes, 1984; Foucault, 1981), speech accommodation m ': c. q Bh tia and Ritchie, 2004 for more details). Never~heles~,
(Giles, Coupland, and Coupland, 1991), language and ideology (Fowler, 1993; gemzation (see a t 1 . that the influence of Inner-Circle Enghshes is
Thompson, 1978), communication (Myers, 1999), among others. See Bhatia 1't ~~uld .be premature
.
o c aim . .
e Inner Circle to the Outer and Expandmg Cuc1es ·
)
(2000: 108-19) and Chapter 32 in this volume for details. umd1rectlonal (i.e., from th. C d d the United States have left
Analytical tools include content analysis, ANOVA, chi-square, frequency Linguistic innovations outs1de the UK, ana a, an . . . Th b' d' f al
. influence on native-English-speaking advertismg. e i~ irec _ion
table, t-test, and regression analysis. a lasting d ti'on and mutually-feeding relationship of global Enghshes is the
On methodological grounds, both qualitative and quantitative techniques accommo a · F 33 1
salient feature of international advertising, as shown m igure . .
are employed. Data collection methods include random sampling, judgmental
sampling, nonprobability sampling, and stratified random sampling drawn
from both conventional and non-conventional advertising. In addition to
interview and survey methods, experimental techniques are also employed.
Experimental techniques have been the salient feature of psycholinguistic
aspects of advertising research. See Samiee and Jeong (1994) for details. The Expanding Circle
Inner Circle
main concern of psycholinguistic research is to address issues pertaining to (e.g. China, Japan)
(e.g., USA, UK)
memory and product name recall. In recent years, this type of research has
begun to align itself with the multilingual nature of advertising.

Other
5 Multiple Mixing and World Englishes Languages
Based on the pattern of advertising outside the Anglophone world, Piller (2003)
notes that advertising functions as a site for language contact. Advertising,
for instance, can be seen as an intrinsically mixed medium - a mixture of
written-spoken forms, text-image mixing, music, etc. In terms of language
mixing, even Inner-Circle advertising shows some openness to language mix- Outer Circle
ing. The addition of a few diacritics and phonological/ syntactic adaptations (e.g. India,
lends monolingual ads the flavor of French, German, or other European Nigeria)
languages (e.g., L'Eggs, el Cheapo, Norishe). Besicles this low-level cosmetic
mixing, the more frequent and dominant trend in global advertising is the Englishes and language mixing: contact and convergence
"high-level" fusion whkh manifests itself in the following four ways: Figure 33.1 World
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606 Tej K. Bhatia
5.2 Product naming and world Englishes
Nowhere is the pattern of mixing world Englishes more obvious than in
the area of prod_uct na?1ing. The.succe~s story of the Walkman (invented by
Japanese advertlsers) is a case m point. Although it was met with great
skepticism initially in the native-English-speaking world, its innovative appeal
silenced puritans and skeptics. Now it has become not only a part of the global
English lexicon, but also a model of a very productive strategy in product
naming in international advertising.
What is even more interesting is that so pressing is the need for product
naming through English that, a little more a decade ago, the Japanese Ministry
of Trade and Industry (MITI) determined that there were not enough names
for the hundreds of soft drinks being produced in Japan. To fill this gap, the
emergency u~e of non-sense English-sounding words (McKeldin, 1994: 71) .
such as posmic, Cham-pe, was approved by the government. It is no accident
the choice of language for filling such a gap was English. · instance, is running an advertising campaign in Australia that features a com-
In the non-English-speaking world, product naming and company nam•.
ing is the domain for which English is the most favored language. Bhatiâ
(1987: 35) shows that English performs an overwhelming function in product
naming. Based on the analysis of more than 1,200 advertisements primarily
in Hindi that were printed between 1975 and 1985, the study revealed that
more than 90 percent of the advertisements analyzed carried a product
name in English. It is also true even of products for the rural market where
familiarity with and literacy in English are minimal. The following leading
soap / detergent brand names current in India are drawn overwhelmingly
from English: Arial, Cinthol, Det, Gnat, Lux, Lifebuoy, Magic, Bonus, Liril,
Margo, Palmolive, Rexona, Sunlight, Surf, Wheel, Marvel, Crowing Glory,
and Ponds. The two notable exception are Nirma and Hamam. Meraj (1993:
224) shows a similar trend in Urdu advertising in Pakistan. Her sample
reveals that English product names account for 70 percent of the ads while
only 9 percent of product names were drawn from Urdu. The remaining
21 percent were mixed product names (English + Urdu) such as Chanda
Battery Cell, Good Luck Haleem, and National Kheer. The same trend is widely
attested in Russia and other European countries. Thonus (1991) identifies
ten different structural types of English-Portugese hybrid product/business
names.
In Japan and Korea, English product names qualified with English first-
person possessive pronouns (e.g., my juice, my car) are quite frequent. The
possessive pronoun can be further subjected to the process of reduplication
(e.g., MyMy Workman).
While Inner-Circle English is enriching other Englishes, it is in turn being
enriched by product names drawn from other languages: Nike (Greek), Volvo
(Latin), Samsara (Sanskrit), and Nokia (Finnish). The mutually feeding relation-
ship among the world Englishes and other languages is shown in Figure 33.1.
World Englishes in Global Advertising 607
5.3 Mixing of world English accents
The incidence of accent mixing in global advertising ranges from standard
to non-standard accents at national and international levels. In television
commercials from the Inner Circle, the mixing of local/regional accents is
utilized not only to generate local appeals and identities but also to render
socio-psychological effects such as trustworthiness of the product advertised
and sincerity on the part of advertisers/actors. A case in point is the use of a
Southern accent in US advertising. In global advertising, on the other hand,
a wide variety of national/European accents are employed to render the
international appeal of the product. For example, McDonald's does not exclu-
sively rely on standard British or American English accents to invoke the
international branding of its product and company. According to Piller (2003:
177), "it seems that some of the major brands may actually be moving away
from the exclusive use of English. At the time of writing, McDonald's, for
mercial set in Italy, with characters using a few Italian words and manifesting
a heavy Italian accent in English." Such a move is crucial for global indexing
as opposed to asserting either British or American identity. Due to the overt
phonetic component, the ethno-cultural stereotypes are marked often by means
of world English accents. For instance, images of holy men, immigrant cab
drivers, or food items (curry) often invite the use of an Indian accent in Eng-
lish. Similarly, a black English accent marks black Urban US ghettos. On the
power and ideology of world English accents, see Chapter 32 in this volume.
5.4 English mixing in non-English advertising
In contrast with the use of symbolic or mocking use of foreign languages in
Inner-Circle English advertising, the qualitative and quantitative pattern of
mixing with English in non-Inner-Circle English advertising is significantly
different. Bhatia and Ritchie (2004: 530-4) show that beside product names,
the use of English has found its way into the structural domains of advertis-
ing, such as attention-getters, company logo or name, packing and labeling,
pricing, slogans, and even the main body of the text. The acquisition of
such domains signifies the power of English in Outer- and Expanding-Circle
advertising.
Based on cross-linguistic study of advertising, Bhatia (1992, 2001) showed
that the mixing with English is a near-universal tendency. Subsequent studies
further confirm this daim. Martin (1998, 1999) shows in her study of more
than 4,000 French television commercials and print ads that English is widely
used. The increasing use of English is particularly notable in cosmetic and
beauty-product advertising in France. Given the international status of French,
the linguistic rivalry between French and English, together with the linguistic
attitudes of French speakers and the French academy, it is particularly
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608 Tej K. Bhatia World Englishes in Global Advertising 609

surprising to find English in a domain in which French has asserted its
supremacy, authority, and international status for centuries. Attention-getters
also favor the use of English over French. Expressions such as advanced cream,
extra help makeup, multi-protection are being steadily used not only as attention-
getters but also in the body of French advertisements in the context of offering
explanations for the merits of the product in question (Bhatia, 1992). The same
pattern is emerging with more vigor than ever before in Asian (see Japan:
Takashi, 1990, 1992; Wilkerson, 1997; Korea: Jung, 2001, Lee, 2003; Taiwan:
Hsu, 2001) and other European countries (Switzerland: Cheshire and Moser,
1994; Spain: Aldea, 1987; France and Germany: Hilgendorf and Martin, 2001;
Russia: Ustinova, 2001).
In considering the quantitative aspects, what is the proportion of English
language material in non-English advertisements? According to a Dutch study
of television commercials, one-third of the commercials on Dutch television
contain English words (Gerritsen et al., 2000). Based on the analysis of 658
German commercials broadcast in 1999, Pillar (2001) shows that 73.4 percent
made use of a language other than German, with English having a major share
of the pie. Bajko (1999) concludes that the use of English became dominant in
the 1990s in German advertising (Piller, 2003: 174).
In short, mixing with English is not only near-universal, but is rapidly on
the increase in quantitative as well as qualitative terms since globalization
became the marketing mantra.
lexical items in non-Roman scripts such as Hangul (Korea), K~takana (Japan),
Devanagari, Gurmukhi or scores of other ":die language scnpts, and Arabie
(India, Pakistan or Arabic-speaking countnes). Of course, Roman ai:d non-
Roman script mixing is also a common sight. Clea:ly, suc.h ads are aimed at
consumers who may not be fluent or even literate m Enghsh. O~ the surface,
this might appear to be counter-intuitive ~nd counter-produ~tive. Howe:er
at the deeper level, this practice is reflective of the underlying assum~tion
.ous planning on the part of national or international adverhsers
or unconsci 1. h Thi · ·
who expect their readers to be somewhat bilingual in Eng is . s is m ~~ree-
ment with their conception of the global citizen: in order to be a global citizen,
some knowledge of English is a prerequisite. .
Not only is English, with or without Roman letters, ~troduced, but ~n
attempt is also made not to deprive consumers of the meanmg an~ pronuncia-
tion of English phrases by employing s~rategies such as pa:aphrasmg or ~ran~­
lating English expressions into local scnpt. How d~e~ one ~trod~ce Engl~sh ~
countries such as Japan where the incidence of b~lmg~ahsm with En?hsh is
perhaps less than one percent? Consider the ad m Figure 33.2. Notice that

6 Laws and Regulations

To restrain the use of English in advertising, some countries have in place
regulatory statutes. A case in point is the Toubon Law in France which came
into effect in 1994. Articles 2 and 12 of this law aim at restricting the use of
English in the French media. Article 12 requires any foreign language words
in advertising to be accompanied by their corresponding equivalents in French
with the following condition: the equivalents in French must be as legible,
audible, or intelligible as the foreign language version (Martin, 1998). The law
safeguards the use of French against English in French media and advertising.
The newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union have similar
regulations in place. In countries such as Lithuania and Armenia, government
regulations include language police, who play a crucial role in confining the
influx of English. llHtll-filttJlibifâ
1111\il':E/ ;l;?!l.l
l:::*â"'lt. V"l'-
V/~c\Jnt"/1J1fi!ll
::>'C":\"::i-H;:l.'!ltlt/
7 World Englishes in Roman Scripts and 111>9/bt:::*âtlic -s ,i; 1,'
JV-;:(î:*Ata:l.'!ll!.
Language Attitudes
The extent of English usage in global advertising is greater than meets the
eye. In Asian and European countries, it is a common practice to write English Figure 33.2 English expression and its pronunciation guide in katakana
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610 Tej K. Bhatia
Script mixing in global advertising: functions
r~g~t abov.e the English expression (Final Stage Premium) is printed a pronun-
ciahon ~m~e for J~panese consumers in the Katakana script.
What I~ mte:e~tm? about such prac~ices is that not only does script mixing
and Engl~sh m1xm? m non-Roman scripts set the stage for bilingualism, but it
also prov1des a fertile ground for the mixing of native and non-native Englishes.
For ~stance, t~e pr~nunciation guide in the Japanese ad adapts the target
~nghsh ex~ress1~~ with CVCV-type phonological adaptation. The main func-
hons of script m1xmg are summarized in Table 33.1.
8 Determinants and Functions of World
Englishes
The quantitative and qualitative pattern of use of English worldwide has added
yet another, but invisible, dimension to English which can be termed the
"mystique factor." English mixing is not motivated by low-level considerations
such as borrowings,. i.e., the use of English to fill a lexical gap in the host
lan~uage. After all, is there a language in th~ world which lacks an English
eqmvalent of words such as new, design, or juice? The use of English is moti-
vated by the deeper, cre~tive desir~s on the part of advertisers (see Martin,
1998, 1999 on the_ perception of English as a powerful creative tool on the part
of French adverhsers and copywriters). English is considered to be a "cool"
language capable of rendering audience identity (as international modem
rational, objective, ~thno-cul~r~l stereotypes etc.) and appeal of the produc~
(as standard, American or British). For more details see Bhatia and Ritchie
(2004).
. In _a_dditio~. to re~dering. the socio-psychological features and indexing
ident~hes, m1xmg w1th Enghsh performs other literary and psycholinguistic
functio?s ~uch as rhyming (Trentenaire On Air - a French radio station ad),
:eduphcat~on (MyMy Workman in a Korean ad), puns (must with two mean-
mgs: Enghsh must and Hindi must 'crazy'), humor, slogans (changing value
system: a slogan such as "Freedom is my birth right" aimed at gender equality
and empowerment). These functions have immense psycholinguistic power
World Englishes in Global Advertising 611
since they play important roles in product recall and information primacy
effects. These are special effects and creative meanings which advertisers strive
for. Creativity through English enables them to conquer the negative social
evaluation of mixing.
8.1 Creativity or deception?
The aim of an ad is to inform and persuade consumers to buy a product. But
these two aims do not carry equal weight. In the process of persuading con-
sumers ads sometimes go overboard, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Therefore, the boundary between creativity and deception becomes blurred.
Holbrook (1978) and Shimp (1983) distinguish between factual and evaluative
advertising. Factual advertising refers to factual daims in a real-world situ-
ation, like pricing, packing, and product attributes. The truth-value or validity
of factual advertising daims can easily be assessed. In contrast, evaluative
advertising refers to what is called in the advertising register, "Puffery." Puffery,
or evaluative advertising, refers to those aspects of advertising that make
advertising more like an art. It makes subjective daims that can neither be
empirically proved nor disproved. The use of English for deceptive purposes
is no longer limited to the Anglophone countries. With English quickly
becoming the near-universal language of product naming, and the forces of
globalization (top-down and bottom-up) at work, English is leading_ in the
race of global deception. Consider the case of rural India, where Enghsh has
become a powerful weapon of deliberate deception. Even leading brand name
products such as Lifebuoy and Boroline are not spared. Relying heavily on the
copied logos and other visual signs, deceptive marketers change a letter of the
product name in English and deceive villagers into thinking that they are
buying a brand name product. Lifebuoy is spelled as Lifeboy and Boroline as
Boriline to cheat the unsuspecting villager. Such problems are not unique to
rural India; the growing role of deception involving English product names is
an increasingly pervasive phenomenon.
9 Globalization: Resolving the Global vs.
Local Paradox
As pointed out earlier, as urban markets reach the point of saturation and
conventional advertising loses its punch, international marketers turn to the
new and emerging semi-urban and rural markets of Asia, Africa, and South
America. This trend marks the process of globalization from the bottom up
which calls for a new approach to marketing communication and innovative
ways of reaching the potential four billion consumers. Although mass media
are very popular around the globe, the search for unconventional ways to
send commercial messages is gaining prominence. In many countries of Asia
and Africa, wall advertising/painting is quite popular not only with local/
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World Englishes in Global Advertising 613

612 Tej K. Bhatia

Models of globalization: competitive and cooperative
regional/national advertisers but also international advertisers. What might
appear to be graffiti to a Western eye, wall advertising, is a very powerful
form of reaching rural audiences (see Bhatia, 2000 for more details on thé
structure, power, and reach of this media modality). This section will discuss
globalization with special reference to this media modality to demonstrate the
scope and magnitude of the impact of world Englishes in global advertising.
".711at is intriguing to observe is that advertisers, either unconsciously or by
design, have developed two distinct models of globalization in relation to
localization, which, in turn, govern their linguistic representational strategies
and linguistic choices. These views can be characterized as "competitive" and
"cooperative." The two divergent views naturally lead to two distinct under-
lying linguistic representational strategies in global advertising: the competi-
tive view leads to language segregation, whereas the cooperative view yields
language mixing. Language segregation is the natural outcome of the per-
ception of globalization and localization as oppositions, while language inte-
gration is the consequence of the perceived accommodation between the two.
The perceived models of globalization and its linguistic renderings are sum-
marized in Table 33.2. Based on these two models, three distinct patterns are
evident in advertising worldwide. The first two patterns lend themselves to
language separation.
9.2 Think local and act local
On the opposite sicle from the think-global-and-act-global ads fall the think-
local-and-act-local type of ads. These ads strive for hyper-localization ~o~gh
local languages and indigenous scripts and illustrate the strategy of glocalization
through language mixing.
Sorne ads depart from the exclusive "think globa~ a~d act ?lobal" s.trat~gy
and make room for globalization by way of bndgmg with locahzation.
Reaching the masses by means of local languages and scripts paves the way for
a safe and less risky globalization appeal. Although the approaches ~re ~vertly
mutually exclusive both in conceptual and lin~uis~c ~erms, the lo~ahzat10n-to­
globalization gap is bridged primarily by nonlmgmshc means - either by shar-
ing logographic properties of the product or by maintaining the common color
scheme.
Rather than relying on visual eues and an indirect approa~h, ~orne ads re~y
on content-sensitive means to induce some degree of globalizahon. A case m
point is the ad for Aral engine oil, a German product (Figure 33.3).
(1) araal - jarmanii kaa nambar ek inja~ a ail.
Aral Germany of number one engme oil.
'Aral - the number one German engine oil.'

9.1 Think global and act global

This pattern is carried out by means of English only, preferably by native
varieties of English in Roman letters .. The global brands which subscribe to
this type of advertising are Coke, Pepsi, Nike, etc. Not only top-clown, but
even bottom-up globalization reflects this approach. Following the stand-
ardization model of international advertising, Coke and Pepsi display their
brands both in non-conventional and conventional media forms. Global
advertisers have begun to paint walls in rural India so vigorously that no
standing structure is spared. Two years ago when Coke and Pepsi ads
appeared painted on rocks on the 33-mile stretch of the road between Manali
and Rohtang Pass in the ecologically sensitive areas of the Himalayan region
of India, environmental groups (including earth scientists) filed a legal suit
against these companies, charging them with violation of the Forest Conserva-
tion Act of India (see Bagla, 2002). Figure 33.3 Bridging the global vs. local <livide
 Studijní text je určen pouze pro použití ve výuce pro ilustrační nebo vědecké účely.
614 Tej K. Bhatia
The message has a topic-com.m.ent structure. The topic, Aral (the product
nam.e) is separated from. the corn.ment - the number one German engine oil - by
the slight, rising wall dividing the two portions of the wall. The entire ad is in
the Devanagari script and the gram.m.atical m.arkers are those of Hindi. The
:i suggestion of global appeal is brought about by the content of the com.m.ent
!
structure. The affiliation part contains information about the Germanie asso-
ciation of the product, and the evaluation part reveals that the product is the
num.ber one product.
Rather than pitting global appeals against local or satisfying them.selves
with m.inim.al content (as in the standardized ads displaying one word - Coke,
Pepsi), the unm.arked pattern, both on qualitative and quantitative grounds, in
global advertising is that advertisers break the barriers posed by linguistic
segregation and attem.pt to integrate the globalization and localization them.es
by integrating the participating linguistic systems and their scripts. This is an
optim.ization strategy which subscribes to the "think and act both global and
local at the sam.e tim.e" approach, which renders optim.ization in the strength
and appeal of their messages. One of the outcom.es of this strategy is the
increased use of Inner-Circle Englishes together with national and local brands
of Englishes, on the one hand, and the creation of their own modes and
standards of m.ixing English, on the other. Staba stands for Starbucks Coffee in
Japan, MacDonald's is called either Mac (Tokyo area) or Macdo (in the western
areas such as Osaka and Nagoya). The process of globalization from. the
bottom. up has opened the flood-gates of English in those rem.ote parts of the
world which were earlier out of the reach of English.
9.3 Cross-cultural translations and intelligibility
Cross-cultural translations are another salient feature of globalization. The
question of appropriateness and acceptance of world Englishes in advertising
figures prom.inently in two contexts: cross-cultural translational m.ishaps and
intelligibility of Inner-Circle English com.m.ercials for Outer- and Expanding-
Circle consum.ers. Translation m.ishaps/blunders and product failure within
and outside the English-speaking countries have been the major concern of
cross-cultural advertising on the part of global advertisers, media practition-
ers, and m.arketers. When the Scandinavian m.akers of the Electrolux vacuum.
cleaner wanted to prom.ote their product in the USA, they used the following
slogan: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." The negative connotation of the
verb "sucks" in Am.erican English did not add to the success of the product.
The sam.e is true of Japanese product nam.es such as Calpis Water, and Pocari
Sweat: they are perfectly acceptable lexical innovations for Japanese con-
sum.ers, but it is not the case for markets of the Inner-Circle English regions. In
India, Eveready Torch is an acceptable product nam.e of a flashlight, but for the
speakers of Am.erican English, it flashes the picture of arson, aggression, and
violence. A chilled beer is written as "Child Bear" in an Indian shop. A sign
"sex shop" for a shop in China is not a taboo; such stores sell herbal tea or
World Englishes in Global Advertising 615
other general health products (vitam.ins, etc.). Ho':ever, such i:iam.es highlight
the problem.s of intelligibility and lexical sem.a~hc asym.m.etnes betwee~ the
world varieties of Englishes. Hence, som.e stud1es, such as those by Gerntsen
et al. (2000) are concerned with the com.prehension of Inner-Circle English
com.m.ercials on the part of Dutch consum.ers.
The use of foreign languages and non-Inner-Circle Englishes in ads. aim.ed at
Inner-Circle consum.ers has also had its own share of problem.s which range
from. corn.plaints of the editors about ungram.m.atical use of ~ngl~;h to inc.o~:
prehensible content causing em.otive reactions such as ads bemg too fore1gn
and "too annoying." While the ads exploit the good, the bad and the_ugly of
"foreignness" or "otherness," as Kelley-Holm.s (2005) shows, the mam func:-
tion of such usage is to exploit national stereotypes (e.g., Germ.ans as mecham-
cal and thorough; Indians as mystic). Starbucks' product name~ such as t~azo
cay (use of Rajashthani Hindi and Gujarati) and ~izes (e.g., S?amsh ~nd !tah~n:
grande) optim.ize the appeal of the message while appropnately h1gh11ghtmg
the multilingual context of English in the Inner Circle.
10 Conclusion
International advertising and media is a fertile ground for the mixing of
world Englishes, on one hand, and the m.ixing of Engl~s~ and other languages
on the other. Contrary to the expectations and pred1ct10ns of market gurus
and proponents of the "Standardization" s:rategy, evei: .in the age of super-
branding and hyper-globalization, international adverhsmg does not ex_cl~s­
ively favor the use of Inner-Circle Engl~sh a~d its ~ccents: Languag~ m1xmg
in general and the mixing of world Enghs~es m p~rhcular is a~ unwntte~ l~w
of international advertising which enables mternahonal adverhse:s to optnn1:ze
the strength and the appeal of their message in tern::s of aud1e~ce idenhty
construction, product branding, and socio-psycholog1cal rendermg of both
audience and products.
11 Future Directions for Research
In order to tap the conscious and unconscious knowledge which plays a crit-
ical role in the creation of ads, it is imperative to understand the complex process
in the m.aking of an ad. How do features of market research and product
positioning map onto an ad copy? How is an ad adapte~ or creat~d cr?s~­
culturally in the age of hyper-globalization by m~k~g _v1sua_l and lmgmshc
choices? In order to answer these questions and gam ms1ghts mto the process
of standardization and/ or adaptation of cross-cultural ads, inte~discipl~ary
research and dialog among the users of world Englishes and mternaho~al
advertisers is needed. Marketing research on the linguistic aspec~s <U:c~ud~g
the use of English) suffers from conceptual and analytical overs1mphficahon
 Studijní text je určen pouze pro použití ve výuce pro ilustrační nebo vědecké účely.
World Englishes in Global Advertising 617
616 Tej K. Bhatia
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FURTHER READING
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