Foreign Language Use in German and Turkish Magazine Advertisements: A Comparative Analysis
İrem AtasoyAdvertisements today are influenced negatively by the use of foreign language as a persuasive tool. This is driven by globalization and the expansion of international brands and multinational advertising agencies. Advertisers frequently use foreign languages to attract attention and to evoke associations and internationality. Foreign words and phrases in advertisements are defined as linguistic codes that can be easily distinguished and remembered by individuals because of their distinctive phonological and morphological features. Such foreign words and phrases are emphasized by using various visual codes (e.g., font, point size, uppercase/ lowercase letters, and color) as typographic components. The use of foreign language in advertisements is one of the most analyzed subjects in the field of advertising language. This study seeks to examine the use of foreign languages in German and Turkish magazine advertisements. Adopting more linguistic and semiotic approaches, which treat language as a sign and advertisement as a message system, this paper focuses on the growing role of foreign languages in German and Turkish advertisements. The corpus consists of the first three online issues of Elle magazine published in 2021 in Germany and Turkey. The data are first classified quantitatively and qualitatively then analyzed in three steps applying linguistic and semiotic criteria. The first step involves the linguistic analysis of foreign words and phrases. The second step undertakes a semiotic analysis of the typographic elements employed as visual codes of foreign language usage in advertisements. The third step is devoted to a discussion and comparison of the results of the foregoing analysis.
Almanca ve Türkçe Dergi Reklamlarında Yabancı Dil Kullanımı Üzerine Karşılaştırmalı Bir İnceleme
İrem AtasoyGünümüzde küreselleşen satış pazarının etkisiyle, uluslararası markalar ile çok uluslu reklam ajanslarının artması sonucunda yabancı dildeki yapılar reklamlarda bir ikna aracı olarak sıklıkla yer almaya başlamıştır. Yabancı dildeki yapılar reklam iletileri içinde kendilerine özgü farklı sesbilimsel ve biçimbilimsel özellikleri sayesinde bireyler tarafından kolaylıkla ayırt edilebilir ve anımsanabilir olan dilsel kodlardır. Reklamlarda yabancı dildeki yapıları öne çıkarmak için tipografi düzleminde yazı tipi, punto büyüklüğü, büyük-küçük harf kullanımı ve renk gibi çeşitli görsel kodlardan yararlanılmaktadır. Reklam dili üzerine yapılan çalışmalarda en çok ele alınan konulardan biri yabancı dil kullanımıdır. Bu çalışmada dilin bir gösterge ve reklamın ise ileti dizgesi olduğu yaklaşımı temel alınarak, Almanca ve Türkçe dergi reklamlarındaki yabancı dil kullanımının karşılaştırmalı olarak incelenmesi ve aralarındaki benzerliklerle farklılıkların ortaya çıkarılması amaçlanmaktadır. Araştırma bütüncesi Elle dergisinin 2021 yılında Almanya ve Türkiye’de çevrimiçi yayınlanan ilk üç sayısında bulunan reklamlardan oluşmaktadır. Araştırma planı kapsamında Elle dergisinin Almanya ve Türkiye sayılarından toplanan veriler nicel ve nitel özelliklerine göre sınıflandırılarak dilbilimsel ve göstergebilimsel ölçütlerle üç aşamada analiz edilecektir. Verilerin çözümlemesinde kullanılacak olan yöntemin ilk aşaması sözcük, sözcük öbeği ve tümce düzeyinde dilbilimsel ölçütlere göre yapılacak olan incelemelere ayrılmıştır. İkinci aşama yabancı dildeki yapıların reklam içerisindeki görsel kodları olarak kabul edilen tipografik unsurların göstergebilimsel çözümlemesini kapsamaktadır. Üçüncü aşamada dilsel ve görsel kodların analizinden elde edilen bulguların genel değerlendirmesi yapılmıştır.
Advertisements today are influenced negatively by the use of foreign language as a persuasive tool. This is driven by globalization and the expansion of international brands and multinational advertising agencies. Advertisers frequently use foreign expressions to attract attention and to evoke associations and internationality. Foreign words and phrases in advertisements may be defined as linguistic codes that can be easily distinguished and remembered by individuals because of their distinctive phonological and morphological features. Such foreign lexical structures are emphasized through the use of various visual codes as typographic components that affect the readability of the written text.
The use of foreign verbal signs in advertisements is one of the most analyzed subjects in the field of advertising language. This study seeks to examine the use of foreign languages in German and Turkish magazine advertisements. Adopting more linguistic and semiotic approaches, which treat language as a sign and advertisement as a message system, this paper focuses on the growing role of foreign languages in German and Turkish advertisements. The corpus consists of the first three online issues of Elle magazine published in 2021 in Germany and Turkey. The selection criterion for advertisements was their inclusion of foreign words and/or phrases in their body, headline, and/or slogans. Advertisements in which foreign language appeared only in brand and/or product names were excluded.
This paper’s methodology is based on linguistic and semiotic text analysis theories of Hartmut Stöckl (2004), and Janina Wildfeuer & John Bateman (2014). The data are first classified quantitatively and qualitatively then analyzed in three steps applying linguistic and semiotic criteria. The first step involves the linguistic analysis of foreign words and phrases in the corpus. The second step undertakes a semiotic analysis of the typographic elements employed as visual codes of foreign language usage in advertisements. The third step is devoted to a discussion and comparison of the results of the visual and verbal codes identified in the foregoing analysis. Framed by a linguistic-semiotic analysis and interlingual comparison, this paper presents the similarities and differences in German and Turkish advertisements. It then compares these findings with the results of previous comparative studies of the use of foreign language in print advertisements.
Results are presented separately for each language and interpreted comparatively by highlighting similarities and differences between the analyzed advertisements in German and Turkish. Notably, both German and Turkish advertisements use English, French, and Italian words/phrases to evoke positive connotations and to enhance value in the international ad market. The use of English is remarkably frequent in both sets of advertisements analyzed, which is likely associated with the dominance of English in the global market. As previous studies on advertising language have noted, English words typically make advertisements look more modern and attractive to consumers. English verbal structures also play a significant role in the target groups’ evaluations of a product, since they convey a positive image. The analysis shows that both German and Turkish advertisements use similar visual codes (e.g., font, point size, uppercase and/or lowercase letters, and color) to emphasize foreign verbal structures typographically. This may reflect the increasing impact of globalization on advertising. The results also indicate some differences in the frequency of particular visual codes. Foreign words and phrases in German advertisements are written in uppercase letters, whereas Turkish advertisements prefer lowercase letters to highlight them. This may be associated with the differing spelling conventions of German and Turkish: whereas all nouns are capitalized in German, this true only of proper nouns in Turkish. The results further indicate that the use of foreign language in advertisements might negatively influence the integrity of verbal structures in German and Turkish. The distinctive grammatical structure and naturalness of these languages might therefore be in danger of corruption.
