Dees-froo-tahr: The aestheticisation of English for commercial purposes
Dees-froo-tahr: The aestheticisation of English for commercial purposes
- Marta Baró and Maria Alamillo
1. Introduction
The aim of this project is to observe, document and analyze an example of a Linguistic Landscape (LL) that can be found in Lleida, in order to demonstrate the uses and meanings of English in the city. According to Bourhis and Landry (2002, cited in Gorter, 2006), a Linguistic Landscape could be defined as “the use of language in its written form in the public sphere” (pg. 2).
Our token, named “dees-froo-tahr”, pertains to a T-shirt located inside a shop from Carrer Major, which shows that it belongs to the commercial activity domain as it offers goods in exchange of money to the public. More concretely, it is located in Mango, a multinational firstly established in Barcelona (Spain) in 1984 by Isak Ermany and that nowadays, has been spread to more than 105 countries. Besides, in order to open a franchise in a city, it needs to be located in the main street or in a relevant shopping center, the area of the shop has to be 700m² plus a 30% of storehouse and there has to be a minimum of 60.000 inhabitants in the city center (Dugarte, García y Salazar, 2012).
Since its beginnings, the main target for MANGO has been women, especially, the enterprise focuses on creating clothes appropriate for all the aspects of a young modern woman’s life (Dugarte, García y Salazar, 2012). Nevertheless, today they also produce clothes for men, children and for women of all ages. Most MANGO products are addressed to a public of average income, for this reason, after observing the cost of our token, which was 5.99€, we could state that it was a reasonable price for a T-shirt made for a young target. As can be seen, over the years the scope of the target market had been spread.
Regarding the languages we can find in this LL, there is Spanish and English. Thus, this token presents an instance of multilingualism, which is “the capacity of societies, institutions, groups, and individuals to engage on a regular basis in space and time with more than one language in everyday life” (Aronin & Britta, 2009, cited in Aubakirova & Mandel, 2018, pg. 18). Both of them are main languages, written in the Roman alphabet, as they are placed on the foreground; therefore, there are not background languages. As can be observed, although it involves more than one language, it is considered monoglossic because they are separate text units and consequently, not mixed. Moreover, it is also multimodal because it combines letters, numbers, the symbol of a speaker and what seems to be the phonetic transcription of the word 'Disfrutar' (Enjoy). This last level of language refers to “the study of the sounds made by human voice in speech” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2020). However, the form dees-froo-tahr is not in the phonemic alphabet, but it is made on purpose so that the standard public can understand that it mimics English pronunciation.
Image 1. Close-up of the linguistic token. Source: authors, February 2020
2. Contextualisation
The shop is located in Carrer Major, 74, 75, 25007 Lleida (Figure 2). The thing that is the most curious about it is that it is placed just in front of the shop ZARA, the direct competitor in women’s clothing, and according to Dugarte, García y Salazar (2012), MANGO is set as the second most sold clothing brand in the same scope as the Inditex franchise.
Carrer Major is one of the streets that form Eix Comercial, knew as the largest outdoor commercial place of Spain (3,5 km) that is situated in the city centre (FACEC, 2014). The people who live in Eix Comercial usually have a low income, are mainly immigrants or old people who inhabited the houses before the degradation of the area, but the usual shoppers are people from all socioeconomic classes. Furthermore, during the summer season, it is a busy street, because as it is one of the most famous places in the city, tourists tend to go shopping there. In fact, during this season, the number of people that go shopping there can increase from 15.000 to 25.000 approximately (FACEC, 2014). The shop belongs geographically to the neighbourhood Centre Històric (Figure 1), an impoverished area that is slowly undergoing a generational renewal (gentrification). According to Cerezuela (2015), during 2014 Centre Històric was inhabited by 10.470 people, of which 42.5%, it is to say 4.450 people, was foreigner. As only have passed six years, we estimate that the numbers have not vary significantly. We also want to point out that there is a difference in terms of social culture between what is considered ‘Eix Comercial’ and Centre Històric, since E.C. is frequented by people from all over the city while the streets of C.H. are only visited by the people who live there.
Figure 1. Map of Centre Històric. Source: Oficina de Turisme de Lleida (n.d.)
Figure 2. Street view of the shop. Source: Google Maps)
3. Methodology
The data-gathering procedure used an interpretative critical sociolinguistic methodology, approached through ethnographic observation, which consisted of visiting two times the linguistic token. The first one, on the 28th February 2020 was done by the whole team, while looking for a linguistic token that could be used for our project. However, one member of the group had already seen the shirt and proposed it to the group. The second visit was done on the 10th March 2020 by one member of the group. The visit revealed that the token was not removed (as would be expected in a multinational shop that operates with ephemeral commerce and trends), but it was moved to a secondary location inner into the shop, losing the commercial impact it had on the first visit when it was on the main shelf of the shop. The third visit had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to the closing of the shops and the confinement of people. However, it is expected that the token is now removed completely.
On the one hand, regarding top-down linguistic policies, Catalan and Spanish are spoken by the shop assistants because it is part of the Catalan Language policy, according to the article 32.1 of the law 1/1998 approved by the Catalan Government, which states that ‘(establishments) must be able to assist clients whether they speak Catalan or Spanish’. Moreover, article 32.3 of the same law regulates that ‘(establishments) must have fixed banners and signs at least in Catalan’. However, signs in Catalan are rarely seen at establishments window-shops.
On the other hand, the use of English in advertisements and clothes is a bottom-up decision by the company MANGO. As a multinational corporation, bottom-up linguistic expressions not affiliated with the brand MANGO are not allowed. This comes both from the aim to maintain the same brand presentation and design in every establishment, providing exactly the same experience to every customer in every MANGO shop, and from the objective to market the brand as a “clean”, professional, international company. As far as we are concerned, any banner or sticker that is placed on their outer walls or window-shops is removed within a short time period.
The linguistic context of our token is determined by the languages heard in the establishment and the languages used on other garments sold there. In the shop, the shop assistants (all female) spoke both Spanish and Catalan, whereas no other languages were heard in the shop. However, there were many other shirts with inscriptions in English, such as 'be the best', as well as in French, which was not as present as English in the establishment but still appeared on some shirts like 'je ne sais quoi'.
The website offers a wide variety of languages depending on the region the client chooses, as displayed in Figure 3. As can be seen in Figure 4, the MANGO online shop offers Catalan and Spanish for the Spain region, but not Galician or other regional languages that exist in the country. It also displays the contents in French for the regions of France, but other regions such as Estonia and Albania are in English. The website also provides other languages like Greek, Hungarian, Czech, Croatian, Japanese, Korean and Netherlandish. (Retrieved by authors from MANGO, April 1st, 2020)
Figure 3. Dropdown menu for available languages in MANGO website, 2020
Figure 4. Example of the language menu for the clienthood in Spanish territory. (Mango, 2020)
4. Results and discussion
Figure 5. Linguistic token on a MANGO shelf. Source: authors, 2020.
The values of our linguistic token, seen in Figure 5 on a store shelf, are mainly aesthetic, identity and productive. Firstly, it is aesthetic because the combination of typefaces, sizes, colours (black and white) and semiotic elements (the icon of the speaker and the number “1”) imply a feeling of beauty created for the purpose of attracting the customer through the sight sense. Secondly, the value of identity is seen in how people choose their outfits and the way they dress as a way of self-expression. In this case, even if the customer doesn’t know the significance of the lettering, it can still express something for him/her. However, the client who buys this T-shirt and knows both languages (Spanish and English) may also want to express that these languages or the countries related to them are part of his/her identity or culture. Finally, the productive value of the linguistic token is related to how the shop made the T-shirt in order to sell it, it is to say, that MANGO designed the product that we analyse in a manner to gain benefits from it.
This T-shirt is a clear example of the use of English, a global language, as an icon of cosmopolitanism, fashion, and modernity. English is used in many T-shirts because of its global recognition, since the shop exports to almost every part of the world thanks to globalization, which was defined as “all those processes [economy, culture, services…] by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society” (Albrow & King, 1990, pg. 9). However, Spanish is added probably for creating that sense of exoticism of a foreign language for customers who live in non-Spanish-speaking countries. For example, Erasmus students or tourists that stay in Lleida temporarily can find it attractive not only for the languages used but also for the price we mentioned before; thus, if they bought it, the T-shirt would become a kind of souvenir of their stay in Spain.
Besides, we also assume that Spanish adds a sense of localised fashion as it is appealing for the people who speak the language, for the reason that understanding what is written increases their willingness to buy it. Nevertheless, this token possibly excludes the customers that do not comprehend any of the two languages and the elders who are not familiarized with English. Furthermore, in spite of having a sense of local identity, as the seller is a multinational, it does not even contemplate the use of Catalan in it.
5. Concluding thoughts
From our point of view, the use of a linguistic token to analyse linguistic landscapes raises awareness of not only how our environment changes over time linguistically without realising but also of how these linguistic choices are a reflection of the people living there and tourism. As Gorter (2012) claims, once you study the language on signs in urban places, the experience of walking down the street changes. Thus, we consider that the process to carry out this project was an excellent experience that changed the preconceived perspective we had about Lleida as we observed the languages in contact (global and local) that we could find in the city while we searched for a linguistic token for our analysis. Moreover, we believe that the creation of a project like Localising English in Lleida, might make students be more respectful of cultural and linguistic diversity.
In the study of Prego-Vázquez and Zas Varela (2018) it is discussed the concepts of ICT, TEP, TAC and their utility in the sociolinguistics domain, which were really useful to comprehend our own project. By using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), such as the blog or the map itself, we were able to do the bases of our project, both interacting with it and looking at previous work. The use of Technologies of Empowerment and Participation (TEP) such as the interactive map and the blog made us the agents and allowed us to carry our own linguistic ethnography while analysing our social environment. Finally, using Technologies for Acquisition of Knowledge (TAC), such as creating and sharing through the map and the blog allows us to learn and assimilate the information that they contain.
To conclude, this assignment has made possible for the students to be agents of their own knowledge, as they had to observe and examine their environment by themselves in order to share afterward their findings with all the classmates. Consequently, this process has increased linguistic awareness as well as it has widened our knowledge about englishisation processes and global languages in local areas.
Bakhyt, A., and Mandel, K.M. (2018). The Concept of Multilingualism. Philology series, 4, 16-24. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333673766_The_Concept_of_Multilingualism
Cerezuela, A. (2015). Dinàmica i estructura comercial al cor del Centre Històric de Lleida (Thesis). University of Lleida, Spain. Retrieved from https://repositori.udl.cat/bitstream/handle/10459.1/57031/acerezuelas.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Dugarte, M., García, D., y Salazar, D. (2012). Estudio de Mercado Empresa Textil: MANGO. Universidad Nacional Experimental Politécnica “Antonio José De Sucre”. Retrieved from https://es.scribd.com/doc/104931569/ESTUDIO-DE-Mercado-EMPRESA-MANGO
Federació d'associacions de Comerciants de l’Eix Comercial de Lleida (FACEC). (2014). Qui som [Information blog].Eix. Retrieved from http://www.eixcomerciallleida.com/ca/welcome/quisom
Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The Study of the Linguistic Landscape as a New Approach to Multilingualism. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(1), 1-6. doi:10.1080/14790710608668382
Law 1/1998. Departament de Presidència, Barcelona, Spain 7th January 1998.
Phonetics. (n.d.). In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/phonetics
Dees-froo-tahr: The aestheticization of English for commercial purposes:
ReplyDeleteBaró and Alamillo’s article aims to analyse a linguistic token in Lleida named “dees-froo-tahr”. They found it in a T-shirt of Mango. Languages used are Spanish and English. The shop is located in the Carrer Major. People living there have low income, but there are shoppers from different socioeconomic classes.
On the 28th February, the first photo was taken. They visited the shop on the 10th March to see if it was removed, but it was not. What they found out is that it was moved to a secondary location, losing the great impact caused at first. They also mention that Mango follows bottom-up linguistic expressions, where they use different languages according to the sector where the brand advertises its products.
In terms of the results, they draw the conclusion that the values of the linguistic token were aesthetic (because of the purpose of attracting through the sight), identity (because it connotes self-expression) and productive (because it is part of the advertisement). I really liked how they described the aesthetic value because in my token, the aesthetic value is the most important one, and I have learnt a lot. They also mention the importance of cosmopolitanism, fashion and modernity.
The article deals with an interesting linguistic token named ‘’dees-froo-tahr’’, found in a Lleida’s shop. It is found in a T-Shirt that pertains to Mango’s clothing brand and the languages the linguistic landscape read are Spanish and English.
DeleteTwo of the important key features of the product is that there are multilingualism and multimodality in the product, as there are English and Spanish words, and a combination of letters, numbers…
The T-Shirt costs 5.99€, which is a reasonable price for all young female targets in the area. In that sense, the cost of the T-Shirt tells us that the product tries to persuade low-income individuals in terms of identity.
Mainly, the linguistic token has aesthetic, identity, and productive value. Also, Mango is guided by bottom-up policies.
Although the shop is located in Lleida’s Carrer Major, Mango is a multinational seller and does not use Catalan. Catalan is invisible in that case, meaning that the local language of Lleida is unfortunately excluded.
This makes me learn a lot about how sellers prioritize languages, by reinforcing some (English-Spanish) and invisibilizing other (Catalan).
The writers report that this linguistic landscape is a great instance of the use of global English, concerning cosmopolitanism, fashion, and modernity.