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Reproducing positive multilingual ideologies in Catalan commercial banners: welcome bonus, happy birthday, entrega free, club card
As the international means of communication it has become, the English language features prominently on a wide range of (non-)institutional communicative inscriptions in the public sphere, even within the territories where English is not the first language. In view of the fact that English is reported to be intimately linked to globalisation (Naji Meidani & Pishghadam, 2013), it is increasingly being incorporated into all societies as an agent of international development (Muhammad Azeem & Samson Maekele, 2016). A case in point would be that of Lleida, a non-English speaking city in South-Eastern Catalonia, where English has recently gained prominence, both in the public and private spheres (Lorés, Soto & Berenguer, 2010).
Over the last decades, a body of research into Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) has emerged within sociolinguistics –an interdisciplinary area within the field of Applied Linguistics–. A surge of interest in LLs has been awakened, in fact, in the research community with studies focusing on the multilingualism present in modern societies, as they enable scholars to analyse and interpret the wider meanings of particular words and images arranged in public spaces (Shohamy & Gorter, 2008). LLs have, indeed, been defined in the extensive literature as the use and combination of written language on public road signs, billboards or street names (Laundry & Bourhis, 1997), which gives inferentially rich information as to how language operates in these societies –the dynamics of language– and how this translates into reproductions of wider social, economic, political, identity and ideology matters of languages in contact and in contrast. Elsewhere, LLs have been acknowledged to be “semiotic material” revealing the ways in which the local and global languages of a place have been appropriated in a particular time or space as a 'landmark' of its history (Mooney & Evans, 2015, p. 99).
The linguistic token that will be examined in the present study is a multilingual and multimodal commercial banner –within Mooney and Evans' (2015, p. 92) categorisation of signs– featuring a) Catalan as the dominant language, b) English as a cool accommodated language serving commercial purposes and c) German as the BRAND language naming the company to which the banner belongs: Media Markt. Additionally, the banner is monoglossic, as it only features the Roman alphabet.
The present paper is embedded within a much larger project –entitled ‘Localizing English in town’ and geared by Dr Maria Sabaté-Dalmau–, which was first implemented in the English Studies degree of Universitat de Lleida, a bilingual public institution in Catalonia, during the academic year 2017/2018. The central aims of this language landscaping project are to enable students to produce knowledge related to sociolinguistics phenomena and develop an intercultural and plurilingual understanding (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2022), as well as to integrate the Information and Communication Technology (TIC/ICT), Technology of knowledge acquisition (TAC/TKA), and Technology of empowerment and participation (TEP/TEP) skills, as specified by Prego Vázquez and Zas Varela (2018). This is done in a twofold way: by using (1) a Google Maps map to create an overview of the LL of Lleida and (2) a Blogger blog to write an entry whereby a thorough analysis of the social meanings of the LL token selected is generated.
2. Contextualisation
The linguistic token is situated in Carrer Joaquin Costa, n. n., in the city of Lleida, particularly in the emerging Copa d’Or neighbourhood (see Figure 2 below), between La Bordeta and Cappont. The banner belongs to Media Markt, a well-known German multinational consumer electronics retailer selling well in European territory and taking great pride in its “innovation” and “uncompromising customer orientation” (Media Markt, 2022a, para. 1). The store is situated in Avinguda President Josep Irla, 1, which is the parallel street to the LL token.
This neighbourhood presents itself as a rapidly growing commercial and tourified area, as plans are being drawn up to expand it with more stores and other meeting points like fast-food restaurants. Yet, initially, Copa d’Or was an under-constructed, unpopulated, and not fully taken-advantage-of land. Over the years, however, it has been transformed into a commercial sector and residential area (see Figures 3 and 4 below), and La Paeria considered this area to have reached its “sostre comercial” with the existing commerce, most of which are multinationals –Media Markt, Decathlon, Esclat, Mercadona and the McDonald’s and Viena restaurants– and the new ones that had been approved –Sprinter and JYSK– (Segre, 2017). A new one –Conforama– has recently been incorporated into the picture all the same. Even recently, a new road has been built connecting the neighbourhoods of La Bordeta and Cappont in a bid to reduce city-centre traffic and, probably, with an underlying view to promoting consumerism.
Unarguably, Copa d’Or is the most active area in Lleida in terms of its expanding urbanisation and house-building, to the point that the population of Lleida has exponentially grown ever since thanks to the development of this area. However, since, as mentioned above, it is a recently formed neighbourhood, there is no official data or Censuses regarding its exact population yet. Such an expansion stands in stark contrast to how the neighbourhood looked two decades ago, with numerous camp houses and agricultural terrains. Of great interest is the fact that the vast majority of residents, with a high purchasing power, are unaware that they live in an emerging Lleida neighbourhood, despite having openly discussed the formation of a neighbourhood association (Aránega, 2021).
3. Methodology
As previously explained, the LL token hereby analysed is located in the city of Lleida, in the west of Catalonia, a bilingual autonomous community in Spain, where two official languages must coexist: a majority nation-state language like Spanish, and a minority national language like Catalan (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2016). For this reason, the Ajuntament de Lleida (2014) published an official bulletin regarding the regulations for the use of the Catalan language. Article 14 establishes that public signage of all kinds must normally be written in Catalan and, in Article 17.2, it is specified that outside the Catalan linguistic field, advertising should preferably be in a double version: Catalan, and the language of the territory in which it is addressed or Spanish. These articles establish a top-down policy on advertising.
In the light of the above, the central aim of the present study is to observe what the LL token selected for the purpose of this analysis can unveil about urban Lleida’s demographic information, the legitimate use of foreign languages in the Catalan city’s commercial landscape and the social meanings of languages in contact and what they tell about economy.
After the second and the third fieldwork visit, it may be wise to suggest that the decision to make English feature in the banner (see Figure 8 below) may be solely based on commercial and economic purposes, as a means of capturing the attention of passers-by. In other words, the LL token indexes, following the values established by the Catalan Observatory (2022), a productive function aiming at providing financial benefits, as it features Catalan as a local one that targets a local audience, and English as a language showcasing internationality, modernity, cosmopolitanism and advancement (see Piller, 2001; 2003). This reveals an underlying linguistic ideology that attributes positive stereotypes to the English language.
At the other end of the spectrum, it must also be mentioned that the other Media Markt’s banners, displayed on the contiguous wall to that of the LL token (see Figures 6 and 7 above), also feature Catalan as the foregrounded language, a language from which a code-switch into English, the second language, is also reported. In the light of the aforementioned, it may be suggested that English only features as a form of strategic multilingualism, as a powerful commercial language aimed at enticing potential customers. Of great interest is the fact that a language contact phenomenon emerges in the banner: the code-switching occurs not only inter-sententially (Appel & Muysken, 1987), at sentence boundaries, as would be the case with “welcome bonus”, “happy birthday”, or “club card”, but also intra-sententially (ibid.), as the alternation occurs in the middle of the sequences, as in “entrega free”.
Indeed, media attention is, in many instances, intentionally and successfully captured through the use of English (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1997), and global English is habitually used in multilingual “media idioms” (Jacquemet, 2005, p. 261) –namely in contexts such as advertising–. It may now be further speculated that the imposition of a more dominant language like English may come at the expense of other submissive languages like Catalan, and a question might therefore be posed: why “welcome bonus”, “happy birthday”, “entrega free”, or “club card”, and not avantatges de benvinguda, feliç aniversari, entrega gratuïta, or targeta de socis?
It is pivotal to underline the fact that less than a decade ago, Catalan was observed to be speakers’ habitual language in most of its territories (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2013). Nevertheless, a more recent document issued by Plataforma per la Llengua (2021) showed that less than a third of Catalan-speaking territories use Catalan as the habitual principal language. Although this phenomenon may urge the adoption of a “bunker attitude” (Baker, 1992, p. 136) towards English –an attitude of defensiveness stemming from the concern that the minority language may be in need of protection against the majority language–, English seems to be enthusiastically welcomed by society at large and not perceived as a predator of minority languages. In fact, notwithstanding the claims that English may potentially generate glocal tensions (Pulcini & Campagna, 2015), studies examining Catalan/Spanish bilinguals’ attitudes towards the Englishisation process in a similar context –tertiary education– have yielded that English is not widely regarded as a predator of Catalan –the minority language– (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2016). In the same line, a similar finding emerged in Pulcini and Campagna’s (2015) own study as well, where English did not emerge as a significant threat to the local Italian culture. English is thus simply portrayed in the banner as a sellable item (Niño-Murcia, 2003), which is monetised and marketised for branding and advertising purposes.
Another plausible explanation that may help explain the presence of English is a discourse that may be deemed more appropriate: Phillipson’ (1992) concept of linguistic imperialism, or perhaps, more accurately, ‘American cultural imperialism’. It would seem that the dominant position of the USA and their commodification of the notions of ‘the American dream’ or ‘the American way of life’, driven themselves by the English language, may be seen as creating a pressing need for other less dominant cultures to absorb English words and incorporate them into the ways in which they navigate social life. This may, in turn, represent an attempt not to be left behind in the quest for power, in the quest for continuing to endorse an assertion standing in dubious scientific footing –yet received enthusiastically and repeated widely–: English is, essentially, a cool language and one that becomes that of “global mass consumer culture” (Featherstone, 1995, p. 8). For this reason, this banner may also index an aesthetic value or function (Catalan Observatory, 2022), since the English language transmits a certain feeling of beauty to the LL token.
As a result of the aforementioned, it may be wise to claim that the present study is also in line with Cenoz and Gorter’s (2006) study, whose findings on the use of English in commercial signs on the streets of multilingual Friesland (the Netherlands) and the Basque Country (Spain) revealed that English was used with connotational values. The authors interpreted that English was increasingly used in commercial signs because of a widely held belief that it was a prestigious and modern language.
On another note, the trend in Cenoz and Gorter’s (2006) study can be extrapolated to the present study as well, as English also appears to have been used persuasively because of the sociocultural values that have been ascribed to it. However, in order to evaluate the impact of persuasive devices in messages including code-switching, the direction of the aforesaid linguistic phenomenon must be considered. Consequently, it seems that the code-switching direction effect model proposed by Luna and Peracchio (2005) might account for another plausible explanation for English being employed strategically for advertisement purposes. In an attempt to make sense of the impacts of messages conveyed through code-switching, the model suggests that advertisements switching from a minority language to a majority language are more conducive to better product evaluations and higher persuasion rates than majority-to-minority advertisements. What is more, their study demonstrates conclusively that code-switched messages activate particular sociocultural associations and attitudes towards the embedded language.
Consequently, the authors' study implies that since majority-to-minority code-switching may trigger negative implications on the part of the target audience, the presence of English within a dominant Catalan-based discourse may wield a more beneficial influence on potential customers and the predominant communicative functions of commercial texts. These are, based on Jakobson’s (1960) model of the functions of language, the appellative –oriented towards influencing the behaviour of the addressee–, and the referential –concerned with presenting reality objectively–, which are therefore satisfactorily and poetically fulfilled. What must be stated, however, is that for code-switched messages to succeed, individuals must have satisfactory general competence in the second language.
Surprising though it may seem, English features in the LL token as a multilingual strategy, despite concerns being raised about Spaniards’ low level of proficiency in a foreign language, especially after the publication of Education First’s (2021) yearly English Proficiency Index, which continues to place Spain closer to the bottom of the ladder. Yet, the authors of the present paper set out to espouse the viewpoint that the LL’s linguistic sequences featured in the English language are iconicised and they, therefore, belong to an internationally recognised linguistic repertoire, shared by members of society as part of their enculturation process. Indeed, “welcome bonus”, “happy birthday”, “free”, and “club card” are easily recognisable linguistic units, with no particular need for a target required proficiency level in the embedded language, as they are likely to sound familiar even to those with a minimal degree of proficiency in English.
Luna and Peracchio (2005) further point out that those terms that have been switched from the foregrounded language to a backgrounded one within an advertising text become, as Fiske and Taylor (1984) suggest, perceptually and linguistically salient, as they stand out from their immediate linguistic or extra-linguistic context or from other foci of attention like typographic or iconographic elements. This may particularly apply to the entrega free case within the LL token analysed in the present study, as message decoding –and appreciation on the part of customers– will be highly influenced by the linguistic markedness, which falls on the fact that no payment will be required. “Entrega free”, however, may be understood transparently, through its denotational value, or through its connotational value, through the social stereotypes of English being oriented towards a set of indexed values. In such a case, “free” could be said to have been used as a linguistic fetish, as a marketed English form aimed at gathering attention.
In a nutshell, it stands to reason that not only do the English expressions featured in the LL token sell values, but also the brand’s image itself: technological advancement and innovation, creativity, modernity, internationality, and entertainment.
5. Concluding remarks
The analysis set forth in the present paper set out with the aim of studying a particular LL in order to unveil wider social meanings. This paper, although limited in its scope, might have served as compelling evidence that Lleida is a multilingual society in constant flux, and that it undergoes sociocultural transformations that become materialised in the language of the commercial banner hereby analysed. It has also served as further evidence that neighbourhoods are never based on “one dominant, uniform ‘culture’” (Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck, 2005, p. 207).
Linguistic landscaping projects have direct practical implications for pedagogical purposes, and the authors of this paper suggest, after a direct experience with citizen sociolinguistics and through this, participatory research (Svendsen, 2018), that they are an effective pedagogical tool for the integration of the TIC/ICT, TAC/TKA, and TEP/TEP skills (Prego Vázquez & Zas Varela, 2018). This enables citizens to adopt a hands-on approach to the social life of the space inhabited by means of conducting ethnographic research emerging from their own experience, whilst raising their critical sociolinguistic consciousness of the place created. All in all, this project has been helpful in gaining valuable insight into the linguistic situation of Lleida and its Englishisation process, and more specifically, it has enabled the authors to further their understanding of sociolinguistic aspects in an actively engaged manner and conduct collaborative and empirical research. A window of opportunity to apply the theoretical aspects of the course into a practical context, and particularly, into our immediate surrounding environment, has been provided as well.
The present study is, however, subject to several limitations. Firstly, this study focused exclusively on a commercial LL token, and other regulatory, infrastructural or transgressive discourses –within Mooney and Evans’ (2015, p. 92) categorisation of sign typologies–, for instance, may have remained comparatively neglected. Secondly, with such a small corpus of multilingual commercial signage, the need for caution must be stressed, as the results, which are not to be taken as conclusive evidence, may not be transferable to a large proportion of LLs in the city of Lleida. Hence, generalising from the limited data corpus should be firmly discouraged. It is therefore recommended that further research be performed in ethnographic LLs –not only in Lleida, but also in other cities– in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the space that surrounds us.
The present study has, nonetheless, succeeded in translating what was observed in the LL token into a broader context, by looking at how underlying multilingual ideologies are reflected and reproduced in the banner and how commerce employs English to transfer to the target audience a spate of sociocultural values assigned to the language. This provides inferentially rich information about the multilingual world we inhabit.
Unarguably, the current findings have added to an existing growing number of studies on LLs, but if the debate is to be moved forward, a better understanding of how multilingualism is reflected in modern societies must be developed. With this objective in mind, a clear picture emerges: the data corpus of this study might be expanded to other commerce-related banners. Similarly, a comparison of linguistic tokens within the commercial landscape featuring English and others featuring only localised languages may be suggested as a plausible direction for work in the future. This may help corroborate or refute the findings derived from the present paper and serve as further evidence of the indexed values (or real profitability) of English.
Overall, despite its limitations, the findings emerged from this study should be interpreted as an important step in forming an increasingly comprehensive picture of the linguistic and semiotic nature of multilingual Lleida experiencing an Englishisation whose intensity had not been recorded before.
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