Hunkemöller: THE EMERGENCE OF ADVERTISING ENGLISH IN LLEIDA
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Figure 1. LL chosen. Source: Picture taken by authors. Retrieved 03/03/2023 |
1. Introduction
According to Mooney and Evans (2015), in these recent days, the study of language in our everyday lives and landscapes has been a point of interest for linguists since it shows real language practices and "communicative inscriptions" which reveal socioeconomic, political, and demographic factors about the society we inhabit; in this case, in Lleida. So, as part of the subject English language in Context carried out by the lecturer Maria Sabaté Dalmau, it has been proposed to conduct a project called "Localising English in Lleida", whose main objectives are to explore, register and evaluate the ways in which the English language has been adapted and localized in the city, and what this tells us about local and global languages in contact and in contrast and their uses and roles in society. In order to achieve those objectives, we had to find a Linguistic Landscape in our city, Lleida. As claimed by Landry and Bourhis (1997, p.25), a specific territory, region, or metropolitan agglomeration's linguistic landscape is composed of the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings."
The Linguistic Landscape (LL) chosen for this project (see figure 1) is a notice found in Hunkemöller’s (see description of the type of business in "context") window display which provides commercial information as its intention is to offer another way of shopping, in this case shopping online.
It is a multilingual notice since we can appreciate two different languages: Catalan, which is the main language, and English, the secondary one. On the one hand, Catalan is used to inform about the clothes, the opening hours, and the different options that the client has by scanning the barcode. Its function is informative and instrumental. We can see it in the main title, the first sentence that we see when we look at the window display: "VARIETAT TALLES AA-H NO TANQUEM MAI". On the other hand, in our LL there is an instrumentalization of English as it is used as a tool of the market to index modernity, advancement, and proficiency but more important, to sell a product. It is "advertising English" because it can be understood by connotation even by non-English users. This will help us show how the Englishisation process in the commercial realm in our city is taking ground and is being displayed. English is used to emphasize each title to reinforce the key content presented in Catalan as we can find in: "Shop the app", "order in store", and "click & collect" (see results and discussion section).
2. Contextualisation
Our Linguistic Landscape is located in Lleida, more explicitly in Carrer Major number 2 (see figure 2, district number 1) which can be found at the charming center of the city's historic district (see figure 4).
Before explaining the street and the shop, it is necessary to consider the contextualization of the city. Lleida is located in Catalonia, a bilingual autonomous community where two main languages are spoken: Catalan and Spanish. Despite this, as has been seen during the course of this project, English and a lot of other languages are present while adversiting a product. However, as stated in article 14 of the BOP (Butlletí Oficial de la Província de Lleida), the forms of communication in signs, announcements... should be in Catalan (Ajuntament de Lleida, 2014).
The concepts, rules, and procedures driving a social group's changes in linguistic behavior constitute language policy (Kaplan and Baldauf, 1997). Because of what has been mentioned before, our LL follows a top-down policy since it is an institution who regulates the way the announcement is written.
Carrer Major is the main street of the city. It is preserved as a cultural asset of regional significance and is a municipal monument. According to an article published in 2017 by the online newspaper 7accents, it is an old street in the city, long and narrow, with a good atmosphere as it is the main meeting point among the population. More specifically, it starts in Plaça de la Paeria, climbs to Plaça de la Catedral, and then turns into Carrer de Sant Antoni. Carrer Cavallers crosses it, and Plaça de Sant Francesc widens it. The river Segre runs parallel to it and is the primary commercial avenue for the stores. It is currently the oldest street in the city.
Figure 4. Map of the neighbourhoods of Lleida.
Source: Retrieved from Gifex (2011) https://www.gifex.com/fullsize2/2011-04-14-13453/Barrios_de_la_ciudad_de _Lerida.html
Furthermore, according to a study on pedestrian traffic conducted by TC Group Solutions (2019), Lleida's Carrer Major is the most lucrative street in Spain for setting up shop there. The average cost of commercial leasing on this street is 495 euros per square meter per year, and there are 8,076 pedestrians on this street per day. This makes the store window the most profitable in both Spain and Europe because the potential cost per client is 1.34–13 euros for every thousand effects it has on a passerby. It is appealing for international (English-mediated) multinationals because they are the only ones who can afford it.
Alluding to the shop, we would like to mention that Hunkemöller is a multinational catering in many different languages worldwide founded in 1886 by Wilhelm Hunkemöller and his wife Josephina Lexis. With 880 stores across Europe, Hunkemöller has been a pioneer in luxury underwear since 1886The business grew by entering Belgium in 1977 and Germany ten years later. Their team of designers draws inspiration from the catwalks to create collections that are always of the highest caliber and are glitzy, trendy, elegant, and stylish. Hunkemöller's official web page is the following: https://www.hunkemoller.com/
On the 3rd of March of 2023, we were walking along Carrer Major in our free time to do so some shopping. Since we already knew that we would have a LL in Lleida, we were watchful to find several options for the project. Throughout the day, we took photos from different places that could possibly be useful in order to have more variety, trying to gather as many linguistically diverse tokens combining local and global languages. The next step was looking carefully at every photo taken and analyzing in detail which would be more suitable for the project. In the end, the picture chosen was a notice found in the window display of the Dutch shop Hunkemöller.
Among all the options we had, we finally selected the one found in the shop Hunkemöller since we believe it has a lot to analyze. It also makes us realize the number of English words that we employ without even realizing it, so it allows us to be aware of our use of "advertising English" in commerce and of the Englishisation of our everyday lives (Gorter & Cenoz, 2009)
For more interest, we wanted to confirm if, during this month of March, it continued in the same way and place, so we also went on the 9th of March and on the 20th of March. On both days, the notice persisted with the same content as the first day we saw it.
In our Linguistic Landscape, we can observe different types of values according to the European Linguistic Landscape observatory (2023). One of them is productive as English has a commercial use to sell a specific product, in our case, clothes. Furthermore, it can be understood by connotation even by non-English local users. It is not essential to have a wide knowledge of this language to understand it. As stated by Piller (2003, pp. 175-6), outside of the indigenous tongue, English is the language that is utilized in advertising the most in non-English speaking markets. "The Linguistic Landscape is shaped by market forces because it is to a large extent made up of advertising messages" (Eldelman & Gorter, 2010). In the LL English is used inside a Catalan sentence which can be pronounced in the Catalan way. We can see the foreign language in the 3 little titles: “shop the app”, “order the store” and “click & collect”. Some of these words (app and click) have been adapted into Catalan and in our society.
Another value that it has is identity since it has positive stereotypes of English as a sign of innovation and leadership as more people who do not speak Catalan can have at least an idea of what the notice is talking about. Using this language also demonstrates cosmopolitanism and modernity. (Cenoz, 2009). Furthermore, Catalan's identity is also shown as it is the predominating language.
The last value that we can find is aesthetic. There is present multimodality as the LL is not only written, but it also has some signs such as Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, and the Pinterest logo to represent the interaction in social networks, and an image such as a mobile phone and a hand holding a bag to make the style more appealing to the viewer. These types of signs are connotational and have become international because everyone is able to understand them, regardless of the language spoken. To achieve this, it is placed right before the average client's eyesight and it has different font sizes to emphasize what the creator wants us to look at first.
5. Conclusions:
Being part of this project and carrying out this research in which we were the generators has made us see the transformation that is taking place in our day-to-day life in our city, Lleida. We have been able to observe that Lleida is a multilingual city because of its international outlook; we can see how other languages of the world are beginning to appear in most commercial places, in public services, etc.
So, it has given us a global vision, and we are fully aware of the importance of languages being integrated or involved in our metropolitan area without realizing it at all because we are accustomed to English since we were raised in a generation that does not view it as something unusual.
Our metalinguistic reflection increases by seeing how Englishization nowadays generates competition for local and global languages in Lleida. The local languages maintain a monolingual vision while the global languages give more thought to the modern world and the evolution of languages around localities.
These experiences provide us with the opportunity to link theory to practice. It has served in a favorable way, and it has also been an advantage to get deep in all senses. We were using new pedagogical technologies: Technology of Knowledge Acquisition (TKA) which consists in introducing the information in a map app and Technology of Empowerment and Participation (TEP) which is introducing the information in a blog app. Both of these pedagogical tools form the Information and Communication Technology (TIC), whose use at the beginning was a bit complicated since it was our first time using it, but still we think that it is really useful the knowledge you have afterward as well as the ease we will have from now on to use it thanks to learn it in our class with the clear explanation that the professor has done about them.
Ultimately, what we take as an apprenticeship is the power of foreign languages being gradually incorporated into this new generation in which we are and the visibility and salience of languages in public spaces.
6. References
Ajuntament de Lleida. (2014). Butlletí Oficial de la Província de Lleida. Número 212. Retrieved from http://bop.diputaciolleida.cat/faces/consultaF/servlets/donarEdicte/?id=2014_212_9251
Bourhis, R., & Landry, R. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality—An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 23–49.
Cenoz, J. 2009. Towards Multilingual Education. Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Multilingual Matters. (p. 132)
Gorter, D. & Cenoz, J. (2009). Language economy and linguistic landscape economy and linguistic landscape. In: E. Shohamy & D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic landscape: Expanding the scenery (55-69). New York / London: Routledge.
Eldelman, L., & D. Gorter. (2010). Linguistic landscapes and the market. In: H. Kelly-Holmes & G. Mautner (eds.), Languages and the Market (96-108). London: Palgrave
Hmong.wiki. (n.d.) Hunkemöller HistoriayEstructura de la empresa. https://hmong.es/wiki/Hunkem%C3%B6ller
Hunkemöller - Lo último en Lencería y Homewear! (n.d.) https://www.hunkemoller.es/?gclid=CjwKCAjwoIqhBhAGEiwArXT7Ky-fc7uZXMBAnAFZGc39-dvYc5ZcdfedW2FW0JJmVoSyP8Nafu7M0BoCOLMQAvD_BwE
Kaplan, R.B. & Baldauf, R. (1997). Language Planning: From Practice to Theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Mooney, B., & Evans, A. (2015). Language, Society and Power. New York / London: Routledge.
Sabaté, M. (2022). ‘Localizing English in town’: a linguistic landscape project for a Critical Linguistics Education on multilingualism. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2022.2067978
7Accents (2017, February 8. Per què el carrer Major de Lleida té tanta importància històrica? https://www.7accents.cat/canal/article/8882/per-que-el-carrer-major-de-lleida-te-tanta-importancia-historica
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