Advertising as Multilingual Communication

Advertising has traditionally communicated messages with strong local and national identities to consumers. Increasingly, though, products, producers, advertising agencies and media are becoming internationalized. In the development of strategies that appeal to a large multinational consumer base, advertising language takes on new "multilingual" features. The author explores the role of advertising language in this new globalized environment from a communicative theory point of view, as well as from a close linguistic analysis of some major advertising campaigns within a multicultural and multilingual marketplace.

Helen Kelly-Holmes is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Limerick.