Bilingualism in Commercial Advertisements: The Case of Addis Ababa
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Date
2008-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate bilingualism in commercial
advertisement. Based on the objectives of the study, data was gathered
through the use of questionnaires and interviews as well as informal
conversations held with the respondents of the questionnaire. According to
the findings, bilingualism is found to be playing an important role in
commercial advertisement in order to communicate better with the
speakers of different languages who are the target audiences of the
advertisers. Bilingual advertisement has also the advantage of creating a
sense of identity and belonging sens with the speakers of the languages
used for advertisement in addition to informing about the products and
services. Moreover, the study reveals that the communicative effects and
the creation of identity in bilingual advertisements serve as means to
enable advertisers to increase their sales and profitability. Concerning the
attitudes of advertisers towards using bilingual advertisement, majority of
them have shown positive attitudes. Different reasons have been provided
by advertisers for using bilingual advertisement, the main ones being, the
communicative advantage of bilingual advertisement, its advantage of
creating a sense of identity and its advantage of enabling organizations to
be more memorable by the different language speakers. The majority of the
advertisers use different ways of getting feedback regarding the
advantage of bilingual advertisement while the rest have no means of any
kind. All the advertising organizations emphasized the communicative
advantage rather than the status of the language in their use of code switching
and English language in their bilingual advertisement.
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Keywords
Bilingualism, Commercial, Advertisements