Language of advertising in bidialectal settings: Does the code matter?

Author(s): Andreas Papapavlou, Melanie Satraki

Advertisement has been defined as “a public notice […] promoting the sales of marketable goods and services” (cf. Vestergaard & Schrøder 1985:2), it entered the field of linguistics and thus it is recognized as a genre by itself. By incorporating linguistic phenomena like code-mixing, foreign language features etc, advertising becomes an interesting field of study. This paper aims at investigating (a) Greek Cypriots’ attitudes towards the ‘exploitation’ of the Greek Cypriot Dialect, Standard Modern Greek and English in local advertising; (b) the influence of the medium (oral vs. written) presenting the advertisement; (c) the subsequent effects of the stereotype reflected in the product per se (local vs. foreign). The results support earlier studies that showed preference towards the standard variety rather than the dialect (Papapavlou 1998, Papapavlou & Sophocleous 2009). Also, the findings bring forth evidence that linguistic varieties without a standardized writing system are mainly accepted in the oral media. On the other hand, the results do not support advertisers’ firm insistence on associating different types of products with different language codes (Pavlou 1992, 2004). The last findings may be the consequence of former language policies that did not encourage dialect literacy (de V. Cluver 2000).

advertising, stereotype, attitudes, Standard Modern Greek, Greek Cypriot Dialect, English

Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.6007/MAJESS/v1-i2/453     Pages: [1-14]