Frank van Meurs

• Radboud University

Relatively few studies have investigated the use of English in job advertisements in countries where English is not the first language and factors on which this use may depend. Countries studied earlier are Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. This study is the first to study English in job ads in Turkey, thereby expanding evidence on the presence o...

Given the multilingual nature of global business, language influences international business (IB) in almost all areas. IB scholars have studied the complex influence of language with manifold theoretical lenses, but have not systematically integrated linguistic theories. Aiming to broaden IB's theoretical repertoire, we draw on a field that has int...

This study aims to contribute new insight into the study of languages in contact by comparing the implicit and explicit general language attitudes of bilingual individuals towards their first and second language in health communication in a multilingual society, through a combination of survey and experimental methods. We investigated to what exten...

Politeness research has shown that L2 users of English differ from L1 users in that they underuse politeness markers to modify their requests. The purpose of the current study was to investigate if variations in politeness modifications in English email requests by L1 versus L2 writers are evaluated differently by L1 and L2 readers. In an experimen...

The global reach of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing localized policy reactions provides a case to uncover how a global crisis translates into linguistic discourse. Based on the JSI Timestamped Web Corpora that are automatically POS-tagged and accessible via SketchEngine, this study compares French, German, Dutch, and English. After identifyin...

This study investigated secondary-school pupil responses to modern adaptations of a historical literary text. In an experiment, 167 Dutch pupils each evaluated one of five versions of a fragment of the canonical Dutch nineteenth-century novel Max Havelaar (1860): original, modern Dutch translation, simplified modern Dutch version, Spike and Suzy co...

In a within-subjects experiment, 119 Dutch listeners evaluated authentic English and Dutch lecture fragments recorded by the same Dutch lecturer. For each fragment, they answered multiple-choice comprehension questions and rated the lecturer on comprehensibility, attitudinal measures (status, competence, likeability and dynamism), and perceived tea...

Commercials regularly use non-standard accented speakers to promote products and services despite sociolinguistic findings that non-standard accents in non-commercial contexts are evaluated less positively than standard accents. Accent evaluations in commercial contexts may be different because of perceived relevance to the product or service or of...

The effect of non-native accented speech on speaker and message evaluations is well-researched for English, but accent-induced effects in languages other than English have been underexplored. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of a weak and strong German accent in Netherlandic Dutch on Dutch listeners’ perceptions of and...

English is widely used in advertising in countries all over the world where English is not an official language (Piller 2003), including countries in Hispanic America (e.g. Chile: Gerding and Morrison and Kotz 2012, p. 142; Instituto Chileno 2016, pp. 13–14; Mexico: Baumgardner 2008). To date, consumers’ response to the use of English in advertisin...

The rapid spread of English medium instruction (EMI) across the globe has led to a growing number of non-native lecturers teaching in English to student populations that are increasingly international. The aim of the present study was to investigate to what extent lecturers with slight or moderate Dutch accents or native British English accents are...

This chapter outlines suggestions for research into the effects of foreign accent strength in English on native and non-native listeners in a variety of contexts.

This chapter deals with the second language strategy distinguished in this book: the use of English to highlight globalness. It presents content analyses showing that English is widely used in advertising across the world, and experiments and surveys showing that English evokes globalness associations, relating to three subdimensions: modernity, su...

In this book, we have discussed three language strategies in advertising: foreign language display to express foreignness, English to highlight globalness, and local language to appeal to ethnicity. This final chapter concludes that three key concepts—language attitudes, language-product congruence, and comprehension—are central to the effectivenes...

In this chapter, we extend our discussion of foreign languages in advertising to related phenomena. It reviews studies on foreign accents in advertising, on foreign languages on product packaging and on foreign languages in the linguistic landscape. We also discuss important complexities relating to foreign languages in advertising. These include t...

This chapter deals with the third language strategy distinguished in this book: the use of language to appeal to ethnicity. It describes interest in ethnic language in advertising as an instance of ethnic adaptation, with examples of studies from Europe, Australia, and the USA. The chapter focuses on the most frequently studied ethnic language in a...

This chapter presents concepts, theories, and models that are relevant to understanding foreign languages in advertising. It discusses models of the way languages are processed in the mind: the Revised Hierarchical Model and the Conceptual Feature Model. It also presents socio-communicative theories of language use: the Markedness Model and Communi...

This chapter deals with the first language strategy distinguished in this book: the use of foreign languages to express foreignness. It argues that the primary function of foreign language display is to link the advertised product to a specific country of origin. The chapter reviews research showing that a foreign language works better for products...

“An impressive integration of research in the use of foreign, or multiple, languages in marketing communications. This work is essential reading for scholars who are interested in conducting research in the area. It provides a global view of the field, including the major conceptual frameworks and empirical findings to date.” -- David Luna, Univers...

Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain with 7,538,813 inhabitants (Generalitat de Catalunya / Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya, 2018a), in which both the Catalan and Spanish language are used and are officially recognized by law. Catalonian consumers are addressed through advertisements in Catalan, Spanish, and mixes of the two languages (At...

The Netherlands can be regarded as a multilingual society, in which the majority – and official – language of the Netherlands, Dutch, is used in different everyday contexts alongside immigrant languages such as Arabic and Turkish and foreign languages such as French and German. In the northern province of Fryslân, the regional language Frisian, whi...

In 2014, a classification was proposed of ways in which brands communicate their country of origin (COO). The current, exploratory study is the first to empirically investigate the frequency with which brands employ such COO markers in magazine advertisements. An analysis of about 750 ads from the British, Dutch, and Spanish editions of Cosmopolita...

The effect of monologues and dialogues in radio commercials Previous research has shown that the use of dialogues instead of monologues in radio narratives stimulates the imagination of listeners and increases involvement with the narratives (Rodero, 2012). To date, no research has investigated the effectiveness of dialogues versus monologues in ra...

The present study investigated the use of a regional accent with varying strengths in product and service commercials. In a 2 (type of commercial: product/service) × 3 (accent: strong German regional / moderate German regional / standard German) between-subject design, 218 German native speakers evaluated product and service commercials. Findings s...

Building on studies of L1 error effects in writing, the present study aimed to gain further insight into thecommunicative consequences of actual and perceived L2 errors in writing by investigating their effects beyond theevaluation of text quality. No studies of L2 writing would appear to have investigated the impact of errors onperception of the a...

The increase in non-native English (NNE) instructors involved in English-medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has led to growing concerns about the evaluation of lecturers' NNE accents. Potentially important considerations that have largely been unexplored thus far are the impact of lecturers' accent strength and of shared L1 background bet...

The purpose of this study was to investigate if English loanwords are perceived differently in Flanders and the Netherlands, two areas with a shared official language (Dutch) but different sociolinguistic background and history. It has been argued that because of historical French dominance over Flemish, attitudes towards loanwords in Flanders are...

Sociolinguistic research suggests that US Hispanic and Spanish consumers may differ in their response to ads with English and Spanish. An experiment with US Hispanic (N = 97) and Spanish (N = 132) participants showed that, although US Hispanic participants indicated that they used more English and less Spanish in various situations, and had a less...

English is used extensively in advertising in countries where it is not an official language (Gerritsen et al., 2007; Piller, 2003). One of the reasons advertisers use English is the assumption that this language has a symbolic value for consumers (Kelly-Holmes, 2000; 2005). http://www.springer.com/la/book/9783658187309

It has been suggested that foreign languages in advertising are primarily used for their symbolic significance (the stereotypes they evoke), and that, therefore, consumers' comprehension of the foreign language used is of secondary importance. Experimental research into the effect of the difficulty of foreign languages in advertising slogans has fo...

When targeting consumers on a global scale, companies make strategic use of languages in their advertisingcampaigns. This chapter presents an overview of theories and research regarding the effectivenessof the use of foreign languages (foreign language display, FLD) in advertising. The aim is to bringtogether theories and empirical studies from var...

Brands can position themselves as belonging to a foreign culture by using foreign languages (FLs) in advertising. FLs in ads have been suggested to be implicit country-of-origin (COO) cues. This paper examines the expectations that FLs operate through the COO effect (Study 1), and that they evoke associations (Study 2) and generate persuasive effec...

Extending previous findings regarding the effects of the use of English as a Lingua Franca in advertising, an experiment tested the effects of the use of English, Arabic or mixed language and the role of product price category in product advertisements on Egyptian consumers’ response (N = 132). Purchase intention was significantly higher for the En...

Few studies on evaluations of non-native English (NNE) accents by non-native listeners have taken into account degrees of accentedness. This study investigated the perception of moderately and slightly accented English by NNE in an educational context. Eight male speakers recorded two fragments of a lecture in English or Dutch. Experts determined t...

The aim of this online experiment was to find evidence for both the alleged attention-getting function of the use of L2 English in job advertisements and for a possible genre–specific viewing pattern for job advertisements. A mixed design eye–track experiment among 30 native speakers of Dutch who saw all-Dutch and mixed Dutch– English job advertise...

The English used in the Netherlands, a European Union country, is classified by many linguists as an ESL variety, or, within Kachru's (1985) Three Circles model, as an Outer Circle variety, or as being between an Outer and an Expanding Circle variety. This paper investigates the status of English in the Netherlands through a systematic application...

It has been suggested that differences in mental processing affect the persuasiveness of language use. Within the Elaboration Likelihood Model framework, we examined if there were differences in the persuasiveness of English versus Dutch words in job ads depending on the way the job ads were processed, either by the central or the peripheral route....

In a verbal guise experiment, 178 listeners with three nationalities (58 French, 59 German and 61 Spanish) listened to samples recorded by female speakers with three degrees of accentedness (strong/slight accented-Dutch and native) in English, French, German and Spanish. Findings indicate that a strong accent had a detrimental effect on understandi...

Research problem: This study provides insight into practitioners' reasons for choosing a particular language (English versus the local language) in the genre of job ads in countries where English is a foreign language (EFL countries). Scholarly publications and public discourse have suggested reasons for language choice, but these were not based on...

Commercials regularly feature foreign accents. This paper aims to investigate whether the use of foreign accents in radio commercials is more effective for congruent than incongruent products, and whether foreign-accented commercials are evaluated differently than non-accented commercials. In an experiment, a group of 228 Dutch participants rated n...

When targeting consumers on a global scale, companies make strategic use of languages in their advertising campaigns. This chapter presents an overview of theories and research regarding the effectiveness of the use of foreign languages (foreign language display, FLD) in advertising. The aim is to bring together theories and empirical studies from...

Many Dutch university students are expected to read and write academic research papers in English. In this article, we discuss a number of areas of EFL academic writing that are relevant for first-year Dutch business communication students. These students need to become familiar with quantitative research in the field of international business comm...

Advertising often confronts consumers with foreign languages, such as German or French in the U.S., but little is known about the circumstances under which this is effective. The linguistic theory of foreign-language display claims that the congruence with the product is the essential element in its effectiveness. This study investigates this premi...

Research problem: The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether style congruency on the dimensions succinct-elaborate and instrumental-affective influenced the persuasiveness of business newsletters in the Netherlands and Great Britain. Research question: Is a writing style more persuasive in a country with cultural preferences that a...

English has come to be widely used for the specific purpose of advertising to reach international target groups in various countries. However, few studies to date have investigated the use – and effects of – English in advertising in Eastern European countries. This study investigated the effect of English in advertisements from Polish glossy magaz...

Although English has been shown to be the most frequently used foreign language in product advertisements in countries where it is not the native language, little is known about its effects. This article examines the response to advertisements in English compared to the response to the same ad in the local language in Western Europe on members of t...

Studies have demonstrated frequent use of English in international advertising, but little is known about people’s preference for English versus local languages. This article empirically investigated the difficulty of the English language as a possible determinant of people’s preference for English or the local language. In an experiment, Dutch par...

The literature generally claims that English is widely used in product advertisements in countries where English is not the national language (e.g. Bhatia 1992; Piller 2003). The apparent assumption is that English is beneficial for the product image and the attractiveness of the text. It is also claimed that the English words or phrases will pose...

According to (2003: 10), organizations are in crisis whenever they are faced with an acute problem that threatens to disrupt the day-to-day business process or, in the worst case scenario, an acute problem that endangers the organization’s continued existence. When a company discovers that it has marketed a defective product, for example, this can...

We carried out a comprehension study in the Netherlands of words discouraged by the Plain English Movement (PEM) and those recommended by the movement's institutions. In our study, we restricted ourselves to the guidelines of one of these institutions, namely the Plain English Campaign (PEC). As the Dutch are familiar with British spellings, termin...

This paper reports on a quantitative investigation into the occurrence of English in product advertisements in Dutch-speaking Belgium, French-speaking Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. For each country six issues of Elle in 2004 were collected and all ads of half a page or larger were analyzed, for a total of 2,384 different ads....

In multilingual advertising, a foreign language is often used for symbolic purposes. In non-French-speaking countries, for instance, French is said to be associated with charm and style. The assumption is that the associations carried by the foreign language are transferred to the product that is advertised. A product advertised using French would...

This paper reports on a study that tested the effect on Dutch respondents of using English in job titles. One half of the respondents evaluated five English job titles, and the other half evaluated the equivalent Dutch job titles. The results of the experiment support claims about the effect of English in job titles in the Netherlands and other non...

Recent research in information and document design explores research by presenting reports of actual research studies in information and document design. It specifically reports on ten studies in the areas of marketing communication (part one), functional communication (part two) and online communication (part three). An introduction places the res...

According to (2003: 10), organizations are in crisis whenever they are faced with an acute problem that threatens to disrupt the day-to-day business process or, in the worst case scenario, an acute problem that endangers the organization’s continued existence. When a company discovers that it has marketed a defective product, for example, this can...

This Research Note reports on a large-scale staff–student project focussing on the use of English for Specific Business Purposes in a number of promotional genres (TV commercials, annual reports, corporate web-sites, print advertising) within several of the EU member states: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain. The project as a whol...

In multilingual advertising, a foreign language is often used for symbolic purposes. Symbolic associations carried by the foreign language are assumed to transfer to the product advertised. Although a number of suggestions have been made as to the associations generated by foreign language use, it has never been tested what associations are actuall...

The use of English in advertising aimed at non-native speakers of English is claimed to enhance image and text evaluation and to have no negative impact on comprehension. We tested these claims using promotional websites aimed at Dutch youngsters. Dutch secondary school pupils evaluated a completely English and a partly English homepage and complet...

Consumers who have suffered as a result of a product defect can claim compensation from the producer. By placing a product recall notice, producers can reduce their liability. Ideally, such a notice should protect the image of the company as well as warn consumers. The problem is that a clear warning may damage the image of the company that placed...

Dutch consumers are increasingly exposed to English in commercials on television. Advertising agencies appear to use English because of financial and image reasons. This article investigates how often commercials that contain English occur in the Netherlands and whether consumers comprehend the English text and appreciate the English that is used....

An important consideration in the field of intercultural communication is the difference in communication styles between cultures. Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) distinguish four dimensions of communication styles: direct - indirect, instrumental - affective, personal - contextual and succinct - elaborate. This last dimension is central to the pr...