ABSTRACT

Choosing the most effective language is critical when advertising to multilingual audiences as the success of any advertising campaign depends on whether the audience “gets” the message. This paper argues that in Africa, “getting the message” is partly dependent on language given that indigenous languages, colonial legacy languages and blends between them compete for audience attention. Using Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) arguments, the study examines this possibility among a 1000 multilingual audience members in five cosmopolitan cities in Ghana. Findings show that advertisements are not consumed in a language vacuum and that language blends are the most appealing to the multilingual audience. The study also finds that attention to, and belief in advertisements are partly shaped by language preference. Besides these empirical contributions, the study positions the ELM as a viable theoretical lens for analyzing the implications of advertising language. Its use of an African sample to test the ELM’s assumptions also introduces novel evidence to the theory’s body of scholarship. Recommendations are made on how advertising practitioners and brand communicators may take advantage of language as an important segmentation criterion in advertising strategy.

摘要

在向多语言受众做广告时，选择最有效的语言至关重要，因为任何广告活动的成功都取决于受众是否“理解”了信息。本文认为，在非洲，“获取信息”在一定程度上取决于语言，因为土著语言、殖民遗留语言以及它们之间的混合语言都在争夺受众的注意力。该研究利用细化似然模型 (ELM) 论证，在加纳五个国际大都市的 1000 名多语言受众中检验了这种可能性。调查结果表明，广告并不是在语言真空中消费的，而且语言混合对多语言受众最有吸引力。研究还发现，对广告的关注和信任在一定程度上是由语言偏好决定的。除了这些经验贡献之外，该研究将 ELM 定位为分析广告语言含义的可行理论镜头。它使用非洲样本来检验 ELM 的假设，也为该理论的学术体系引入了新的证据。就广告从业者和品牌传播者如何利用语言作为广告策略中的重要细分标准提出了建议。