<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><br>-
<div id="gmail-post-area" class="gmail-col gmail-span_8">
<h1>Spanish Language Political Ads Sometimes Alienate English Speakers</h1><p class="gmail-iframe-container">For Spanish speakers, ad content includes less information about policy, and more about religion and family values.<br>
</p>
<p class="gmail-meta">By <span class="gmail-author">Laura Rice</span><span class="gmail-date">November 2, 2018 10:51 am</span><span class="gmail-categories">| <a href="https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/categories/business/" rel="tag">Business & Your Money</a>, <a href="https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/categories/government-politics/" rel="tag">Government & Politics</a></span></p><div class="gmail-social"><ul class="gmail-socialite gmail-social-buttons gmail-small"><li><br></li><li><div class="gmail-socialite gmail-facebook-like gmail-socialite-instance gmail-socialite-loaded"><div class="gmail-fb-like gmail-fb_iframe_widget"><span style="vertical-align:bottom;width:108px;height:20px"></span></div></div><br></li></ul></div><div id="gmail-header-featured-image"><div class="gmail-wp-caption-area" style="width:1024px">
<div class="gmail-image">
<img src="https://www.texasstandard.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/44284248172_83404d0553_b.jpg" alt="" width="100%" height="100%">
</div>
<div class="gmail-caption-text">
<p class="gmail-credit">Julia Reihs/KUT</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">Beto O'Rourke speaks at the Texas State Capitol in August at the Rise Up rally for criminal justice reform. </p>
</div>
</div></div><div id="gmail-portfolio-extra"><div id="gmail-more">
<div id="gmail-fws_5be074d0cf207" class="gmail-wpb_row gmail-vc_row-fluid gmail-vc_row gmail-standard_section" style="padding-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px"><div class="gmail-row-bg-wrap"> </div><div class="gmail-col gmail-span_12 gmail-dark gmail-left">
<div class="gmail-vc_col-sm-12 gmail-wpb_column gmail-column_container gmail-col gmail-no-extra-padding">
<div class="gmail-wpb_wrapper">
<div class="gmail-wpb_text_column gmail-wpb_content_element">
<div class="gmail-wpb_wrapper">
<p><span style="font-weight:400">As Election Day gets closer, the
airwaves are getting more crowded with political ads. Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz and his challenger, Congressman Beto O’Rourke, in particular, have
raised lots of money in their campaigns and are now spending it on TV
and radio.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Austin-based Marketplace Reporter </span><a href="https://www.marketplace.org/people/andy-uhler" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight:400">Andy Uhler</span></a><span style="font-weight:400"> noticed some of the </span><a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/31/world/political-ads-en-espanol-more-simple-translations" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight:400">ads</span></a><span style="font-weight:400"> in English and Spanish are complicated by more than the issue of translation. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">“What we’re seeing is this trend of
ebb and flow in terms of who you think you’re getting to vote for you,”
Uhler says. “…If you’re Beto O’Rourke and you’re depending on that
Hispanic vote, then you’re probably going to invest a lot of money into
it.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">Uhler spoke with </span><a href="https://polisci.ucsd.edu/about-our-people/faculty/faculty-directory/currently-active-faculty/abrajano-profile.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight:400">Marisa Abrajano</span></a><span style="font-weight:400">,
a political science professor at the University of California San
Diego. She said political ads in English tend to include more policy
topics such as economic growth, taxes and health care, while Spanish ads
are driven by emotion and topics like religion and family values. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">“If you design Spanish language ads
that omit much more policy content than English language ads, then
Spanish speaking voters are not getting the same kind of information
that monolingual English language folks get,” Abrajano said.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">The data on who speaks Spanish in
neighborhoods and cities is too broad and doesn’t allow candidates to
zero in on what specific households are speaking Spanish, Uhler says.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">“You can have mailers, but you’re not
going to individually look at who is speaking Spanish and how to
advertise to them,” Uhler says. “I spoke to another researcher at Yale,
Alex Coppock, he told me that the consequences for hitting somebody with
an ad that doesn’t appeal to them in their language of choice, even if
you’re bilingual, [has] huge negative consequences.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">18 percent of monolingual English speakers will have a more negative reaction to Spanish ads. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400">“It could be that you kind of bristle
if you hear an ad in Spanish,” Uhler says. “You want it to appeal to
your culture if you’re a monolingual English-speaker. We don’t really
have the why as to that negative reaction.”</span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight:400">Written by Brooke Vincent.</span></i></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>
</div>
- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>