"Enticing the bilingual consumer"

[Dan Goodman]

Public release date: 29-Mar-2005

Contact: Carrie Olivia Adams
coa at press.uchicago.edu
773-834-0386
University of Chicago Press Journals
Enticing the bilingual consumer
Interject an English word into the Spanish ad
Even though 20% of American consumers consider themselves bilingual,
advertisers have had little idea of how best to reach this growing
sector of the U.S. population.

A recent study of "code-switching" by David Luna (Baruch College) and
Laura Peracchio (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee), published in the
March 2005 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, provides some
provoking ideas. "Code-switching" is the academic term for changing
horses in mid-sentence--or, in this instance, interjecting an English
word into a Spanish sentence. Because English is seen as the "dominant"
language, placing an English word into a Spanish ad is more persuasive
than the reverse--placing a Spanish word into an ad written primarily in
English.

Why should this be so? Linguists have long understood that language
signals social identity. Explaining that "code-switching activates
language-specific associations," the authors observe that minority
languages are perceived to have less prestige than majority languages.
Thus advertisers who switched from a majority to a minority language
(typically English to Spanish) "elicited a significantly higher
proportion of negative thoughts" and lower product evaluations than
advertisers who made the switch in reverse.

Luna and Peracchio's study is significant for raising these ideas and
invites further research into consumer attitudes toward majority and
minority language use, attitudes which become increasingly complex as
perceptions of minority languages shift.

###

Advertising to Bilingual Consumers: The Impact of Code-Switching on
Persuasion. By DAVID LUNA AND LAURA A. PERACCHIO. © 2005 by JOURNAL OF
CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. - Vol. 31 - March 2005

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Dan Goodman
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