Mixing English in French advertising

This paper focuses on the use of English in advertising, supplementing previous research on advertising with an analysis of code–mixed advertisements drawn from recent magazines in France. Strong evidence emerges that advertising language differs significantly from non–persuasive varieties in terms of the available choices of medium and function, the role of ‘participants’, and, most importantly, the innovative linguistic and paralinguistic features that serve as attention–getting devices. Furthermore, the discourse domains of English in code–mixed advertising seem to reach far beyond those normally associated with English (e.g., modernity, technology, and science). Finally, it is suggested that the proportion of English in a given advertisement may be an important factor in determining its socio–psychological effect. A cline of code–mixed advertising is introduced as a possible means of measuring this English/non–English ratio from a structural perspective.