Marianne Starren

International Advertising in Western Europe: Should Differences in Uncertainty Avoidance Be Considered When Advertising in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether cultural differences necessi tate adaptation of advertisements to local circumstances in interna tional business communication. In particular, value appeals are thought to be culturally sensitive because cultures differ with respect to which values are considered important, and it is thought that appealing to important values is more persuasive than appealing to ones less impor tant. This article reports on an experiment in which the persuasiveness of an appeal to security was compared to that of an appeal to adven ture. The relative persuasiveness of these appeals was studied in coun tries (i.e., Belgium, France and Spain) that are characterized as high uncertainty avoidance cultures, and a country characterized as a low uncertainty avoidance culture: The Netherlands. Results showed that the two value appeals proved equally persuasive for all countries.

English in Product Advertisements in Non-English-Speaking Countries in Western Europe: Product Image and Comprehension of the Text

ABSTRACT 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 the target group for which the ad was intended: 715 young, highly educated female consumers. The use of English in a product ad does not appear to have any impact on image and price of the product, but it does affect text comprehension: the meaning of almost 40% of the English phrases was not understood. These results were the same for all countries involved in the study, irrespective of whether the respondents’ (self-) reported proficiency in English is high or low.

Grammatical preferences in aspect marking in first language and second language: The case of first language Dutch, English, and German and first language Dutch second language English, and first language Dutch second language German

Production studies on event conceptualization have shown that the language inventory has a clear influence on event descriptions in different languages (e.g., Carroll & von Stutterheim, 2010). In our perception study with native speakers of German, English, and Dutch and Dutch learners of German and English, we were able to show that in addition to preferred verbalization patterns, there are other verbalization patterns that are rated as equally likely. Our results suggest that a more differentiated explanation is needed than that proposed by Slobin (1996b). Grammatical aspects of a language are easier to acquire and apply than lexical aspects. These differences can be explained in terms of automatization and cognitive control of first language and second language processes

Aspectual perspective taking in event construal in L1 and L2 Dutch

Abstract The present study focuses on the role of grammatical aspect in event construal and its function in encoding the specificity of an event. We investigate whether advanced L2 learners (L1 German) acquire target-like patterns of use of progressive aspect in Dutch, a language in which use of aspect depends on specific situation types. We analyze use of progressive markers and patterns in information selection, relating to specific features of agents or actions in dynamic event scenes. L2 event descriptions are compared with L1 Dutch and L1 German data. The L2 users display the complex situation-dependent patterns of use of aspect in Dutch, but they do not select the aspectual viewpoint (aan he construction) to the same extent as native speakers. Moreover, the encoding of specificity of the events (mentioning of specific agent and action features) reflects L1 transfer, as well as target-like performance in specific domains.