Exploring English in TV product advertising for Dutch-speaking children

Abstract

In the context of global English, children are an interesting target group both from a marketing and a linguistic perspective, yet the use of English in advertising for children has so far received little research attention. Investigating English in a corpus of 3566 free morphemes (smallest independent linguistic elements) in 98 TV product advertisements aimed at Dutch-speaking children in Flanders, Belgium, this study addresses the methodological question of what counts as ‘English’ before inquiring into: (1) the overall amount of English; (2) which parts of the adverts are susceptible to English; and (3) the types of English used. Results show 80% of the adverts contain English, but English accounts for only 13% of the total free morphemes in the adverts. 70% of adverts contain English in the product or company name, which suggests that even in advertising language, the use of English is limited to specific functions in the Dutch-speaking Belgian context.