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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 371

Part of Session 130: Language in Multilingual Cities (Other abstracts in this session)

Multilingualism in commercial advertising in Luxembourg city

Authors: de Bres, Julia
Submitted by: de Bres, Julia (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)

With its own national language (Luxembourgish) and three languages of administration (French, German and Luxembourgish), Luxembourg is one of the most multilingual countries in the world.  This is ever more the case, as a result of the presence of an increasing number of migrants attracted by the country’s favourable economic situation.   These include historical waves of Italian and Portuguese migrants (the latter of whom now make up 20% of the resident population), migrants who come to work at EU institutions and multinational companies, and daily migrants from Belgium, France and Germany.  This international migration is centred on Luxembourg city, where today a majority of residents originate from other countries.

This growing ethnolinguistic diversity is reflected in written form in the city’s public texts and spaces, including in commercial advertising.  Advertisers contribute to the construction of identities, by attempting to identify with (and thereby mirroring) identity constructions present among the target population.  In multilingual Luxembourg, language choice is an important means of identifying with target audiences, and this use of languages also reveals broader patterns regarding the contemporary shape of multilingualism in Luxembourg.

This paper presents results from a study of mutlilingualism in commercial written public texts in Luxembourg city, drawing on discourse analysis of advertising materials from the banking, insurance, telecommunications and retail sectors (including newspaper ads, billboards, brochures, etc).  The focus of the paper is on how companies strategically employ different languages to commercial ends, how these language choices reflect the changing status of the different languages of Luxembourg, and what this language use reveals about tensions between old and new forms of multilingualism in the city.