Symbolic Values Of Foreign Language Use

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Since Greece entered the EU, language learning has become prominent and gained further momentum in the context of modern globalized economy. Acknowledging the intense commodification of the modern foreign language education industry, this research explores Greek Foreign Language Learner (FLL) investment in multiple foreign languages, and how symbolic value can influence it. To this purpose, I borrow the definition of symbolic value from the field of sociology--namely the context-dependent sociocultural meanings associated with commodities, or in the context of this research, languages--and, grounded on the construct of investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which is located at the intersection of identity, ideology, and capital, I perform a thematic analysis of thirty-three semi-structured, in-depth, interviews conducted with Greek FLLs. The results lead to the following conclusions: i) knowledge of English is so widespread it is taken for granted; investment in several foreign languages is thought essential for professional success and signifies personal cultivation and social class aspirations. ii) Proficiency, but mainly certification, in languages of major EU countries is thought to be necessary for career purposes, and has come to represent symbolic power, which is associated with desirable linguistic capital and learner identity, but not necessarily with economic advantages. iii) Recent economic developments drive learners to consider alternative language choices that are associated with negative symbolic value but are understood to grant access to the "new economic world order." However, despite their increasing economic relevance domestically and internationally, these languages cannot "stand alone" in terms of the individual's capital. Learning languages associated with positive symbolic value appears crucial in terms of identity as it allows learners to affiliate with desired imagined communities and to claim imagined futures, thereby forging modern national and transnational identities that transcend the limitations posed by current political and economic events in Greece.

In the increasingly competitive global market, successful and meaningful intercultural advertising plays a key role in reaching out to consumers from diverse language and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is crucial for individuals and businesses to be able to navigate the field of marketing communications to cut through the noise in a consumerist society to persuade their target audience. The Role of Language and Symbols in Promotional Strategies and Marketing Schemes provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of the power of words and symbols used in promotional strategies and marketing schemes. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as shock advertising, branding, and celebrity endorsement, this book is ideally designed for marketers, managers, business professionals, academicians, researchers, and graduate-level students seeking current research on the use of language and symbols in marketing tactics.

This book presents a comprehensive account of the use and effects of foreign languages in advertising. Based on consumer culture positioning strategies in marketing, three language strategies are presented: foreign language display to express foreignness, English to highlight globalness, and local language to appeal to ethnicity (for instance, Spanish for Hispanics in the USA). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach, integrating insights from both marketing and linguistics, presenting both theoretical perspectives (e.g., Communication Accommodation Theory, Conceptual Feature Model, Country-of-origin effect, Markedness Model, Revised Hierarchical Model) and empirical evidence from content analyses and experimental studies. The authors demonstrate that three concepts are key to understanding foreign languages in advertising: language attitudes, language-product congruence, and comprehension. The book will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, marketing and advertising.

This book provides insights into the inspiring and multifaceted field of advertising research, which is confronted with challenges regarding ad content and execution, media placement, as well as online and social media. Distinguishing between digital, classic, subtle and alternative advertising formats, renowned scholars from around the globe contribute state-of the-art research on these issues in 23 chapters. Advances in Advertising Research are published by European Advertising Academy (EAA). This volume is a compilation of research presented at the 18th International Conference in Advertising (ICORIA), which was held in Krems (Austria) in June 2019. The conference gathered around 150 participants from all over the world. ​

"Murakami Haruki is perhaps the best-known and most widely translated Japanese author of his generation. Despite Murakami’s critical and commercial success, particularly in the United States, his role as a mediator between Japanese and American literature and culture is seldom discussed. Bringing a comparative perspective to the study of Murakami’s fiction, Rebecca Suter complicates our understanding of the author’s oeuvre and highlights his contributions not only as a popular writer but also as a cultural critic on both sides of the Pacific. Suter concentrates on Murakami’s short stories—less known in the West but equally worthy of critical attention—as sites of some of the author’s bolder experiments in manipulating literary (and everyday) language, honing cross-cultural allusions, and crafting metafictional techniques. This study scrutinizes Murakami’s fictional worlds and their extraliterary contexts through a range of discursive lenses: modernity and postmodernity, universalism and particularism, imperialism and nationalism, Orientalism and globalization. By casting new light on the style and substance of Murakami’s prose, Suter situates the author and his works within the sphere of contemporary Japanese literature and finds him a prominent place within the broader sweep of the global literary scene."

Japan and the United States are in closer contact politically and economically than ever before, yet in many ways our nations are as far from mutual understanding as ever. Misconceptions and miscommunications between East and West continue to plague this important relationship, frustrating the best efforts of both cultures to work together. Stereotypes abound: Americans see Japanese as evasive and inscrutable, while Japanese see Americans as pushy and selfish. What causes these persistent misunderstandings, and what can be done to avoid them? Fluent in both languages and at home in both cultures, Haru Yamada brings an insiders perspective and a linguists training to this difficult question, illuminating the many reasons why Americans and Japanese misunderstand one another. Social organization, she explains, shapes the way we talk. Because American and Japanese cultures value different kinds of social relationships, they play different language games with different sets of rules. In America, for instance, Aesop's fable about the grasshopper and the ants ends with the ants scorning the foolhardy grasshopper. In Japan, however, the story has a very different ending: the ants invite the grasshopper in to share their winter meal, as they appreciate how his singing spurred them on during their summer labors. In the difference between these two endings, argues Yamada, lies an important lesson: Americans, because of their unique political history, value independence and individuality, while Japanese value mutual dependency and interconnectedness. The language of both cultures is designed to display and reinforce these values so that words, phrases and expressions in one language can have completely different connotations in another, leading to all manner of misunderstanding. Yamada provides numerous examples. In Japan, for instance, silence is valued and halting speech is considered more honest and thoughtful than fluid speech, while in America forthright, polished speech is valued. Likewise, the Japanese use word order to express emphasis, while Americans use vocal stress: a listener unaware of this difference may easily misunderstand the import of a sentence. In a lucid and insightful discussion, Yamada outlines the basic differences between Japanese and American English and analyzes a number of real-life business and social interactions in which these differences led to miscommunication. By understanding how and why each culture speaks in the way that it does, Yamada shows, we can learn to avoid frustrating and damaging failures of communication. Different Games, Different Rules is essential reading for anyone who travels to or communicates regularly with Japan, whether they are scientists, scholars, tourists, or business executives. But as Deborah Tannen notes in her Foreword to the book, even those who will never travel to Japan, do business with a Japanese company, or talk to a person from that part of the world, will find the insights of this book illuminating and helpful, because the greatest benefit that comes of understanding another culture is a better and deeper understanding of one's own.

The papers here were selected from presentations made at the 24th Annual Conference of the Linguistic Association of Nigeria (LAN) which held at Bayero University Kano. The book contains seventy-seven (77) papers addressing various issues in linguistics, literature and cultures in Nigeria. The book is organized into four sections, as follows: Section One Language and Society; Section Two Applied Linguistics; Section Three Literature, Culture, Stylistics and Gender Studies and Section Four Formal Linguistics.

This compilation of several research papers is an important material for those who wish to conduct papers about the English language and literature. The volume contains ten papers about discussions on speech and articulations, phonetics, English language roles in the linguistic landscapes, as well as some Asian fiction and gay language. I have been particularly fortunate to produce and present these papers internationally because of the grants given to me by several offices and institutions. This is my way of sharing these blessings I have received with my students who in turn will be writing their research papers.