Creating ‘Multilingual’ Texts: Combating Multilingualism

Abstract

The previous chapters in this book have dealt with a number of different contexts in which multilingual advertising texts are found. First of all, the largely monolingual English media context within which foreign French, German, Spanish and other words appear. Secondly, the particular case of English, with its various fetishes and associations, its use on the Internet, and its prevalence in the market discourses of Central and Eastern Europe. Thirdly, the situation of minority languages (Irish), accents and dialects (Irish-English), and their relationship to the market and market discourses. And, finally, the marketed discourse of the pannational, multilingual context, namely Eurosport. In some cases it is the texts themselves that introduce ‘multilingualism’ or multi-voicedness to the context, whereas in others the texts are designed to overcome a multilingual context. Many issues emerge from this investigation of market-driven multilingualism, and the objective of this final chapter is to draw some overall conclusions from these various case studies.