Onderzoeksartikel

Engels in commercials op de Nederlandse televisie: frequentie, uitspraak, attitude en begrip

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Abstract

Some companies believe that they can gain enormous savings by using English slogans, English product names (such as Happy Meal) and English words and phrases in commercials in non-English-speaking countries where English seems to be understood fairly well, for example in the Netherlands. A third of the commercials on Dutch television are either completely in English or contain some English words and phrases. In this paper, we will attempt to show that the use of English in commercials is often not well understood and well received. A quantitative investigation among 60 Dutch men and women evenly distributed across two age groups (15-18 and 50-57) and three levels of education (low, middle, high) showed that all the respondents displayed a negative attitude towards such commercials (the mean appreciation score was 3.4 where 1 is positive and 5 is negative) and that only 34% were able to give a rough indication of the meaning of the spoken English elements in the commercials. One lesson communication managers could draw from the results of this study is that if spoken English is used in commercials, it is advisable to put the English text on the screen as well, because this increases the chances of comprehension by 25%.

How to Cite:

Gerritsen, M., Korzilius, H., Van Meurs, F. & Gijsbers, I., (1999) “Engels in commercials op de Nederlandse televisie: frequentie, uitspraak, attitude en begrip”, Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap 27(2), 167–186.