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ERIC Number: ED569089
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 218
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: 978-1-3038-9140-3
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Use and Perception of English in Brazilian Magazine Advertisements
Montes, Amanda Lira Gordenstein
ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University
This study investigates the uses of English in advertising in Brazil and the attitudes of Brazilians towards the use of different difficulty levels of English in advertising. Using a two part, mixed-methods approach, drawing from quantitative and qualitative methods, I utilized a corpus study to examine English uses in Brazilian magazines and a survey to investigate the difficulty of English slogans as a determinant for people's attitudes towards English in advertising. For the first part, three major Brazilian news magazines, Veja, Epoca, and ISTOE were used. From three issues of each magazine, results showed that 57% of the advertisements in all nine magazines contained English in different parts of the advertisements, with most occurrences in the product name, followed by the body copy, headline, subheadline, and slogan. English was used to advertise a number of different product types, but was especially used for advertising cars, electronics, events, and banks. It was also found that the majority of English was used for its symbolic representations of modernity, prestige, globalization, and reliability. Using a survey for the second part of the study, I investigated how Brazilian participants judged four advertisements that featured English slogans that were comparable to slogans judged to be easy or difficult to understand in a similar study conducted by Hornikx, van Meurs, and de Boer (2010). Participants were offered attitudinal choices to mark off on a 4-point Likert scale, where they indicated their attitudes towards the English slogans provided. They were also asked to determine if they understood the slogans and to translate them to indicate their actual understanding of the slogans. Participants showed more positive attitudes towards the uses of English than negative attitudes. The survey provided evidence that with the very low numbers of correctly translated slogans, many participants believed they understood the slogans, which could prove to be more of an indicator of positive attitudes than their actual understanding of the slogans. This project provides an example from one Expanding Circle context touched by the far-reaching influences of World Englishes. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Tel: 800-521-0600; Web site: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml
Publication Type: Dissertations/Theses - Doctoral Dissertations
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Brazil
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A