KWARTALNIK NEOFILOLOGICZNY, LXXI, 1/2024
DOI: 10.24425/kn.2024.149615
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
(UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLOŃSKI)
ORCID 0000-0002-0151-3049
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING
A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS
OF POLISH ADVERTISEMENTS OF CULTURAL EVENTS
ABSTRACT
The paper presents a linguistic landscape analysis with elements of multimodality of 60 advertisements of
various cultural events collected in Polish public space, written in both Polish and English. The study aims
to establish what elements of the advertisements tend to be expressed in English, how, additionally,
multimodal tools foreground or background the use of the two languages, and, consequently, what message
such choices convey about the status of English in Poland as reflected through the analysed genre.
KEYWORDS: multilingualism, global English, outdoor advertising, linguistic landscape, multimodality
INTRODUCTION
The topic of the paper is to present an analysis of written outdoor advertisements
of cultural and entertainment events composed in Polish and English, or fully in
English, which can be found more and more frequently in Polish streets. The aim is
to investigate them as manifestations of multilingual texts1 and assess the role which
especially the English language tends to play in the genre. The following analysis
should be viewed with an awareness that the Polish law on texts appearing in public
space stipulates that “[o]n the territory of the Polish Republic, the Polish language
shall be used in all legal action between Polish entities as well as in cases when one
of the parties is Polish. Specifically, this paragraph refers to names of goods and
1
A multilingual text will be understood here broadly as a text composed, in varying proportions and
with a possible replication of a part or the whole of the meaning, in two or more languages.
Copyright © 2024. The Author. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of
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allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license
the modified material under identical terms.
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
21
services, advertisements, instructions for use, information about properties of goods
and services and warranty terms and conditions, invoices, bills and receipts.”2 This
resolution therefore demands the use of the Polish language in official contexts in
Poland.3 On the other hand, the English language has unquestionably increased its
visibility in an ever growing number of non-English speaking countries as of late,
especially in the countries of the Expanding Circle, in which it is used as an important foreign language (cf. Jenkins 2015; Kachru 1992; Phillipson 2018). The use of
English as a Lingua Franca, a variety facilitating communication between speakers
of various other linguistic backgrounds4 has gained recognition in scholarly studies
as well (Cogo, Dewey 2012; Seidlhofer 2011). Numerous domains of private and
public language use in Poland have reflected this tendency quite abundantly in the
recent two decades too.
This is the context in which the following analysis of outdoor advertisements of
broadly understood cultural events to be offered in Poland will be conducted. The
investigation will primarily focus on the linguistic aspects of the texts of the
collected samples of the genre of advertisements in search of possible regularities
and specific functions of the languages, especially including the identification of
typical meanings and sections of the advertising texts in which the English
language has been predominantly used. The study will be set within the theoretical
framework of the Linguistic Landscape (LL) investigation (cf. Gorter 2006, 2013
2018; Landry, Bourhis 1997; Spolsky 2009), and conducted from the perspective of
critical discourse analysis. As an additional source of understanding of the linguistic
choices made in the analysed advertisements discussed will also be some semiotic
(multimodal) aspects of the collected text samples (pertaining only to the textual
component of the analysed advertisements), viz. their location in the body of the
advertisement, as well as the colour and the size of the font applied, with the aim to
establish how these may help to foreground or background the meanings they convey
in the two respective languages, Polish and English.
LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE
The study of the collected material will be kept within the theoretical framework
of Linguistic Landscape, which typically analyses language(s) displayed on public
signs, for instance advertisements and billboards, in a particular, physical, and nowa2
Article 7, the Act on the Polish language of 7 October, 1999.
Based on this assumption a TV viewer appealed to the court in 2014 with a complaint that the
actors in a commercial advertising of Paco Rabanne perfumes spoke English on Polish TV, against the
above-mentioned law that requires advertising to be provided in the language understood by everybody in
the country, and on that ground he won the case (Rzeczpospolita, 6 November, 2014).
4
ELF is typically described as English which is “used as a contact language among speakers from
different first languages” (Jenkins 2009: 143).
3
22
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
days also virtual space, which in the present study will be represented by the linguistic landscape of the city of Kraków, Poland. As Kelly-Holmes (2005) highlights, the
use of multiple languages in advertising is a tool to index international identity as
opposed to the national and local one. The analysis of the visibility and strategic use
of Polish and English found in Polish outdoor advertising will, therefore, help us
draw conclusions about the values which the two languages and thereby cultures
index in the Polish advertising discourse.
An investigation of linguistic landscape was first conducted in 1977 in Israel
(cf. Rosenbaum et al. 1977), with a focus on the use of multilingual signs in the
streets of Jerusalem. However, the field was given its name only in 1997, following
the by now classical study by Landry and Bourhis in Canada, who defined the
concept as “the visibility and salience of languages on public and commercial signs”
(Landry, Bourhis 1997: 23). As a result of the intense development of the discipline,
which originally focused on the public space of mainly metropolitan areas, analysing
private as well as official public signs (Gorter 2006, 2013), the LL investigation has
spread into other contexts of study as well, gradually including online resources,
images, sounds, smells, etc. (Ben-Rafael et al. 2006; Ivkovic, Lotherington 2009;
Jaworski, Thurlow 2010; Scarvaglieri et al. 2013; Shohamy, Gorter 2009). The
field has evolved from a stage of its being primarily descriptive in character to
employing a more critical approach regarding the studied signs, on the assumption
that the signs used in public spaces reflect a more or less pronounced power struggle
lying behind the visibility (or absence) of given languages and their distribution. As
a result, a new definition of the field was developed and published in The Linguistic
Landscape: An International Journal (2015: https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/
journals/22149961). It now assumes that the “field of Linguistic Landscape (LL)
attempts to understand the motives, uses, ideologies, language varieties and contestations of multiple forms of ‘languages’ as they are displayed in public spaces.”
At this point it is important to stress the fact that the focus in the study of LL,
placed on the visibility and use of different language varieties, is to be viewed as
different from the study of borrowings. Borrowing is originally a foreign (donor)
language item which has been incorporated into the borrowing language system
(cf. Hudson 1996), and in order to know a borrowing a speaker does not need to
be familiar with the donor language or show any degree of bilingualism (cf. Gabryś
2000; Poplack et al. 1988). On the other hand, the formulation of certain sections of
public texts, e.g. of advertisements, in English does certainly require the message
addressees to understand the languages used in them. As the study of LL was first
developed in multilingual areas (cf. Israel, Canada, Belgium, etc.), the analysis
aimed to identify the visibility of various languages, their prominence or lack thereof
as a sign of demarcation of areas inhabited by different ethnic groups (cf. Blommaert
2013). It thus performed an informational function regarding the distribution of
ethnic groups and relevant languages. The aforementioned expansion of the scope
of investigation in the field soon led to the inclusion of areas which, though not
officially multilingual, displayed the use of a variety of languages, often not histori-
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
23
cally connected with the given area. In such contexts a more symbolic function of the
respective languages used in the studied location was recognized (cf. Backhaus 2007;
Haarmann 1989; Santello 2016), highlighting a different status and value of respective varieties in a given society. The latter option appears to be of relevance to the
present study, as English, which will be analysed in the context of Polish advertisements, does not represent any ethnic minority physically living in Poland. Since the
analysed material tends to employ sequences of words or even full sentences or texts,
rather than individual items in both English and Polish, which often, as will be demonstrated below, convey complementary pieces of information, they will be treated
as manifestations of different languages aimed at a bilingual person, or one who is
familiar with Polish and English to an extent which will allow him/her to understand
the chunks in both languages. This, in turn, may be perceived as a sign of a newly
developing functional bilinguality (cf. Nagel et al. 2015; Niemeier 1999)5 of Polish
advertisement recipients and functional bilingualism of at least some section of
Polish society.
ENGLISH IN ADVERTISING
English, a lingua franca of the modern world, has naturally been employed in
various contexts, including advertising, in numerous non-English speaking cultures
and countries to date. Its status has been researched in e.g. multilingual contexts
(e.g. Grin 1994; Ye, Qin 2004), and in specific countries, e.g. in Switzerland
(cf. Cheshire, Moser 1994), Bulgaria (Griffin 2001), Belgium, France, Germany,
the Netherlands and Spain (Gerritsen et al. 2007), Japan (Haarmann 1989), China
(cf. Zhang 2001; Li 2019), Central and Eastern Europe (Kelly-Holmes 1998, 2000,
2005), Russia (Ustinova, Bhatia 2005), and Poland (Bulawka 2006; Dąbrowska
2022c; Planken et al. 2010). Based on their analysis of the use of English in Russian
advertisements Ustinova and Bhatia (2005: 496) concluded that in advertisements of
foreign products it was company names, product names, and labelling which tended
to be kept in English. The researches recognised it as manifestations of the process of
globalisation, as opposed to customisation (cf. standardisation vs. adaptation), typically found in advertisements of foreign brands (cf. de Mooij 1994; Grant, Short
2002). The globalisation approach tends to be marked by the companies’ keeping the
original form and content of the advertisement when their products or services enter
foreign markets (cf. Kotler et al. 2002), while customisation leads to some local
modifications of the text (cf. Baumgardner 2008). Regarding language choice made
in advertisements in view of some prospective gains, Spolsky (2009: 35) concludes
5
Following Hamers and Blanc (1989: 6), the term bilinguality is to be understood as a fluent
knowledge of two languages at a level of an individual. Bilingualism, in turn, is to be viewed as the
knowledge and habitual use of two languages by a given community.
24
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
that “the normal result of a communicative goal would be a policy to advertise in the
language of potential clients and customers,” because this would guarantee a proper
comprehension of the information provided (cf. Grin 1994). However, research
demonstrates that foreign languages, and English in particular, are not necessarily
used with their communicative function in mind, but are rather selected in respect of
the symbolic value which they are associated with, e.g. glamour, high quality and
modernity (cf. Bhatia, Ritchie 2004; Dąbrowska 2020, 2022b; Haarmann 1989;
Kelly-Holmes 2000, 2005). This approach supports marketers’ desire to create brand
awareness and develop a positive attitude to the product in the first place, an
adequate comprehension of the message, however, appears to be of secondary importance to them (cf. Gerritsen et al. 2000). The use of foreign languages in advertising
is, therefore, often investigated in respect of their symbolic value (cf. Haarmann
1989; Santello 2016). More recently, the question of identity construction of the
addressees of advertising (Li 2015; Piller 2001, 2003) combined with the investigation of lifestyles that consumers aim for (cf. Vestergaard, Schroder 1985) has
been incorporated as well. The choice of a language that connotes the values with
which the consumers identify appears to be a natural outcome of such processes too
(Blommaert 2010).
CHOICE OF LANGUAGE(S) IN PUBLIC SIGNS
Regarding the question of language choice in public signs, at an early stage of
LL investigation Spolsky and Cooper (1991) developed a set of rules which, looking
from the point of view of logic, should govern the choice of languages used in those,
and in advertisements in particular (cf. Spolsky 2009). They suggested the following
guidelines for the marketers to follow (Spolsky, Cooper 1991, after Spolsky 2009:
33), viz.:
1. Write a sign in a language you know;
2. Prefer to write a sign in a language which can be read by people you expect to
read it (presumed reader condition);
3. Prefer to write a sign in your own language or in a language with which you
wish to be identified (symbolic value condition).
In view of the current investigation, we could then assume that rule 1 and
2 should act as guidelines; based on these Polish advertisers should opt for the Polish
language in advertisements of events, since the primary recipient of an event to be
delivered in Poland would be a speaker of Polish in the first place. Point 3 brings in
a different dimension, however, i.e. one linked with the sense of identity and the
symbolic value. This, as pointed above, may affect the principles of logic and lead to
the choice of other languages than the native one.
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
25
Ben-Rafael (2009: 48), therefore, postulates some more complex LL principles
of language choice, which, no doubt, in different proportions, appear to inform the
decisions made by advertisers today. These are, respectively:
1. Presentation of self perspective;
2. Good-reasons perspective;
3. Collective identity perspective;
4. Power relation structuration perspective.
It is to be noted that the principles focus on different aspects of the choice which
an advertiser is to consider, and thus they do not always go hand in hand with each
other. For instance, the need to be unique (principle 1) and at the same time a pressure
to reflect the group identity one identifies with (principle 3) may go at cross purposes
as far as advertising is concerned. As Coupland (2010, cf. Pavlenko 2009: 248)
points out, LL may highlight different qualities of contemporary urban experience,
including different manifestations of language conflict. The good reasons perspective
reflects the fact that goods respond “rationally” to the public’s needs and desires and
must “anticipate client’s cost-and-benefit considerations” (Ben-Rafael 2009: 46),6 in
which case the client’s positive attitude to foreign, western products, including
entertainment, may lead to the choice of English instead of Polish. Finally, BenRafael’s last principle, similarly to the guidelines developed by Spolsky and Cooper
(1991), highlights the inequality of power attributed to respective languages. Considering the position which English has attained in the modern world, especially in the
context of entertainment (cf. Crystal 2003; Jenkins 2009) this principle appears to be
particularly relevant to the present investigation.
In this regard it is important to highlight the importance of the context which
informs the decisions made by authors of public signs, in this case advertisers. As
Blommaert (2013: 38) says, “[p]ublic signs both reflect and regulate the structure of
the space in which they operate. Sociological, cultural, sociolinguistic and political
features of that space will determine how signs look and work in that space, and
signs will contribute to the organisation and regulation of that space by defining
addressees and selecting audiences, and by imposing particular restrictions, offering
invitations, articulating norms of conduct and so on to these selected audiences.”
Different countries or communities approach the issue of public signage differently,
as can be seen in the case of the strict Francophone policy about the use of French in
public space in Quebec as opposed to the encouragement of linguistic internationalization in Japan (cf. Backhaus 2009). Following Voloshinov (1929, in Sloboda
2009: 174), it therefore needs to be stressed that the sign is ideological in its nature,
and that ideology is a undeniable quality of the sign. As a result of ideological
changes signs can, therefore, be removed, destroyed, but also replaced or re-indexed,
much as it could be observed in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe after
the fall of communism. Signs not only reflect and index ideology, but also perform it
6
“The LL items should “speak” to the public and focus on actors’ anticipated rational attitudes”
(Ben-Rafael 2009: 48).
26
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
(Sloboda 2009: 176), in other words, the choice of a given language as opposed to
another, e.g. English as opposed to Polish, will highlight the values of the culture or
the ideology (e.g. globalisation) which are to be viewed as dominant and with which
the advertising institutions tend to identify with. The aspect of change is, therefore, to
be highlighted here too as a marker of the dynamic character of public signs (Pavlenko 2009). For instance, following her investigation of LL regarding the visibility of
Russian as opposed to other languages in the post-soviet countries’ LL, Pavlenko
(2009: 254–264) suggested a number of categories of signs identified in her study
and processes lying behind, e.g. language erasure, language replacement, language
upgrading and downgrading, as well as the rise of language regulations. While
language erasure is an extreme measure which will typically apply to areas experiencing some revolutionary political shifts, language replacement as well as language
upgrading and downgrading may be detected in the material to be studied here as
well. For instance, items of advertisements so far always expressed in Polish
(e.g. titles) will increasingly often appear in English instead, while the order of
the language arrangement in the studied texts as well as the size and colour of the
respective items will upgrade or downgrade the importance of the respective
languages used to express them.
In terms of the structure of the textual content of multilingual signs, Reh (2004)
argues that the language distribution in public signs should be analysed from the
point of view of how information is arranged in them. In her view the information
provided in the respective languages may be duplicating, fragmentary, overlapping
or complementary (after Pavlenko 2009: 248). Regarding the study of multilingual
texts, as well as an additional investigation of the multimodal elements in them,
Sebba (2012 [2013]) points out that unfortunately the analysis of written multilingual
texts has not been very frequent to date (unlike the analysis of conversational
exchanges). In his view their systematic study certainly requires understanding of
the local literacy practices, and their visual and spatial aspects are, therefore, an
integral part of their adequate understanding as well. He claims, therefore, that
theories describing code switching, which to some extent resemble, but do not
themselves constitute an analysis of multilingual texts, do not match the written
discourse of posters, advertisements, etc., however, for the lack of an alternative
researchers have largely drawn on from the methodology developed by Blom and
Gumperz (1972) or Myers-Scotton (1993), etc. In Sebba’s view, however, “[a]dvertising (...) is an area where the monolingual norm is sometimes flouted, even in
societies where it is strong in other contexts” (2012[2013]: 6). Recent work on
globalisation and co-modifiction of English offers some helpful perspective in this
respect, especially in the context of analysing advertisements (cf. Backhaus 2006,
2007; Huebner 2006; Hult 2009). Vertovec’s (2006) concept of superdiversity and
Blommaert’s (2010) focus on the use of truncated repertoires in contemporary multilingual spaces appear to create a framework conducive to the analysis of multilingual
written texts.
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
27
VISUAL AND SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT
OF LANGUAGES IN PUBLIC SIGNS
Moreover, spatial arrangements of various language components of public signs
are also of interest to semioticians (Scollon, Scollon, 2003). Multimodality of the
signs, i.e. the prominence of linguistic elements in terms of their font size, their
order, location and colour is equally important to an analysis of LL as their linguistic
content (Pavlenko 2009). Indeed, Sebba (2012 [2013]) claims that multimodal texts
cannot be fully understood if attention is only focused on strictly textual aspects
(cf. Johnson, Milani 2010: 11–12; Lemke 2002; Ventola, Moya Guijarro 2009). For
instance, according to Scollon and Scollon (2003: 122), the preferred language
commonly appears at the top and on the left or in the centre of the pages
(cf. Coupland 2010; Kress, van Leeuwen 1996/2006), which Backhaus (2006,
2007), however, criticizes as a Western approach only. This in turn, indicates that
the interpretation of signs must be conducted with respect to ideological and cultural
context in which the signs are used. Following her analysis of some Norwegian
advertising texts, also Graedler (1999: 337) offers some helpful conclusions regarding the interaction between the various languages found in the analysed texts
and their location there. She observes that “[s]witches in ads are also very often
found in conspicuous positions – almost 90% occupy an initial position as heading,
or a paragraph-final or text-final position in the text, or they are graphically separated
from the text proper. Given the overall discourse function of advertising – to sell
product – and the sales and snob-appeal associated with English world-wide, this is
not surprising.” Interestingly, also Androutsopoulos (2012) has developed the
concept of “English on top” in the spatial arrangement of multilingual texts which
include English.
Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/2006) are pioneers in analyzing multimodality
and the interplay between the text and the image in advertisements (cf. Jewitt 2009;
Kress 2010; Liu 2013). They explicate that ‘[m]ultimodality’ as a term refers to
several types of modes in human communication such as visual, audio, written, oral,
and spatial” (Kress, van Leeuwen 1996, after Pan 2015: 20). There has been an
increased focus on the inclusion of multimodal aspects in research of multilingualism
from various perspectives in the recent two decades, a prominent area of analysis
among which has been the field of applied linguistics and language teaching and
learning (cf. Ainsworth et al. 2023; Dye, Emmorey 2017; Holmström, Schönström
2018; King 2021; Youngjoo et al. 2020). The present paper, however, does not
investigate the use of multilingual texts and their multimodal aspects for educational
purposes. The study of the collected data, kept within the framework of Linguistic
Landscape analysis, focuses on the use and the value of respective languages, and
therefore on the textual aspects in the collected signs. The concept of multimodality
is referenced here as an auxiliary research tool, because the study of the collected
material, as highlighted above, will also investigate some non-textual aspects of the
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MARTA DĄBROWSKA
advertisements, namely, the colour, font, and layout of Polish and English elements
of the texts. Their analysis will add up to the understanding of the role which the two
languages play in the advertisements discussed here, and how they are positioned in
relation to each other. This will, in turn, reveal more clearly the intention of the
advertisers of the events in terms of who the advertisements are directed to and the
value they, symbolically, connote. It is to be remembered that the advertisements
analysed here have been found in the linguistic landscape of a major Polish city, so
their visibility in the public space both reflects and at the same time reinforces the
perception and the role of the two investigated languages in the social context in
which they have been displayed, which is why the understanding of how their
respective position is coded and highlighted in the texts contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms by which such an effect is achieved. According to Sebba
(2012 [2013], cf. Hu and Luo 2016), the investigation of multimodality in the
analysis of multilingual texts has so far been rare, but certainly worth a mention is
the contribution by Stroud and Mpendukana (2009, 2010, 2012) and their “material
ethnography of multilingualism.” To these we can add a few other, more recent
works, e.g. by Rowland (2014), Zabrodskaja and Milani (2014), and very recently
the whole volume edited by Włodarczyk, Tyrkkö and Adamczyk (2023) devoted to
both historical and contemporary investigation of the intersection between multilingualism and different types of modalities.
It is to be reiterated (see above) that the research of texts, including advertisements, which would make use of more than one language has so far typically relied
on the use of code-switching as an analytical framework. However, according to
Sebba (2012 [2013]: 17) the analysis of multilingual texts is different from the
analysis of code-switching, since “while spoken code-switching is essentially onedimensional, involving the juxtaposition of spoken linguistic units from two
languages within a single interactional event, language mixing within multilingual
texts is potentially multidimensional, involving juxtaposition or separation on
both the linguistic and visual dimensions.” In view of the above, Sebba (2012
[2013]: 17–21) stresses the necessity to include in the framework such elements as:
(1) units of analysis, i.e., a) grammatical units, b) genre-specific units relevant to
textual structure and cohesion, e.g. headings, paragraph, and c) visual/spatial
units as e.g. columns, box, frame;
(2) language-spatial relationships – spatial relationship between units containing
a specific language or mixture of languages,
(3) language-content relationship, i.e., the relationship between the content written in various languages, which can be: equivalent (symmetrical matching
monolingual items), disjoint, and overlapping (asymmetrical language-spatial
relationship and disjoint language content relationship) (cf. Reh’s (2004)
typology);
(4) language mixing type (mixed units with more than one language, corresponding to the units analysed in code-switching, and language-neutral units,
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
29
i.e. items which belong to more than one system, like brand and proper
names);
(5) parallel texts (symmetrical matching monolingual units – a visual metaphor
for equality) and complementary texts (asymmetrical language-spatial relationship and disjoint language content relationship) – only suitable for a reader
who can read both languages well.
Sebba’s model is notably very complex and multifaceted, with a primary aim to
thoroughly investigate individual texts (a qualitative analysis). In the present study,
whose objective is to draw conclusions about the frequency of the visibility and as
well as character of the interplay between the two languages, Polish and English, in
the linguistic landscape of cultural outdoor advertising, the focus is firstly quantitatively oriented, and therefore such a detailed description of certain aspects of the
model as the investigation of the use of grammatical units in the investigated texts
(cf. point 1a) or the analysis of language mixing type (cf. point 4), which do not
directly pertain to the LL framework, falls outside the scope of the paper. Therefore,
only selected aspects of Sebba’s model will constitute a foundation for the investigation conducted below. Their purpose will be to present a quantitative analysis of the
above units based on the collected sample of texts in order to observe general
tendencies which are displayed in the researched material.
METHODOLOGY AND DATA
LL as a field has not developed a distinct methodology, being open to both the
descriptive and the critical method of discourse analysis (cf. Budarina 2015). The
following discussion will therefore involve a critical multimodal analysis of advertisements as a genre, in keeping with point 1b and c of Sebba’s (2012 [2013]) model,
in which it will focus on structural elements of the genre. Regarding the structure of
the genre of written advertisements, it has been broadly described as Capture^Focus^Justification, in an attempt to highlight both the verbal and the visual aspects of
the genre (cf. Herman et al. 2022). In order to make the two aspects more distinctive,
Cheong (2004: 165–174) divided the verbal components into, respectively,
Announcement (primary, secondary), Enhancer, Emblem, Tag, and Call-and-Visit
information, while in her view the visual component typically consisted of Lead
(Locus of attention), Complement to the locus of attention, Display (explicit, implicit, congruent, incongruent), and Emblem. In a more traditional approach to the
description of textual components of the advertisement as a genre, however, the
features typically identified are: the headline, body copy, signature, slogan and
testimonial (cf. Delin 2000, after Simpson, Mayr 2010: 34). It is the latter, simpler,
model that will be utilised in the following analysis due to the fact that the multimodal aspects discussed in the paper will only be limited to the size, colour and
location of the textual elements, since the analysis is focused only on aspects of
30
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
multilingualism, therefore the question of images, photographs, their location and
size, etc., as already explained earlier, will not be tackled in this paper. It is important
to point out that the components listed above are more characteristic of product
advertising, and as Simpson and Mayr (2010: 34) observe, not all advertisements
always contain all these five elements. As regards the structure of outdoor advertising, and notably of cultural events, however, my research demonstrates that no
specific studies of this type of advertisements seem to have been conducted from
the linguistic point of view to date. The focus has rather been more on the reception
and effectiveness of the outdoor advertisements, their typology and location,
economic aspects, the use of photography and imagery (cf. Çiftçi, Karabulutlu
2020), etc. In view of this the choice of that broad universal model to describe the
structural components of advertisements appears to be justified in the present context
of analysis as well. The components will be a useful point of reference for the
presentation of the distribution of the two languages in the material discussed below.
An overview of the collected data leads to a conclusion that certain features
appear to be largely missing from outdoor event advertisements, primarily the testimonial and the slogan. Instead, a typical advertisement appears to contain a headline
(name/title of the event), occasionally a subheadline (a sentence of specification
concerning the event or a special guest),7 and a body copy (normally containing
such details as the location and the time, the source of tickets, etc.).8 Compared to the
components typically found in product advertisements, elements like the logo, the
slogan, or the testimonial tend to be missing in the analysed event advertisements and
will, therefore, not be discussed. The focus will, as a result, be placed on the headline, the subheadline as well as the body copy, and will highlight the use of Polish
and English in those. The first level of the analysis will involve the description of
their role and their distribution, and it will broadly be based on some of the categories developed by Sebba (2012 [2013]) already indicated above. The discussion
will, therefore, focus on the equivalent, disjoint and overlapping content in the
textual elements of the advertisement, as well as the advertisement units discussed
above as typical genre elements which may show a tendency to be expressed in one
investigated language or the other. As already explicated, the analysis will also
incorporate elements of multimodality of the advertising texts, looking at the location, size as well as the colour of the English and Polish items in the body of an
advertisement. Once the classification has been completed and typical tendencies
identified, the obtained results will be discussed more broadly as a part of the second
level of the analysis in relation to the role and principles of the LL selection of
languages proposed by Spolsky and Clarke (1991) and Ben-Rafael (2009), presented
7
Cf. Cheong’s (2004) Primary and Secondary Announcement, the most salient parts of the
advertising text (cf. Nugroho 2009)
8
Cf. Cheong’s (2004) Enhancer and Call-and-Visit Information, likely to be combined in outdoor
advertising, as well as Androutsopoulos‘s (2012) heading, bracketing and naming.
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
31
in the initial part of the paper, in order to indentify the underlying ideologies governing the choices made by the advertisers of the respective events.
As regards the study data, after advertisements of other products (though also
with English) have been removed from the collected sample, the material investigated here has been limited to 60 examples of outdoor advertisements of cultural
events, collected in the period between November 2021 and July 2022 in the area of
the city centre of Kraków (approx. 1 km around the Main Square). Following
Sebba’s model (2012 [2013]), a broad overview of the collected sample has led to
the division of the material into disjoint, equivalent, and overlapping/mixed types,
with an addition of the category of complete advertisements in English, the latter
being of special interest in an officially monolingual country like Poland. The overview of the collected material has thus rendered the following numerical results:
• 60 advertisements of cultural and entertainment events in all;
• 10 advertisements composed fully in English – 16.66%;
• 34 disjoint advertisements (both in Polish and English, with different elements in
both) – 56.66%;
• 9 equivalent advertisements (the same information expressed in both languages) – 15%;
• 7 overlapping/mixed advertisements (primarily in Polish, with some elements
also in English) – 11.66%.
ANALYSIS OF DATA
CLASSIFICATION OF ADVERTISEMENTS
1) The first category, i.e., advertisements fully in English, constitutes about a fifth
of the collected material. It is significant that a foreign language text is addressed to
a (at least partly) monolingual Polish audience. Most of such texts are short, consisting of one-two sentences, which are primarily the only items in the advertisement,
with an exclusion of the dates and times of the events as well as locations (these are
to be viewed as neutral text units). The main examples are headlines, e.g. The Show.
A tribute to ABBA; A tribute to Ennio Morricone by Italian Movie Orchestra.
Morricone. Film History; Luis Bravo’s Forever Tango; Scorpion’s songs symphonic
by legendary former drummer Herman Rarebell; Schiller. Support: Michał Łapaj.
Live in Poland; Summer Jazz Festival. 11.07. 2021. 8 pm. Branford Marsalis Quartet; Tiësto at Arena. Support: Agraze as well as Ochman Exclusive. They consist of
mainly the name of the event, sometimes also the institution organizing it. They often
tend to repeat the same title of the event which would be used outside of Poland, in
keeping with the principles of globalization or standardization of foreign brands or
a form of customization of the global models (cf. Kotler et al. 2002).
2) By far the largest group is that of disjoint/complementary items, which constitute more than a half of the collected sample (56.66%). The most salient item in the
32
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
text which tends to be expressed in English is the headline: the title of the event,
which may in itself be the name of the event/performer or performance, or an
additional piece of information about a special guest as well as the institution organising it, viz. the subheadline. The examples include: Patronat Honorowy Jacek
Majchrowski Prezydent Miasta Krakowa. Ireneusz Raś Poseł na Sejm RP. Polish
Grand Prix Kraków 2022. International Cheerleading Championship. 4 czerwca
2022; Guns n’ Roses. Plus Special Guest: Gary Clark. 20 czerwca 2022. PGE
Narodowy. Warszawa; Gregorian Grace; Ladies Night. 23 czerwca 2022; Hotel
Variete. Variete’s Great Revue. Jedyne takie show!; Power of love. Polska. Nowy
reality show; From Poland with Love. Listy do Haralda Szeemanna. Spotkanie
autorskie z Andą Rotterberg. 27.6.2022, godz. 18.; Speaking Concerts. Ostatnie
Requiem czyli M jak Mozart; Kazimerz Summer Festival. Wielke Otwarcie. Sarsa,
Bokka, 2–3 lipca; Visual Concert. Koncert Muzyki Filmowej i epickiej z projekcją
z najpiękniejszych miejsc świata; etc. Most of the time the items expressed in English
are headlines of the advertisements, sometimes also a body copy. They tend to
appear at the top of the advertisement, occasionally centrally and at the bottom,
which makes them the most prominent feature of the text also visually (see below).
3) A very interesting, and in many ways a somewhat specialized group consists
of advertisements with an equivalent meaning provided in the two languages. The
location of the two versions is irregular, but as they provide equivalents of both the
headline: the title of the event, and/or the subheadline: subtitle and the institution, the
texts can come at the top, the centre or the bottom, with pairs of texts in both Polish
and in English. Such an order of the two languages is particularly important to note,
as it seems to be a regularity manifested by all the 9 items out of 60 (15%). Examples
are as follows: Dlaczego obrazy? 25.05–26.06 Why pictures? 25.05–26.06; Powrót
do źródeł / Back to the sources, Duch ukryty w drzewach. Tradycja i kunszt japońskiego ciesielstwa/ Spirit hidden in the trees. The tradition and craftsmanship of
Japanese Carpentry; Niedziela / Sunday, 24.04. 2022, godz. 19.00. Charytatywny
concert dla Ukrainy / Charity concert for Ukraine; Galeria Sztuki polskiej XX i XXI
wieku/Gallery of 20th and 21st century Polish art. Rzeźba / Sculpture, Najwyższa
forma sztuki / The highest form of art; Wtorek/Tuesday; Nowy początek. Modernizm
w II RP / A new beginning. Modernism in the second Polish Republic; 28.06.2022,
19.30. Tajemnice koszernego wina / The secrets of kosher wine. An interesting
observation to be made regarding this category is that such advertisements are in
part advertisements issued by museums or concern cyclical state/city promoted
events, moreover, they tend to provide information about the respective organizing
institutions in the two languages too, viz. Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie. [Gmach
Główny]/The National Museum in Kraków [The Main Building], Muzeum Manggha/
Manggha Museum, Miesiąc Fotografii w Krakowie/Kraków Photomonth, Festiwal
Muzyki Dawnej/Early Music Festival. As shown above, the advertisers here are
particularly careful to put the Polish version of the information first in each of the
analysed cases, and English only afterwards, through which they indirectly indicate
that the dominant language in this case is Polish.
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
33
4) The category of overlapping/mixed advertisements is represented by 7 examples in all (11.66%). Due to their less predictable format and content they are harder
to classify and analyse. They can be illustrated by: Queen symphonic: A rock band
& orchestra. Zmiana daty. 8.6.2022.; Filharmonia dowcipu. Waldemar Malicki.
15 lat / The best of. 14.10.2022 Kraków. Centrum Kongresowe ICE, godzina
18.00; Wydarzenie towarzyszące/ Accompanying event of the: Festiwal Kultury
Żydowskiej. 30.06.2022, 20.00, Alibi Folk, A return to Yiddish World. The Alibi
Sisters. Bilety. Tickets: 50 PLN; XIV Kraków Summer Animation Days. Letnie
pokazy najlepszych światowych animacji / Open air screenings of the best world
animations. Wstęp wolny/free entrance, 15–17 lipca 2022/15–17 July 2022.
Kraków, Plac Wielkiej Armii Napoleona; Kraków Photomonth/Miesiąc Fotografii.
Czwartek. Slava Ukraini! Ramię [w]ramię. R[w]R. Wernisaż 27.05.2022 – 19.00.
Wystawa czynna 27.05.22–26.06.22. Galeria Szara Kamienica Rynek Główny 6,
Kraków. As can be seen, some examples in this category are almost entirely in
English, but with barely one-two items in Polish (e.g. Zmiana daty on the advertisement of Queen’s concert), which, in turn, indicates that the advertisement is
addressed to Poles, after all, otherwise it could have been kept entirely in English. In
other examples most of the information is in both languages, e.g. regarding Kraków
Summer Animation Days, in which, however, beside the parallel texts in English and
Polish, there is the name of the event only in English and the location details
provided only in Polish. Similarly, in the case of the Alibi Sisters’ concert the
practical details (concerning the tickets) and the fact that it is an accompanying
event of the Jewish Culture Festival are in two language versions, whereas the name
of the event is quoted only in English, and the name of the institution and the name
of the festival, surprisingly, only in Polish. A different advertisement, one concerning Filharmonia dowcipu (the ‘Filharmonic of Humour’) provides the whole text in
Polish except for one phrase in English, viz. the best of, written in red, which comes
as a parallel to another phrase in red, but in Polish, i.e. 15 lat (‘15 years’), so they
appear to be a somewhat bizarre pair of counterparts. Overall, however, much like
the complete advertisements in English and also like the disjoint advertisements,
the overlapping category too, implicitly, assumes the knowledge of both languages
on the part of the reader, and, as it is more likely than not that the reader will
be a Pole speaking English, rather than an English person speaking Polish, the
demand is put on Polish recipients to understand another language, not the other
way round.
As the below table shows, in terms of the units which typically appeared in the
analysed material in English, the most frequent section expressed in that language
was the headline of the advertisements, visible in 51/60 (85%) samples analysed.
This ties in well with Graedler’s (1999) and Androutsoupulos’s (2012) analyses, in
whose case close to 90% of the texts which they analysed shared this feature as well.
This, combined with the position of the items and the multimodal aspects to be
discussed below, constitutes the most powerful element of the analysed genre, one
that attracts the reader’s attention in the first place and stays as the most prominent
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MARTA DĄBROWSKA
Table 1. Genre-specific units in English
heading
signature
body copy
item
number
headline
51
subheadline
6
special guest
3
cyclical event
13
institution
5
practical details
10
unit of information after seeing the text. In a significant number of cases (13/60,
22%) the headline is the original headline of an event/concert/etc. which was
composed in English, e.g. Alicia Keys World Tour; The Show. A Tribute to Abba;
Queen Symphonic; International Cheerleading Championship; Dream Theatre. Top
of the World Tour; A tribute to Ennio Morricone. Morricone Film History; Luis
Bravo’s Forever Tango; The Power of Love. Polska; Alibi Folk, A Requiem to
Yiddish World; Home Alone in Concert. John William’s Music; Gregorian Grace;
Scorpion’s Song Symphonic by Legendary Former Scorpions Drummer Herman
Rarebel; Il Divo Greatest Hits Tour, etc. Yet in the case of other events their titles
were no doubt developed locally by Polish advertisers, e.g. Kraków Summer Animation Days; Spartan Race; Ladies’ Night; Kazimierz Summer Festival, Ochman
Exclusive; Speaking Concert; From Poland with Love; Variete’s Great Revue; Silesia of Love; Biogreen Future, Olsztyn Green Festival, Art Festival. The idea appears
to have been inspired by some internationally recognised patterns and customized to
express local meanings (cf. Baumgardner 2008), which as a result gives the events an
international feel.
Some headlines (6%) were also accompanied by subheadlines, as could be seen
in the above examples; viz. The Show. A Tribute to Abba; A tribute to Ennio
Morricone. Morricone Film History; Alibi Folk, A Requiem to Yiddish World; Home
Alone in Concert. John William’s Music. A more conspicuous element in English
was also the name of a broader, often a cyclical event, whose function could be
compared to that of the endorsement in product advertisements. These examples are
represented by The National Museum in Kraków; Summer Jazz Festival Kraków;
Early Music Festival; Restaurant Week; Kraków Photomonth; International Festival
of Independent Cinema; Silent Disco Party; Manggha Museum; Kraków Summer
Animation Days. It has to be noted, however, that these phrases have almost always
been accompanied by a Polish version, unlike the titles of the events (it is to be noted
that the same event/organizers were quoted on a number of posters, too, especially
the National Museum in Kraków and the Kraków Photomonth).
The remaining units were infrequent and constituted elements of the body copy.
Three times an announcement about a special guest appeared, introduced in English,
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
35
viz. (Guns N’ Roses) Plus special guest Gary Clark; (Schiller) Support: Michał
Łapaj; (Tiësto At Arena) Support: Agraze. Another feature that seemed to share
a similar level of importance with that of the heading on many of the posters were
practical pieces of information (viz. Call-and-Visit information), like the time of the
event, the location, and the price, quoted in both English and Polish, or only in
English, viz. Gmach Główny/The Main Building; June 15 2022, Arena Gliwice,
Poland; wtorek/Tuesday, 28.06.2022; niedziela/Sunday 24.04.2022; 15–17 lipca
2022/15th–17th July 2022; Wstęp wolny/free entrance; bilety/tickets: 50 zł; otwarcie/opening: 15.10.2021; Kijów Centrum. 8 pm, 10.07.2021. Here again such items
tended to be paired up with Polish items mentioned parallel with these. In the texts
which belong to the disjoint category of advertisements the practical information,
primarily located at the bottom of the posters, tended to be expressed in Polish,
contrary to the most prominent information in the headline in English. This observation appears to corroborate Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) division of the advertisement’s content into the ideal (the top) vs. the real (the bottom) type of the content.
Although by no means present in all the analysed items, such a division was visible
in 15 (25%) texts.
MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF THE MULTILINGUAL TEXTS
The previous sections have demonstrated a prominent role of English in the
analysed texts, drawing our attention especially to the meanings expressed in
the headlines and in a few additional units of the text discussed above. It now needs
to be added that the multimodal aspects of the textual items of the genre, namely the
colour, size of the font employed to convey the English items, as well as their
location in advertisement, whether alone or in relation to Polish items also may
and do enhance the visibility and prominence of English. It was already highlighted
above that numerous items in English were placed at the top. More precisely, there
were 28/60 (47%) of such items, which makes it close to a half. In such cases English
appeared at the top (the ideal) of the text, occasionally accompanied by some more
items at the bottom as well (11/60, 18.33%). There were also some advertisements
with English at the bottom only (16/60, 27%), most often in the cases where there
was no other text in the advertisement beside that item. The central position of
English units was utilized in 20% of the texts, which enhanced the visibility of
the language used too. The left position was made use of in 20% of the samples
as well, which tends to be a frequent position for European-language items (written
from left to right); this position also conveys what is the given in traditional advertiement structures (cf. Kress, van Leeuwen, 1996/2006), as opposed to the new, yet in
the material analysed here this interpretation does not seem to be confirmed. The
right-hand side position was used only in 10% of the cases.
Moreover, the top position of almost a half of the English units in the text meant
that it could be and in numerous cases was followed by Polish items below, which
36
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
made the latter less visible and less prominent compared to English (noted in 26/60,
43% of cases). A different order could also be found, i.e. first the Polish language was
used and then the English items (10/60, 16% of the items). Such an arrangement was
typically used in equivalent texts, where the original items were in Polish and their
exact counterparts in English followed, which, as already pointed to above, was
especially found on posters displayed by the National Museum of Kraków, the
Manggha Museum, the Galicja Museum, Misteria Paschalia and Kraków Photomonh
advertisements (viz. Tajemnice koszernego wina/The secrets of kosher wine; Plenerowe pokazy najlepszych światowych animacji/Open air screenings of the best world
animations). This approach appears to stress the primary value of Polish, and this time
English assumes a secondary role here, explaining the respective meaning to the
potential foreign recipients of the advertisements. Thus, the function of English here
appears to be different than that on the posters with the headline expressed primarily
or only in English, which attracted the viewers’ attention in the first place with their
worldly connotations. As could be surmised, the cultural institutions listed above
appear to stress the utilitarian function of English, whereas other advertisers explore
its symbolic function and international connotations. Finally, the order Polish-EnglishPolish was also found in the analysed sample, though only in 5/60 (8.3%) items.
Additionally, an examination of the size of the fonts was conducted. A broad
overview of this aspect demonstrated that in 26/60 (43%) of the cases the fonts used
for English items were bigger than in the Polish words used in the texts. In quite
a few advertisements the size of the fonts for the two languages (19/60, 32%) was the
same. In some, however, it was genuinely the same (4/60, 6.66%), in others – the size
was the same but not the colour, or else the bold vs. the regular font type options
were explored. Only in 12/60 (20%) of the cases the font of the English words was
smaller, for instance in the advertisements of the Art Festival. Wiele Kultur; Olsztyn
Green Festival, Nowy początek. Modernizm w II RP or Ochman Exclusive, which
diminished the prominence of English to an extent.
Additionally, it is interesting to observe that only five types of colours (with two
individual exceptions, brown and green) were used to mark the English words.
Though the distribution cannot be generalized in view of the limited sample of texts,
it has to be said that the most typical colour used was white (19/60, 32%), at times
with no difference between English and Polish, and sometimes differing in size and
shape. Then the second most visible colour of the fonts was black (17/60, 28%),
followed by a very visible colour of numerous headings which was yellow (13/60,
22%). Red was used less often (8/60, 13%), yet in such cases the English text was
especially conspicuous. The last colour, the neutral blue, appeared in only 5/60 (8%)
of the items.
According to Strużycki and Heryszek (2007: 57, after Peszko 2016: 102),
various colours have different associations and use in advertising. It may therefore
be of help to briefly quote their observations here for reference, though no doubt
a much more systematic study of the collected material would be needed in this
respect to prove or disprove their claims. In their view white is associated with
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
37
personality, maturity, independence and purity; black connotes luxury, sophistication
and mystery; yellow is viewed as an encouragement to act and try, attracts attention,
and stimulates; red, in turn, indicates power of experience, is full of life, increases
activity; while blue, in turn, brings calm, cool and relaxation.
DISCUSSION
The analysis presented above adds a new perspective on the visibility and use of
English in Polish discourse of advertising, in this case outdoor advertising of cultural
events. English in Polish advertisements has so far, though altogether infrequently,
been researched mainly from the point of view of Anglicisms used there (ranging
from one-word borrowings to full texts), their frequency, form, and role (cf. e.g.,
Bulawka 2006; Griffin 1997; Tobolova 2012; Wieluniecka 2010) or else it has been
investigated in respect of the readers’ perception of the use of English in such
contexts (cf. Dąbrowska 2022b; Planken et al. 2010). The present paper offers an
innovative approach to the visibility of English in Polish advertising, and for the first
time to the linguistic landscape of outdoor advertisements of specifically cultural
events, due to the fact that it sees the analysed material as a multilingual text, not
a monolingual one marked by the use of loans or code-switching in it. Such an
approach also indirectly reflects the phenomenon of a newly developing multilingualism in certain realms of language use in Poland. The analytical framework applied
here, informed largely by Sebba’s (2012[2013]) research model, and used earlier
with reference to the visibility of English in advertisements in other socio-cultural
contexts (cf. Graedler (1999) for Norway, Martin (2007) for France, Androutsopoulos (2012) for Germany) offers thereby a broadened perception of such practices
across different cultures and allows us to compare the strategies used in Polish
advertising discourse, both at the level of language and the use of multimodal
aspects, with those identified in other countries. As the results discussed above have
already highlighted, the use of English at the top of the advertisement in 47% of the
studied texts, and in 43% of the cases additionally marked by a bigger font than that
used to convey Polish items corresponds to parallel findings concerning other
languages affected by the dominant position of English and its symbolic value in
the advertising domain. Such results also indirectly point to a somewhat downgraded
role of Polish in contemporary outdoor advertisements of cultural events (cf. Pavlenko 2009). An important outcome of the study, however, is the identification of
a relatively small, yet noticeable group of advertisements put up by state cultural
institutions (16% of the research material) in which it is Polish that consistently
comes first and only then is it followed by the equivalent meaning conveyed in
English. This, in turn, may be viewed as a strategy used to counteract the growing
visibility of English that consequently leads to a diminished value of Polish in the
advertising discourse.
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MARTA DĄBROWSKA
When looking at the collected material from the point of view of the rules first
identified by Spolsky and Clarke (1991) as far as the choice of the language in an
advertisement is concerned, it may be deduced that some violation of their principles
can be observed in the analysed material, which possibly reflects some more general
trends obtaining in the contemporary world. While there is no ground to undermine
principle 1 (“write a sign in a language you know”), as the texts appear to be
formulated correctly, no matter whether in Polish or in English, principle 2 seems
to be somewhat abused, which can be supported by occasional critical comments of
participants of some cultural events in Poland offered only in English.9 Most
certainly, it is principle 3, however, that dominates in the majority of the posters,
as one can see that the symbolic value condition, i.e. the implicit need of advertisers
to be identified with the global trends, cannot be undermined. When examining the
material from the point of view of Ben-Rafael’s (2009) principles, one may observe
certain further complications and internal conflicts in the material discussed here. No
doubt the need to present oneself in a unique way in order to be noticed and to sell
the product dominates in the use of English when it comes to commercial undertakings. However, the need to adjust to the collective, and thus the Polish, identity
may be especially pronounced in the advertisements of cultural institutions, especially museums, which may be more restricted in their freedom of language selection
and use. Hence perhaps their upfront care about the Polish language that comes to the
fore, which is marked by putting Polish first, and English only as a translation. The
good reasons principle may surface itself particularly in the case of copying foreign
models and retaining the original texts when following the principles of globalisation
and internationalization with which the viewers may want to associate and are in
need of. It is, however, in all the three cases, hard to deny the fact that the power
structuration relation perspective, which corroborates Spolsky and Clarke’s (1991)
last rule, seems to dominate. English is a language of high status in the world, also in
Poland, and its status informs its frequent appearance and various functions it
performs. Only the category of equivalent advertisements shows an interesting deviation from the overall hegemony of English. In principle, it acknowledges its visibility
in the world, yet, through the order of the Polish and only then the English phrases as
well as the same font size and colour it skillfully indicates that there is a local norm
to adhere to and thereby it contests the global hegemon.
9
The critical attitude to the use of English only in some cultural contexts may be illustrated by the
following complaint: “To już jakaś mania, że każdy musi znać angielski!” [‘It is already some kind of
a mania that everyone must know English!’], which a viewer of a Film Music Festival concert of John
Powell’s music in Kraków in May 2022 that was entirely conducted in English left on the FMF Facebook
website. To this criticism the organizers responded as follows: “Język angielski jest uznawany za
międzynarodowy, dlatego podjęliśmy decyzję o nietłumaczeniu” [‘English is considered to be an
international language, which is why we chose not to interpret (it)’].
ENGLISH IN POLISH OUTDOOR ADVERTISING. A LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE ANALYSIS...
39
CONCLUSION
The above analysis has focused on advertisements of cultural events in Poland as
an aspect of the study of linguistic landscape. The above findings, based on a limited
sample of texts, but one that reflects current trends in the analysed genre adequately,
demonstrate that English as a global language, the language of entertainment, has
quietly but firmly established its presence in the Polish culture and entertainment,
including its use in the advertising discourse of events. The role of English in the
analysed texts seems to be particularly that of attracting people’s attention to the
events and stressing their global, and possibly therefore supreme quality indicated by
phrasing the names of the events in English. English then seems to be gradually
replacing Polish in the headlines of respective events, possibly at the same time
downgrading Polish as less effective in this respect (cf. Pavlenko 2009). The dominant role of English is often additionally enhanced by the position of the headline,
being placed at the top of the page (47% of the texts), as well as the colour and
infrequently the size of the font. Other elements in English vary as regards the
subheadlines as well as body copy, i.e. in respect of the practical information
provided there. Organising institutions and cyclical events also quite often (22%
of the items) choose to be named in English or give their names in both languages
in order to highlight their international character.
Although most of the events are advertised in a big city like Kraków, it should
not be assumed that the overriding reason for the use of English there is an attempt to
reach an international audience visiting the place. The category of disjoint as well as
overlapping advertisements indicates that the readers must know Polish too to be
able to understand the full message adequately. It is therefore not the utilitarian
purpose of English that comes to the foreground here, although this function may
be dominant in the case of the complete advertisements composed in English, some
of which reflect the original foreign models and are a product of globalisation and
customisation. It is rather Ben-Rafael’s (2009) sense of unique presentation of self in
order to attract as many viewers/attendees as possible. However, providing the Polish
text at the same time appears to point to the need to uphold one’s collective identity
too. An overriding principle found in the majority of the texts analysed in this study
seems to be, therefore, the need to join the global trend of using English in the
entertainment context. Institutions like museums, however, seem to have developed
a different strategy of tackling the global fashion, by using Polish and English with
exactly the same meaning, in this very order, and without any special effects which
would foreground the English text (on the contrary, sometimes English is written in
a less conspicuous manner). This sub-trend is therefore to be noted, and possibly to
be recognized as a manifestation of a tacit resistance to the dominant global trend. As
may then be concluded, introducing English everywhere as a language of international communication does not necessarily find general approval in the world
(cf. Dąbrowska 2022b), and this feeling of ambivalence is also to be sensed, both
explicitly, and as some of the examples demonstrate here, also implicitly, in Poland.
40
MARTA DĄBROWSKA
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