Expanding the scope for research on global English-language advertising

Language contact phenomena of English use in global advertising are usually analysed within the framework of world Englishes or linguistic hybridity for an examination of language contact and change, borrowing, hybridization, bilingual creativity, language attitudes, functions, and others. The insights of postcolonial performativity, however, suggest reconsidering the theoretical grounding for studying English use at the transnational level in diverse genres of different sociolinguistic communities around the world. This article posits a new direction for studying the use of English in global advertising. The high level of variation and complexity observable in many aspects of English use is assumed to be germane to, and constantly mediated through language ideologies that are often diverse, complex, unstable and even conflicting.