THE EFFECT OF MOTHER TONGUE AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDE IN PROCESSING CANTONESE AND MANDARIN ADVERTISEMENTS

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1 THE EFFECT OF MOTHER TONGUE AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDE IN PROCESSING CANTONESE AND MANDARIN ADVERTISEMENTS Fang Liu, Dick Mizerski and Kim Kirsner University of Western Australia Track: Marketing in International and Cross-Cultural Environments Key Words: Effect, Language, Cantonese, Mandarin, Advertisement Abstract The complicated language situation in China presents major challenges for advertising in that country. Most Chinese people are bilingual as they use both Mandarin (official spoken language) and their local language (i.e. Cantonese) in daily life. There is, however, no empirical study on the relative effects of these two types of languages on advertising. This paper explores the effects of a person s mother tongue and their language attitude toward the mother tongue and their official language on their processing of radio advertisements. This study found that the effects of mother tongue and language attitude both influence processing of the ads. The effect of mother tongue is stronger than the effect of language attitude on memory. However, the effect of mother tongue does not significantly influence the affect or liking of the ad. 1.0 Introduction With one of the world s fastest-growing per-capita discretionary personal income, 1.28 billion people, and membership in the World Trade Organization, China s huge market potential is being increasingly targeted by international marketers. Although China offers a huge potential, it is a very difficult country in which to develop advertising campaigns. China has many unique economic, social, cultural and language differences within its borders. This paper focuses on China s unique language situation and its implications for advertising. 2.0 Language Situation in China and Advertising Challenges China has more than 80 different dialects or languages. Although more than 98% of the people in China use languages that involve one language family (Han Language Family), that family has now evolved into a number of different languages, many of which are mutually unintelligible (Liu et al, 2001). In practice, many of the spoken languages are no more similar to each other than English and French, or even English and Hindi. A universal writing system has been adopted for all of the Chinese languages and dialects since the PRC was founded. All groups can read the same text even though they will generally use different spoken forms. The government also made Mandarin the official spoken language in 1950, and children usually start to learn Mandarin when they begin their primary education at 6-7 years old. However, local languages are still used by the vast majority of Chinese in their daily life, and often more frequently than Mandarin. Therefore, almost all Chinese are at least bilingual, if not multilingual in their use of language (Liu et al, 2001). Radio is an important medium in China. The radio medium covers 93.2% of the population in PRC, about the same coverage as TV (Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, 2003). People in Guangdong Province were reported to spend significantly longer time listening to radio than watching TV or reading newspapers (Guangdong Bureau of Statistics, 1998). Due to Radio s broad reach and much lower expense than TV, radio is one of the most popular advertising media in China. Marketing in International and Cross-Cultural Environments Track 1483

2 The complicated language situation in China presents challenges for advertising in China. There is no empirical research demonstrating whether the local language(s) or Mandarin is more effective in advertising. In China, local language(s) and Mandarin are both used in TV advertising and radio advertising, often following one another in a programme. According to Mr Luo from Guangzhou Radio, advertisements in Guangzhou Radio s everyday program is run about 60% in Cantonese compared to 40% of made in Mandarin. For stations that cover more rural areas, the percentage could be much higher-about 80%-90% in Cantonese and 10-20% in Mandarin. The situation is similar in other provinces and areas. 3.0 Language Effects on Advertising Languages reflect different cognitive principles that affect information processing (Sridhar 1989). In multilingual speech communities, members often share receptive competence in more than one language but vary greatly in their relative ability to speak them (Muriel 1989). From the literature on bilingual research, it is clear that information-processing will be more effective when received in the audience s stronger language-usually their mother tongue. 3.1 Memory& Processing Efficiency A variety of research (e.g. Roslow & Nicholls, 1996) indicates that US Hispanic bilinguals may use significantly different processing strategies and/or prefer to process different types of ad claims depending on the language in which the material is presented. Their research has also found that information-processing will be more effective in the stronger (Spanish) mother tongue language. Perhaps that is why these bilinguals tend to prefer to communicate in Spanish. Bellenger and Nabetter (1982) found that Hispanic shoppers, who were also proficient in English, still preferred dealing with Hispanic salespeople because they believed they could communicate better with the latter. Dolinsky (1984) found that Hispanics, even if very proficient in their non-dominating language of English, may still have difficulty processing consumer information when the information is presented in English. Roslow and Nicholls (1996) also found that Hispanic bilinguals in US are more likely to assimilate more information when communicating in their mother tongue of Spanish. Moreover, the use of Spanish is more effective in terms of engaging people in creative, associative and imagery-laced interpretations. Finally, Hispanics assume they are more likely to make better choices when product information is provided in their mother tongue language of Spanish (Roslow & Nicholls 1996). Most people in China are more fluent in their mother tongues (i.e. Cantonese) than in Mandarin (Zhuan 1995). Past Research (Liu et al, 2001) on Cantonese bilinguals (with Cantonese as mother tongue and Mandarin the second language) found that they are more proficient in Cantonese than Mandarin. Nearly 80% of the Cantonese-speakers reported that they were very fluent in their mother tongue of Cantonese, while only 43% of them believe that they were very fluent in Mandarin. In a Chinese language study, Zhang (1996) found that local languages (or dialects) are better for idealization, which means ideas and thoughts can be more clearly expressed in the local language than the official language of Mandarin. Sha (1996) found that the speed of processing information was greatly affected by whether the mother tongue or the official language of Mandarin was used in the conversation. For example, the Minnanese bilinguals (with Minnanese language as mother tongue and Mandarin as second language) showed slower information processing when speaking ANZMAC 2003 Conference Proceedings Adelaide 1-3 December

3 in Mandarin (Sha 1996). It would be expected that when Cantonese bilinguals hear advertisements in their mother-tongue of Cantonese, they will remember and process more information, and form more favourable judgements about the products, due to their proficiency in Cantonese. 3.2 Affect Another function that language provides is to express feelings. It does this through meaning and sounds (Yu, 1995). When a word s meaning remains the same, different sounds (phonetics) can still prompt different feelings. The strength of the feeling, and whether it is favourable or unfavourable, appears to depend on the language attitude of the person hearing the message. It is reported that Hispanic-English bilinguals usually have different emotional feelings towards the two languages (i.e. Spanish & English). Roslow and Nicholls (1996) found that the mother tongue is more effective in terms of eliciting feeling and motivation than a language (e.g., English) learned later in one s life. In Pavlou s (1995) study on Cyprus broadcasting, he found that multi-dialectal society s local dialect had more emotional appeal to the speakers of that speech community. Luna and Peracchio (2001) found that the words in Spanish had a greater tendency to elicit emotion because they better explained the Hispanic cultural concepts. Favouring the local language with more favourable outcomes may be caused by its familiarity. Familiarity has been regarded as one important reason that words prompt positive feelings (Zajonc, 1968). It has been found that people will feel more favourable towards something that they are more familiar. Because the local language of Cantonese is still the dominating language for Cantonese bilinguals living in the province, they are more familiar with their mother-tongue of Cantonese. Therefore, it would be expected that Cantonese bilinguals would have a more favourable attitude towards Cantonese than towards Mandarin. If that was the situation, they would have a more favourable attitude towards advertisements in Cantonese than that in Mandarin. 3.3 Language Attitude Language attitude has been studied widely in sociolinguistics and has been a major field of study for over 30 years (c.f., Agheyisi and Fishman 1970; Cooper and Fisherman 1973). Spoken language is seen as an identifying feature of membership in a national or cultural group. Sociolinguists believe that a listener s attitude towards members of a particular group would be expected to generalize from the language that group uses. Ferguson (1959) found that most mother-tongue groups positively value their first language, but the positive features may vary from group to group. Language attitude can be used to reflect interethnic attitudes, in other words, stereotypes are associated with people in a particular speech community. An attitude towards a language can also influence the persuasiveness of that particular language (Agheyisi and Fishman 1970) through its emotive capabilities. Albonetti and Dominguez (1989) claimed the emotive powers of the mother-tongue are not quickly diluted, no matter what degree of assimilation. More recently, Koslow, Shamdasani and Touchstone (1994) claimed that Hispanic bilinguals in the US like the Spanish-language advertising better than the English-language advertising. We can infer, from the above discussion, that the effect of mother tongue and language attitude are intricately related to each other. Most previous research found that respondents tend to have a more favourable attitude towards their mother tongue than any second language. However, it is not clear whether this would happen to the Cantonese bilinguals in Marketing in International and Cross-Cultural Environments Track 1485

4 China. In order to explore the possible different effects that one s mother-tongue and attitude toward a second language may have in an audience s processing of advertising, an experiment was developed. It is hoped that this study can help advertisers to better understand how people respond to advertisements in different languages in places where more than one language is used (such as Puerto Rico, USA-Mexican Border, Anglo-Franco speakers in Canada, to just name a few). 4.0 Methodology A series of 45-minute experiments were conducted in Guangzhou, the Capital of Guangdong Province in Southern China in late 2002 and early A total number of n=191 Cantonese bilinguals (with Cantonese as mother tongue and Mandarin as second language) were selected. The convenience sample was collected at several locations in the city in order to obtain a cross-section of the population. In each experiment, one or more subjects were exposed to a 5-minute prerecorded radio news program that had a number of short radio advertisements embedded in the middle of the news portion. The taped material was designed by professionals in the radio industry so that it sounded like an actual radio program. The subjects were told to listen to the taped program in a way they would normally listen to radio and then answer questions about the program. The subjects were not told that the purpose of the experiment was about advertisements. When interviewed at the end of each experiment, none of the subjects guessed the true purpose of the experiment, nor that they had been subjects in an experiment. This would tend to rule out possible demand effects in the results. The questionnaire given to subjects measures the program and ad memory and their attitude toward the advertisements, brands and the spokesman for a particular advertisement. Four products were chosen for this study (ice cream, herbal tea, terrapin cake and biscuits) and two ad versions (Cantonese and Mandarin) were made for each product by professionals. The scripts for each ad were pretested. Eight different orderings of the advertisements were used in the experiment to check whether there would be order effects in the presentations of the ads, but none were found. Two different question orders were used to check whether there were ordering effects from the questionnaire, but no effects were found. A scale of 1-5 (1- least favorable and 5- most favorable ) was adopted to measure attitude towards ad., attitude towards brand, ad credibility and buying intention. The scale was pretested with 100 subjects to ensure that the scale was understood and usable by Cantonese subjects. 5.0 Results and Discussions Basic frequency tests were conducted to obtain basic data regarding recall and recognition for each product. Then an average percentage of recall and recognition was obtained across of all products. A Bonfferonie adjustment was applied because of the multiple comparisons to determine if there were significant difference (p<0.05) in recall and recognition when Cantonese bilinguals were exposed to Cantonese ads versus mandarin ads. The same procedure was adopted for testing attitudinal measurements such as attitude towards ad. and attitude towards brand. Therefore, the discussion regards the performance of Cantonese bilinguals across all products. 5.1 Effect of Mother Tongue Figure 1 shows that Cantonese bilinguals do better in all memory measurements including product and brand recall and recognition, if the advertisement is conducted in their mothertongue of Cantonese rather than in Mandarin. However, only aided product recall, product recognition and brand recognition were significantly different (p<0.05). ANZMAC 2003 Conference Proceedings Adelaide 1-3 December

5 Cantonese Bilinguals (n=191)-memory Percentage (%) of the Sample Unaided Figure 1: Memory Measures for Cantonese Bilinguals Cantonese Bilinguals (n=191)-attitude Mean at a scale of Attitude toward Ad (1-5) Attitude towards Ad credibility Buying Intention Figure 2: Attitude Measures for Cantonese Bilinguals Figure 2 shows that Cantonese bilinguals seem to have about the same brand attitude or ad attitude towards the Cantonese and Mandarin audio ad. Therefore, the effect of mother-tongue does not appear to extend beyond memory. When asked about the credibility of the ad, Cantonese bilinguals tend to believe that Mandarin ads were more credible than the Cantonese ads. This may be related to the official status of Mandarin. An official language may be viewed as more formal and credible. 5.2 Effect of Language Attitude A large number of studies have found that one s mother-tongue is favored more than one s second languages. However, the results show that this sample of Cantonese bilinguals tend to have a more favourable attitude toward the official language of Mandarin than their mother tongue of Cantonese (Mean score for Mandarin=3.4; Mean score for Cantonese=3.3 at 1-5 scale). Out of n=191 subjects, n=86 had a more favourable attitude towards Mandarin, while n=76 had a more favourable attitude towards their mother-tongue. Twenty five had the same attitude towards both languages and were deleted from further analyses. T-test has shown that the Cantonese likers and the Mandarin likers were not significantly different in terms of their education (p=0.513) or gender (p=0.722). However, Mandarin likers tended to be younger than the Cantonese likers (p=0.05). Figure 3 and 4 show that both Cantonese likers and Mandarin likers perform better in memory measurements if the ads are in Cantonese. This result offers additional support that Marketing in International and Cross-Cultural Environments Track 1487

6 the mother-tongue effect is more important than the language attitude effect in terms of memory about the ads content. Cantonese Likers (n=76)-memory Percentage (%) of the Sample Unaided Figure 3: Memory Measurements-Cantonese likers ( product recall and recognition are significant: p<0.05) Mandarin Likers (n=86)-memory Percentage (%) of the Sample Unaided Figure 4: Memory Measurement-Mandarin Likers (, and are significant: p< 0.05) However, in attitudinal measures, Cantonese likers and Mandarin likers responded differently to several questions. Cantonese likers had a more favourable attitude to the Cantonese ads across all measurements (See Figure 5). However, the Mandarin likers had a more favourable attitude toward the ad and stronger belief in the ad if it was in Mandarin (See Figure 6. Nonetheless, the Mandarin likers still tended to have higher purchase intention if the ad was in Cantonese. ANZMAC 2003 Conference Proceedings Adelaide 1-3 December

7 Cantonese Likers (n=76)-attitude Mean at a scale of Attitude toward Ad Attitude towards (1-5) Ad credibility Buying Intention Figure 5: Attitude Measurements for Cantonese likers Mandarin Likers (n=86)-attitude Mean at a scale of Attitude toward Ad Attitude towards Ad credibility (1-5) Buying Intention Figure 6: Attitude Measurements for Mandarin-likers 6.0 Conclusion, Limitation and Future Study There are several limitations associated with these findings. This study used a convenience sample so findings may not reflect a generalized picture of the entire Cantonese population in China. We have not studied effects of product category on ad processing. Past empirical research has shown that the audience s personal involvement with a product can strongly affect advertising performance. Shimp (2000) posited that persuasion can be the result of an emotional attitude formation, a cognitive attitude formation, or a combination of both. Cognitive formation is tied to the beliefs or attitudes about a product while the emotional formation is tied to the affect and liking towards the advertisement. This paper has found the effects of mother tongue and language attitude in ad processing. It seems that the effect of mother tongue is stronger than the effect of language attitude on memory. However, mother tongue does not significantly influence the affect or liking of the ad. Marketing in International and Cross-Cultural Environments Track 1489

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