English as a Cultural Index: Codeswitching in Italian Advertising

Codeswitching has been studied mainly as a speech phenomenon, particularly with reference to immigrant communities. This thesis, however, explores the phenomenon of codeswitching in a written environment, namely Italian magazine advertisements. In many Italian advertisements the native language is intermingled with the English code. In the last century, English has gained the status of being a global language, thus becoming the international language of communication. However, as Cheshire and Moser point out in “English as a Cultural Symbol: The Case of Advertisements in French-Speaking Switzerland,” English is used not only as a communication tool, but also as a “cultural symbol,” “as a sign in itself” (1996:451). Following their study of English in French-Swiss advertising, and using the Peircean term “index,” this thesis focuses on the cultural indexing of the English codeswitching employed in Italian advertisements. The high occurrence of English code in the signature lines of the ads supports the hypothesis that English is being used as cultural index. The results of my research show that the cultural indexing of the English code in the Italian magazine ads has two purposes: (a) to create a direct index to the United States, its culture, its economy, and technological advances; and (b) to evoke the prestige and international appeal from stereotypes of the United States that have become attributes of citizens of the world.

Thesis Author: Cummaudo, Maria Gaetana

Year Completed: 2001

Committee Members: Alan Manning, Cinzia D. Noble

Thesis Chair: Cynthia Hallen