Toothpaste advertisement in Thailand
This example of commodified bilingualism in advertisement
is the toothpaste (牙膏)advertisement in Thailand. The producer used two kinds of
languages in the advertisement, which are English and sign language and the
artists inside spoke Thai. The advertisement has been translated into two
languages, which are English and Korean and both three versions used English as
the lyrics, which showed again English is the dominant language in our world
and the companies tend to use it as a tool to increase the amount of the
consumers and build up a globalized image to its products.
Moreover, we can see
there is a kind of language that merely appear in advertisement, which is sign
language. Sign language is only a minority language in the world and only a few
people use it. I think the reason why producer used sign language (手語) in the toothpaste
advertisement was that he or she may want to fragment the dominant ideology in
society. As the mainstream think that sign language is only the common language
of the disables and not useful for the normal people. I think the producer was
in an attempt to distribute message of the advertisement through sign language
in order to fragment the dominant ideology. Moreover, using a minority language
in the advertisement can attract more audience and crave deep image to the
consumers. To sum up, the language mixing and the use of minority language in
this toothpaste advertisement not only increase its own goodwill around the
globe, but also fragment the dominant ideology.
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeAhnagJdcA
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