Unpacking Sixty Years of Research on Foreign Languages in Advertising: Inspiration from Linguistics for Consumer Language Research

Jos Hornikx and Frank van Meurs

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2026, vol. 11, issue 2, 214 - 226

Abstract: There is a growing interest in the role of language in consumer research. This article reviews 60 years of research on one specific topic in this area, foreign languages in advertising. It documents the language strategies, theory clusters, topics, and methods in 125 articles, and compares linguistic research with marketing research. This comparison shows that marketing-oriented research can benefit from two distinguishing characteristics of linguistic research: foreignness as an important language strategy, and ”language as a symbol” as a theory cluster. More concretely, the results of this article contribute to advancing consumer language research by offering linguistic insights for brand name translation strategies, and by presenting a framework for generating new research ideas on linguistic complexity. Finally, for the broader domain of consumer research, we present implications for research on brand associations as well as research on consumer identity and consumption.

Date: 2026
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