Multilingual viewers’ cultural perceptions of multi-script advertisement design: a Bahraini case-study
Marwa Isa
Supervisors: Dr Caroline Archer-Parré, Dr Colette Jeffrey
This research asks t what extent does the cultural background of a multilingual viewer influence how they perceive the design of multi-script advertisements? It aims to: 1] To trace graphic trends in multilingual advertisements from 1940 to 2000, and to map these historical trends against technological, social and cultural shifts; 2] To investigate the extent to which aspects such as history, language, demographics, and cultural inheritance influence contemporary viewers’ responses to multilingual advertisements; and 3] To consider how a more refined understanding of viewers’ responses to multi-script advertisements can be applied in contemporary designs. The study is structured in a chronological manner. Firstly, it explores the past; secondly the present; and finally, it proposes possible solutions for the future of multilingual advertisements in Bahrain.
In this research the term multi-script advertisements is used to define advertisements that incorporate at least two scripts, these two scripts are English and Arabic. This research will also incorporate advertisements that have two variations of different scripts, an English version and an Arabic version. The term multilingual is used to define a population with the two primary languages being Arabic and English and the third being any of the many languages used in Bahrain. Multilingual was the preferred choice instead of bilingual due to the ethnic diversity in Bahrain that encompasses more languages.
