English in advertising in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

AbstractIn the last few decades, the linguistic landscape in Lubumbashi, the second largest and most economically important city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has grown into a big mosaic of languages and colors as many Anglophone mining and trade multinationals established themselves and implanted their foreign identities. For example, of the more than 1,000 advertisements counted in a small section of the city centre, English numbered up to more than 40% of them. Yet, English has remained alien in the country's everyday transactions. The main reason for its presence is that it has become a ‘global language’ (Crystal, 1997), spreading to ‘nearly every corner of the earth’ (Sonntag, 2003, p. xi). The main functions played by this mixture in which English plays a prominent role is to serve for cloning (or pirating), commercial purposes, corporate identity, cosmopolitanism, hybridization, imitation, and snobbism. This ubiquity of English is in sharp contrast with the infinitesimal use of English in intra‐national transactions.