Aim:

This paper examines bilinguals’ retention of a television (TV) advertisement in their second language (L2) to test whether L2 competence, liking for the advertisement, and involvement with the advertised product cause a change in L2 retention.

Methodology:

An experiment exposed 304 Chinese–English bilinguals to audio-visual advertisements that were technically (e.g. similar executions) and linguistically alike (e.g. discourse with similar ratios of ‘content words-to-grammatical lexicon’) in their native language (L1; control) and L2 (treatment).

Data and analysis:

Content analysis of four unstructured items operationalised L2 advertisment memory by ranking retention scores from 0 to 4. We performed t-tests (with Cohen’s d) and F-tests to compare retention across the levels of independent variables.

Findings:

L2 proficiency did not facilitate meaning-deduction from within context, but the length of bilinguals’ residence did, indicating that subjects linguistically adapt to their L2 environment in time. Content features (e.g. message clarity) increased liking for the L2 advertisment while execution (e.g. music) increased L2 advertisement memory. Involvement with the advertised product did not affect L2 retention.

Originality:

Print stimuli use has limited the utility of earlier findings from research on advertising to bilinguals for exercising one language skill (i.e. L2 reading). The use of audio-visual stimuli to exercise concurrently L2 listening and reading skills have been rare despite the increased consumption of TV advertisements through online video-sharing platforms.

Implications:

When designing audio-visual inputs for bilinguals, ‘what’ (i.e. content) hardly matters in relative to ‘how’ (i.e. execution) unless bilinguals orient themselves to the natural contexts of their L2 settings. Firms in bilingual markets can optimise their communicative (e.g. belief reinforcement or creating awareness) and behavioural objectives (e.g. sales) by provoking the peripheral processing of their straightforward messages using appeals (e.g. music, emotional, and animated visuals) for longer retention among their non-native-speaker targets.

中文翻译：

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保留第二层电视广告：中英双语者的实验

目标：

本文研究了双语者以其第二语言（L2）保留电视（TV）广告的情况，以测试L2的能力，对广告的喜好以及对广告产品的参与是否会导致L2保留率的变化。

方法：

一个实验使304名中英文双语者接触了视听广告，这些广告在技术上（例如，类似的执行方式）和语言上都相似（例如，话语中“内容词与语法词典”的比率相似）以其母语（L1；对照）和L2（治疗）。

数据与分析：

通过将保留分数从0到4进行排名，对四个非结构化项目进行L2广告记忆的内容分析。我们进行了t检验（使用Cohen d）和F检验，以比较自变量水平上的保留。

发现：

第二语言水平并不能促进从上下文中推断出意思，但是双语者的居住时间确实可以，这表明受试者在语言上会及时适应他们的第二语言环境。内容功能（例如，消息清晰度）增加了对L2广告的喜好，而执行（例如，音乐）则增加了L2广告的存储量。参与广告产品不会影响L2保留率。

独创性：

印刷品刺激的使用将早期研究结果的用途从广告研究限于双语者用于锻炼一种语言技能（即L2阅读）。尽管通过在线视频共享平台增加了电视广告的使用量，但很少使用视听刺激来同时锻炼L2听力和阅读技能。

含义：

在为双语人员设计视听输入时，除非双语人员将自己定向到其L2设置的自然环境，否则“什么”（即内容）与“如何”（即执行）无关紧要。双语市场中的公司可以通过利用吸引力（例如音乐，情感和动画视觉效果）激发直接信息的外围处理，从而优化其交流能力（例如增强信念或建立意识）和行为目标（例如销售），从而在非企业中保持更长的保留时间。 -母语使用者目标。