Market forces are widely acknowledged to be at the heart of globalizing forces, and any consideration of how globalization affects language and vice versa requires an in-depth examination of the relationship between languages and markets. Despite this, the disciplines of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have an uneasy relationship with markets. The hegemony of market processes and their negative outcomes has, it could be argued, become a commonsense assumption in the academic treatment of the subject. The aim of the current volume is to challenge this assumption. The book takes the market as its common starting point, and examines, in a large number of individual contributions, the sociolinguistic inputs and fall-out from market processes, using a variety of different methodological approaches and various contexts and case studies. These cases range from a call centre in India to an industrial development agency in the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht, with genres ranging from Sami rap music to corporate mission statements. The book is intentionally interdisciplinary, including perspectives from management and economics, media and communications studies, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, and cultural studies.

Advertising has traditionally communicated messages with strong local and national identities to consumers. Increasingly, though, products, producers, advertising agencies and media are becoming internationalized. In the development of strategies that appeal to a large multinational consumer base, advertising language takes on new "multilingual" features. The author explores the role of advertising language in this new globalized environment from a communicative theory point of view, as well as from a close linguistic analysis of some major advertising campaigns within a multicultural and multilingual marketplace.

Advertising has traditionally communicated messages to consumers with strong local and national identities. However, increasingly, products, producers, advertising agencies and media are becoming internationalized. In the development of strategies that appeal to a large multinational consumer base, advertising language takes on new 'multilingual' features. The author explores the role of advertising language in this new globalized environment, from a communicative theory point of view, as well as from a close linguistic analysis of some major advertising campaigns within a multicultural and multilingual marketplace.