Abstract The use of foreign language in advertisement is common and, sometimes, inevitable in the globalization era. Indonesia experiences no exception. As more international relations take place both in the forms of imported products, services and cultures, English as a foreign language has become more wide-spread in Indonesia, especially in the fields of marketing and entertainment. Being a multilingual country, Indonesia has hundreds of local languages on top of its official, national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Therefore, it is very interesting to see the use of English in print advertisements.
According to Setiono (2002) in The Jakarta Post Indonesians tend to use English due to four reasons, three of which are from the linguistic perspectives and the last is social point of view: (1) the unavailability of Indonesian vocabulary that is equivalent English words used, (2) inadequacy or inability of the vocabulary to present the equal meaning used in English, and (3) demands for immediate understanding in certain felds. While in sociolinguistic perspective, is concerned with the euphimistic purpose.
This study focuses more on the sociolinguistic aspect, how and for what purposes English vocabulary are borrowed in advertisements, especially in the form of street banners. First, it tries to see the groups of products and services that use English-loan words in their ads. For products, there are five groups: fashion, food and beverage, vehicles, electronic and housing. For services there are three groups: education, cellphone/internet provider and entertainment. In this step, the quantifying results can show which group use English vocabulary the most and which the least. The next focus it to create inventory of English-loan words used in the ads. Piller (2001) and Gao (2005) believe that the use of English in bilingual setting is related to identity construction. Therefore, this study also tries to classify the use of English in the narration into five categories of motivations as suggested by Piller (2001), i.e.: (1) international orientation, (2) future orientation, (3) success orientation, (4) sophistication, and (5) fun orientation.