How do contemporary social identities evolve in a globalized marketplace? This research examines the construction of identities in multilingual advertising, focusing on a corpus of German advertisements from 1999. Observing a shift from political identities based on citizenship to economic identities centered on global consumerism, the study notes a parallel move from monolingual to multilingual, English-dominant advertising practices. The analysis reveals that 60–70% of advertisements released on German television networks and in national newspapers in 1999 were multilingual. The subject positions created by multilingual narrators and narratees are characterized through the lens of Bakhtinian dialogism and point-of-view theory. The study investigates the acceptance or resistance to these identity constructions outside commercial advertising by examining multilingualism in nonprofit and personal advertising. Across these various discourses, German–English bilingualism is valorized as the strongest linguistic currency for the German business elite. This research provides valuable insights into how advertising shapes social identities in an increasingly globalized and multilingual world, with implications for understanding the interplay between language, culture, and consumerism.
Published in Language in Society, this study aligns with the journal's focus on the interplay between language and social structures. By examining identity construction in multilingual advertising, the paper contributes to the understanding of how language shapes social identities and power dynamics. This research is significant for the journal's audience of sociolinguists, communication scholars, and social scientists interested in language and society.