ABSTRACT
In 1998, an article appeared in The New York Times about a German newspaper company, Berliner Morgenpost, that had just launched a major advertising campaign in its drive to become the leading newspaper in Berlin and, it was hoped, in the new capital of Europe (Cohen, 1998). Surprisingly, the advertisers settled on an English slogan, not a German one, for their campaign, even though the newspaper is published in German. The slogan, “Simply the Best,” was borrowed from the song by American pop singer Tina Turner. The company’s marketing manager reportedly felt that the slogan was “young, fresh, simple and [was] sure to get people talking. German words are just too long.” Cohen, a writer for The New York Times, explained the significance of the slogan, given that the German translation, “Einfach besser” was really not longer at all:
English, of course, is advancing everywhere, propelled by the Internet and the dominance of American popular culture. It is the most widely studied foreign language in German schools, where most children start learning it at age 11. But its advance has been particularly marked here [in Berlin], strong enough to set off a debate on what it is to be a German. (p. 1)
The German newspaper saw English as crucially linked to its own ambitions as well as those of the city and country within the new Europe. This advertising campaign illustrates the changing, and thus sometimes socially un-settling, role of English in corporate, educational, and popular cultures
in various parts of the world, particularly in times of socioeconomic and political transition. English, like pop culture, can be a unifying factor or an alienating, segregating factor across groups and across generations (e.g., Duff, 2002); both have the potential to provide access to cultural information and to social interactions or to serve as formidable obstacles or barriers to social progress and integration.
