Recent years have seen nations expend considerable sums of public funds on “nation branding” – campaigns and events which are of interest primarily to the fields of political science, marketing, and public relations... [ view full abstract ]
Recent years have seen nations expend considerable sums of public funds on “nation branding” – campaigns and events which are of interest primarily to the fields of political science, marketing, and public relations (e.g. Anholt 2007; Kaneva 2011). A growing number of studies in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology have started to pay attention to the phenomenon as well (e.g. Graan 2016; Del Percio 2016a), exploring for instance the political economy of nation brands such as Switzerland (Del Percio 2016b). Surprisingly, Germany’s nation branding efforts following unification in 1990 have not been the focus of much research, despite being ongoing for many years and ranked the second most valuable nation brand in the world (cf. http://nation-brands.gfk.com/). This paper represents a case study of its nation branding efforts, focusing in particular on how language(s), diversity, ethnicity, and nationhood are imagined, used, and represented in its campaigns and events. With the continuous influx of immigrants and refugees, neologisms for Germany such as “Schland” (instead of Deutschland), and in view of its recent history, the notion of Germanness remains hotly debated in politics and by the media. Methodologically, this study draws on ethnographic interviews conducted with employees of Germany’s official governmental organization for nation branding, participant observation, and a corpus/discourse analysis of official newsletters and other media campaigns, such as posters and videos. One of the more surprising findings is that the majority of campaigns focus on a domestic audience and aim to portray Germany as an open and diverse country by promoting ethnic diversity, but primarily restrict its language to English.
Anholt, Simon 2007 Competitive Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Del Percio, Alfonso 2016a Branding the Nation: Swiss Multilingualism and the Promotional Capitalization on National History under Late Capitalism. Pragmatics and Society 7(1): 82–103.
2016b Nation Brands and the Politics of Difference. Signs and Society 4(S1): 1–28.
Graan, Andrew 2016 The Nation Brand Regime: Nation Branding and the Semiotic Regimentation of Public Communication in Contemporary Macedonia. Signs and Society 4(1): 70–105.
Kaneva, Nadia 2011 Nation Branding: Toward an Agenda for Critical Research. International Journal of Communication 5(25). http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/704.
