Audience Perceptions of Code-Switching and Plurilingualism in Algerian Social Media Advertising

In multilingual Algeria, social media advertisements combine linguistic resources that may simultaneously communicate cultural closeness and global appeal. This convergent mixed-methods study examines how 135 Algerian social media users perceive code-switching and plurilingual advertising. Questionnaire measures captured advertising exposure, reading comfort, nine attitudinal evaluations, and written examples. Descriptive analyses, exploratory nonparametric comparisons, rank correlations, and thematic interpretation were integrated. Respondents associated mixed-language advertising with cosmopolitan identity (67.4%), engagement (66.7%), and modernity (63.7%), although 58.5% preferred single-language advertisements and 60.7% trusted advertisements more in their preferred language. Greater comfort with mixed forms (ρ = −.26, p = .007) and English (ρ = −.21, p = .029) corresponded to less perceived confusion. Written accounts indicated familiarity, prestige, audience targeting, and occasional distrust. The findings suggest that linguistic hybridity has symbolic appeal but is not uniformly easy to process; interpretations depend on linguistic repertoires and perceived communicative fit.