Advertisements
This digital archive was created to preserve the Anglophone periodicals published in nineteenth century Chile. The only known copies of many of these papers are held by the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) of Chile; the AnglophoneChile project team collaborated with the National Library to preserve these papers for future generations while providing global access for researchers.
About this Exhibit
Newspaper advertisements are a crucial component since they not only market products and services to a specific audience but also offer glimpses into the customs, artifacts, and culture of the time and place in which they were employed. In Chile's case, English-speaking immigrants affected Chilean culture in significant ways during the nineteenth century. A hybrid culture was created when ideas, cultural practices, and material objects were passed back and forth between communities, forming part of each group's identity. This exhibit examines the different themes found in three Anglo-Chilean newspapers and explores how aspects like the use of the language, design choices, the showcase of a foreign culture, and description related to luxury might have been influenced by the social and cultural context.
The Valparaiso Review
Each issue of this magazine runs the same group of advertisements, and none of them uses significant amounts of Spanish. In terms of graphic design, all advertisements rely on different font typefaces, sizes, and formats; more complex elements like drawings or illustrations do not appear.
Valparaíso and West Coast Mail
In this newspaper, the advertisements are far more descriptive than they were in earlier newspapers. Most ads focus on goods or services: hotels, English shops, etcetera. While some of the ads are written in Spanish, the majority are still in English. This newspaper’s graphic design relies primarily on typography, with some images beginning to appear.
The Star of Chile
This newspaper features far more diversity of advertisements than did earlier publications, and the ads promote a wide range of goods and services. The Spanish language appears more frequently than in earlier newspapers; this is especially the case in advertisement titles. The newspaper also emphasizes images, as well as other graphic design elements like typeface and format. In comparison with earlier newspapers, The Star of Chile’s ads are no longer as text-heavy, and some even experiment with space and form by highlighting graphic elements, juxtaposing innovative fonts, text boxes, ad sizes, and shapes, etcetera. In tandem with these innovations, the Star of Chile’s advertisement section is more important within the newspaper overall, with more pages dedicated to advertising and a greater diversity of content.
The use of the Spanish language in advertisements published in Anglo-Chilean newspapers, whether in titles or descriptions, increased as the century progressed. Whereas in the early years (1840s-1860s), Spanish was used only in titles, as in “Instituto de Idiomas,” by the 1870s Spanish might appear in entire descriptions, such as “Sastrería y Ropería.” This new feature not only indicates cultural exchange between British and Chileans, but also implies a shifting readership for these Anglophone papers: by printing some ads in Spanish, editors provided a wider audience with access to information. The bilingual text demonstrates that Anglophone editors no longer focused exclusively on English-speaking audiences but sought a wider, Spanish-speaking readership as well. These changes are especially apparent in The Valparaíso and West Coast Mail and The Star of Chile.
Note: we have chosen not to count the use of Spanish in street addresses as examples of linguistic hybridity.
This advertisement is written entirely in Spanish; it promotes a tailor shop in Valparaiso that offered a wide variety of men’s clothes at very accessible prices.
Ad for Sasteria y Roperia, form The Valparaiso and West Coast Mail, July 3, 1868
This advertisement includes Spanish only in its title and promotes a German bar that sells German beer as well as sandwiches—items still associated with German culture in Chile.
Ad for Bar Aleman, from The Star of Chile, October 8, 1904
This advertisement uses Spanish only in the title; however, its promotion of a language institute specializing in both English and Spanish reflects the importance of both languages in the region, while implying the increased hybridity of the English-speaking colony.
Ad for Instituto de Idiomas, from The Star of Chile, October 8, 1904
