Why Hermès Wants to Be Mispronounced
For many consumers, an expensive designer purchase is the ultimate way to signal their status. These brands are powerful symbols of wealth and success, leveraging long histories of prestige and linguistic exclusivity to attract aspirational consumers eager to prove their worth.
It's well-known that these brands succeed primarily because of their association with high social status, much of which stems from France's cultural prestige.
France has an international reputation for its opulence, romance, and rich history, qualities inevitably tied to its language. As Linguist Adam Aleksic (EtymologyNerd) explains, this perception of elegance comes more from its powerful cultural associations than the language's linguistic characteristics. French luxury brands utilize this by deliberately adding hints of the language to elevate their status, from their branding to product names.
The frequent use of French in luxury branding impacts consumer engagement. From asking for specific products to discussing various luxury brands, shoppers have to name-drop French terms. To boost their status, many shoppers feel compelled to study and perfect their pronunciation. This pressure stems from the major spelling and sound differences between French and many other languages.
The French Challenge
The pronunciation of a single word can act as a filter. Frequent luxury shoppers often cringe and swiftly correct when they hear Hermès pronounced as "Her-mees." Silent letters stemming from pronunciations no longer in use remaining in French orthography contribute to this confusion, as seen in Hermès [ɛʁ.mɛs], Bordeaux [bɔʁ.do], and Saint-Germain-des-Pres [sɛ̃.ʒɛʁ.mɛ̃.de.pʁe].
Additionally, French has phonemes absent in English and many languages: nasal vowels (like the [ɛ̃] in "Saint" above), the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] (the distinct French "r"), and the voiced labial-palatal approximant [ɥ] (as in "huit"). Complex phonotactics that allow consonants to move across syllables further intensify this confusion.
For most L2 learners, the complexity of French can lead to linguistic insecurity and the phenomenon of hypercorrection. Consumers may overcorrect and add nasalization or other French phonemes in places where they don't belong, just to sound like they fit in. This tendency mirrors William Labov's famous 1966 department store study, which found that employees at middle-tier department stores would overcorrect and have higher usage of standard English features than high-end stores. This finding reveals that people may subconsciously exaggerate prestige speech features to align with higher social classes. In this case, French functions within luxury circles as a prestige language that many attempt to adopt to try to fit in. But this isn't a mistake; luxury brands strategically exploit linguistic insecurity across all their communicative outlets, most notably within the physical store itself.
The Store Experience
Luxury fashion houses display high social status through their in-store experience. Store speech patterns align with standard business dialects, with employees acting with high levels of professionalism. Store employees, from security guards to sales associates, wear well-kept suits and act with an air of sophistication, reinforcing the store's elite connotations.
Interestingly, luxury brands often exploit this positioning to drive profits with how their employees treat customers. In traditional businesses, employees are trained to appease customers and never refuse. Luxury brands, however, often flip the script.
Within luxury stores, a key sales tactic involves engaging in what linguists call face-threatening acts (FTAs) to subtly pressure customers to spend more money. In this context, 'face' refers to a person's reputation and self-esteem. An FTA can amplify pre-existing desires for validation, motivating them to prove their worth through spending. Actions as subtle as locking the door to enter the store, leaving consumers waiting for security to let them in, and critically correcting incorrect product or brand pronunciations can contribute to these feelings of insecurity and elevate the positioning of luxury brands. This transforms purchases into validating experiences. Each bag effectively comes with an invitation to an exclusive club.
Instead of repelling consumers, these face-threatening acts enhance the brand's allure and further its associations with high class to make its products more desirable.
Profiting from Insecurity
The luxury industry is built on a paradox known as Veblen goods, where higher prices attract more consumers, not less. This positioning occurs because consumers feel more exclusive and valued when they purchase these types of goods. It's a carefully constructed image built on the brand's associations and the in-store experience.
Brands leverage French's linguistic complexity and FTAs to raise their perceived barriers to entry, making their products more elusive and desirable to consumers. Many go a step further and often incorporate phrases like "This is our last one in stock" to amplify urgency and exclusivity.
Among luxury brands, Hermès stands out with its manufactured scarcity model for its bags. To earn the opportunity to purchase a famous Birkin or Kelly, a customer must develop a deep relationship with a sales associate and build a purchase history with significant previous spending at Hermès stores. To purchase a bag, customers must often spend tens of thousands on other Hermès products. This relationship system, combined with pronunciation pressures, transforms the Hermès shopping experience into a performative act, giving luxury brands all the power.
French luxury brands use language as a gatekeeper. Words become a signal of in-group status, a barrier that amplifies perceived value, customer loyalty, and exclusivity. Luxury's linguistic reliance on French has become one of the industry's most powerful tools designed to create insecurity within consumers and elevate the status of the brands.
