Shift of use of capital (upper case) letters in english and Latvian marketing texts

Abstract

This paper is largely observational. It discusses shifts in capitalization practices in marketing texts in Latvian. Two of the observed shifts are changes in accepted Latvian orthography (in Latvian texts) and one is an extension of Latvian changes into English texts written in Latvia. One of the Latvian shifts may be due to external influence and one is from internal sources. These changes are considered as matters of orthographic change, cultural change, the introduction of new (or previously little utilized) communication channels and tools and demonstration of the evolution of new communication rules. The paper provides some hypotheses about what may cause this and makes some observations about what this reflects about culture and language and how these are applied to other languages.

Keywords

• capitalization
• orthography
• language change
• Latvian
• English