Significant role of advertising in America

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

IZHEVSK STATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Significant role of advertising in America

Course paper 

                            
 
 

Student:

V.V. Gaponova.

Group 4-58-1                                                                          

                                                              

     Scientific Supervisor:

Filatova R.M.                                                         
 
 
 
 
 

Izhevsk, 2009 

Contents 

Introduction……………………………………………………………………..3

1. Is advertising language normal language…………………………………….4

2. Components of advertising…………………………………………………...5

2.1 Text………………………………………………………………………….5

2.2 Image………………………………………………………………………..7

2.3 Sign………………………………………………………………………….7

2.4 Slogan……………………………………………………………………....10

3. Some levels of advertising…………………………………………………...10

3.1 Phonological level of ad…………………………………………………….10

3.2 Lexical level of ad…………………………………………………………..11

3.3 Syntactic level of ad………………………………………………………...14

3.4 Semantic level of advertising…………………………………………….....16

4. Words and phrases used in advertising………………………………………19

5. Presupposition………………………………………………………………..21

6. Colors………………………………………………………………………...23

7. Fear advertisements…………………………………………………………..25

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………27 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Introduction:

Product advertisement - a form of communication is an inevitable outcome of a capitalistic society. Advertisement can be defined as an organization of text that provides information about a product or service along with an anchorage of image that suggest some cohesion or logical linkage leading to some relevance or meaningful interpretation to the target consumers. The natural order of the language is modified, shaped and stylized by the copywriter according to the product of advertisement and the target group of consumer. The success of an advertisement depends not only on the degree of effective conscious communication that has been made possible, but also on the degree of unconscious effect or an ‘unavoidable’ effect of communication that is made possible by a particular advertisement. So the stylistic distinction between the general spoken form and the advertising language is considered integral by a copywriter to make direct-convincing communication as well as ‘unavoidable’ or indirect-convincing communication. Thus the present paper aims at developing a framework for classification and analysis of the observed patterns of various advertising texts. Such a characterization has been felt to be a prerequisite to construct an experimental design to evaluate the extent of effectiveness of an advertisement by linking the patterns and types of advertisement to consumer responses, objectively. This paper also about consideration of levels of advertising, fears of advertising, meaning of colors and not only.

 Advertising language as already defined is an organization of text that suggest some cohesion or meaningful interpretation to the target consumers, demands description of its functional and formal aspects with reference to the semantic and pragmatic interpretations. The language of advertisement has been viewed in various ways by different scholars with some variations as well as with some commonness in them.

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1. Is advertising language normal language?

These questions relate to the place of advertising language in the context of the readers' general knowledge of language. In order to answer them, we must have some conception of what is meant by "normal language". The English language has evolved to have many different kinds of functionality, each of which corresponds to different situations and styles of use. From an analytic point of view, it seems to make most sense to understand "normal language" to include the variety of styles of English that mature speakers and readers control. This will form the backdrop of everyday language in its many functions, against which we can view advertising language. If one looks around in literature on advertising, or searches on the WWW, it is not uncommon to find claims to the effect that advertising breaks the rules of normal language and language use. However, from the perspective of a professional linguist, few of these claims really seem to be supportable. Now, with the exception of linguists, few people have any reason to pay close attention to the way that language is actually used in its speech community, for a wide range of communicative functions. Like many aspects of human being and human behavior, our unconscious knowledge of language is much greater than our conscious knowledge of it, so the facts about language that are immediately accessible to the average person only cover part of what the language is and how it is used. Collect some text from advertisements that you have found. Can you find any examples of words, phrases or constructions that are truly different from the various varieties that you encounter on a regular basis? These varieties may include informal spoken language between close friends to technical and scientific descriptions, and everything in between. Doubtless, not all of the text you find will be standard English.

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2. Components of advertising 
2.1 Text

The advertisement has some Text, which provides information about the product, and more importantly, provides anchorage for the Image. Under the general category of Text, there may be descriptive information about the product, other text that serves the purpose of catching the readers’ attention, as well as (typically) short phrases that act as a kind of slogan, and finally the name of the company and/or the name of the product. Depending upon the formal pattern, advertising text has been broadly classified into six types:

1. Message Reduction Ad-text

2. Discursive Ad-text

3. Allusive Ad-text

4. Prosodic Ad-text

5. Declarative/Assertive Ad-text

6. Didactic Ad-text

1. Message Reduction Ad-Text

As the ultimate purpose of advertisement is to capture the reader’s attention, messages regarding a product are often found to be shortened or reduced. Short phrases are also found to be used for the purpose which seems to be like a kind of slogan establishing relevance 1 with the product or the brand. The physical property of the organization of the text thus plays the role of ‘catch’, thus capturing the reader’s or listener’s attention at once.

2. Discursive Ad-Text

Advertisements are often made in the form of a discourse where the desired response needs to be interpreted by the receiver. In such advertisements different socio-cultural / socio-political / socio-economic clues are found to be involved in the discursive text as a whole.  
 

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Various stylistic devices like – ambiguity, personification, interrogation, parallelism, disjunction, etc. are found to be employed in such discursive advertisements. Some instances of discursive advertisements are presented in the following with description of the anchored images in order to establish the relevance of the implicative.

3. Prosodic Ad-Text

Advertisements are often organized by employing rhyming patterns, popular poem/song, repetition /reduplication, expressive, etc. This prosodic pattern helps the copywriter to penetrate the hearer’s or reader’s attention either by facilitating the path of ‘known to unknown’ (in case when popular song/tune/poem are employed) or by capturing the attention of the target consumer by repetitive structure and expressive. The social-psyche is found to be considered integral in such advertising texts. Some instances of advertising text belonging to the prosodic pattern are cited below.

4. Allusive Ad-Text

Allusive advertisement refers to the type of advertisement which involves an event, story, description or reference, involving a commonness of understanding with the audience by choosing a setting which may be considered a everyday livelihood of the target consumers.

5. Declarative /Assertive Ad-Text

Statements that are declaring or asserting some idea, notion, truth regarding a product or brand is often found in advertising language. Some rhetorical expressions like metaphor, simile, oxymoron, personification, etc. are often found to be involved in such advertising patterns. This specific pattern is widespread in organizing advertising text.

2.6. Didactic / Directive Ad-Text

Advertisements are often made in instructive manner or teaching like pattern. Such

advertising language comes under didactic pattern of advertising text . 
 
 

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It is worthy to note in this connection that the products marketed through these advertising texts, necessarily links the sense of ‘ever desired’ social power and a sense of social freedom along with the products.

2.2 Image

The advertisement has an Image component, which is typically a scene which provides the background for the entire advertisement. The Image may or may not feature a representation of the product, and the product may or may not be "in use" (for example, imagine an image of a tube of toothpaste as opposed to some toothpaste on a brush, or some beer in a glass as opposed to a bottle of beer). The Image component may be more than just one scene, as is often found in the "before-after" type of advertisement (for example, 69 Allegra), or if there are other symbols or visual features that are superimposed on the original scene (such as 05 Europcar or 15 Dunhill, or, taking an odder example, 23 Max Factor). The original scene in the Image may lend itself to a variety of interpretations. Look at sunset a (right), and think about what kind of advertisement you could create, based on this image. An Image usually has some interpretational component which guides the reader to certain aspects of meaning, possibly in conjunction with the Text.

2.3 Sign

The key concept in advertising analysis is that of the Sign, as defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, which is the combination of a Signifier (below, "sr") and a Signified (below "sd"). Culler (1987) provides an excellent introduction to Saussure's thinking and highly influential ideas. The importance of the sign has been widely recognized in the previous literature on advertising. Taking a simple case from language, Saussure observed that the relation between Signifier and Signified is arbitrary: the concept of "dog" is picked out by "dog" in English, "chien" in French, "Hund" in German, "inu" in Japanese, and "kay" in Korean, for example.  

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Although each of these sound sequences has a history within its own language, from which we may come to understand why the word is currently the way it is, there is no specific sound sequence which is universally associated with any given meaning (with the possible exception of onomatopoeic words, though even these are quite culture-specific). Hence we say that the "dog"-dog Sign in English is arbitrary, just as the "Hund"-dog Sign in German is (equally) arbitrary. The "arbitrariness of the sign", as it is called, may strike you at first as a cause for concern, as arbitrariness perhaps suggests randomness, sloppiness, or inattention. But in fact, the arbitrary relationship is a vital and fundamental part of any creative communication system, because new signs can be created as needed. And far from being subject to randomness, a sign-based system works because all participants in the community agree on what given sr-sd relationships are. Hence, a sign looks like this:

The sr elements stand in opposition to one another, which is to say that they are differentiated by minimal changes in form: "dog" vs. "dock" vs. "dot" and so on. Hence this is known as a relational system --- each element is related to the others by some shared features, and some different features. More formally, we say that each sr stands in paradigmatic opposition to the other srs, and the choice of one element of the paradigm over another may carry some further meaning. Imagine, for example, what factors would be involved if you referred to an animal in front of you by "this dog" or "this doggie". More surprisingly, Saussure observed that the sd elements (meanings) are themselves arbitrary cuts on the conceptual plane, and are therefore relational too. He gave the example of the French words "rivière" and "fleuve", both of which mean "river" in English, but a "fleuve" is a river which flows to the sea, while a "rivière" does not.  

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This is a perfectly sensible semantic distinction, and one that speakers of any language can grasp; yet it is an arbitrary distinction, in the sense that one language can use it to classify words while another may not. To recap, in language, meaning is conventional in the sense that what the meanings are, and what signifiers relate to them, are arbitrary choices that the community conventionally respects. Going beyond language, the arbitrariness of the sign leads to this conclusion: anything can mean anything! And although we have focused in this section on language, in fact all symbolic activity involves such a system of arbitrary relationships (e.g., monetary systems, writing systems, mores code, and the pieces in a chess game). In the world of advertising, we can apply the simple concept of a sign in many ways: the name of the product may well be novel and arbitrary (for example, before 1996 or so, what did the word Amazon have to do with selling books?), as may any symbols, images or people associated with the product. The arbitrary nature of the sign is used deliberately in 57dow, where the word green is presented against a red background, which creates an advertisement that is quite confusing to the reader. Upon investigation, we learn that the "green" is the green which is culturally associated with envy---your friends will envy you your Dow carpet product. What does this signify? Clearly, it is a picture of two people, but you may feel that there are further meanings. Are these people successful? Are they happy? Is the Image primarily about the woman, or about the man? Symbols need little illustration; everyone can easily think of company symbols. In terms of cultural significance, a company is well-served if its symbol becomes an index---a signifier which goes beyond what it directly signifies to some larger association. The symbol, too, may come to be indexical over time. This represents a very strong cultural establishment of the symbol, and may be a very powerful marketing tool. To summarize, within an advertisement, the Image component may have some part that is iconic to the product, and there may be some symbols such as a company logo, and so on. The overall Image may have some cultural associations, which are indexical to some larger cultural context. 

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2.4 Slogan

A slogan is a form of verbal logo. In a print ad, it usually appears just beneath or beside the brand name or logo. A slogan sums up what one stand for, one’s specialty, the benefit, and one’s marketing position, and one’s commitment. It is especially useful to reinforce one’s identity. A slogan can prove to be more powerful than a logo. People can remember and recite your slogan while they are unlikely to doodle your logo. It is more important for your slogan to clearly state what you are about than to be clever, but if you can accomplish both, all the better. Slogans have two basic purposes: to provide continuity to a series of ads in a campaign and to reduce an advertising message strategy to a brief, repeatable, and memorable positioning. The slogan should be used everywhere. Think of it as being attached to one’s name like a shadow; put it on business cards, printed ads, personal brochures, signs, letters, in the yellow pages -everywhere one can put it. The advertising slogan is always short and epigrammatic in nature. It helps to make the ad more impressive and memorable.

3. Some levels of advertising

3.1 At the phonological level

Use of rhymes.

One of the best techniques for bringing in the brand name is to make the slogan rhyme with it. An ad slogan is better if it reflects the brand’s personality. By this kind of rhyming, the brand name is highlighted. The ad slogan is thus highly purposed. It can differentiate a slogan from others by the brand name and the special rhyming which is the identity of the slogan.

Haig Scotch: Don't be vague. Ask for Haig.

Quavers: The flavor of a Quaver is never known to waver.