Towards a Pragmatic Approach to Understanding Modern Advertising
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Towards a Pragmatic Approach to Understanding Modern Advertising By Pam, Keziah Jonah Department of English University of Jos [email protected], [email protected] 08035531964 & Dakat, Blessing Vou Department of English University of Jos [email protected], [email protected] 08065390532, 08093654938 Abstract Ordinary and even literate people do not have any means of checking the truth of assertions made in an advertisement until it is too late. Meanings of adverts are most times deliberately made obscure. The usual and expected goal is to win people over and persuade them to do certain things they would not have ordinarily bothered to. Using Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature, we conclude that meaning is better arrived at in mercantile strategies via implicature and context. 88 Introduction Communication is goal-oriented in that contributors make mindful selections that suit their illocutionary goals in order to yield the desired utterance meaning. Leech (1983) views communication as being “geared towards problem-solving, a notion that saddles both the speaker and the hearer with distinct, clear cut responsibilities that will make the interchange feasible” (p. x). Thus, communication of whatever sort is a dynamic phenomenon that requires that participants actively play their defined roles. While the speaker’s role is to construct an utterance that conveys his/her illocutionary goal, the duty of the hearer is figuring out the meaning of the utterance. Consequently, we presuppose that there are implicit meanings in the illocutions of visual adverts. There is more attached to the meaning of adverts than the common words used to transmit it. Words are carefully selected to persuade and appeal to the viewer’s need. For instance, a depressed person from another bank after losing some business opportunities of obtaining financial assistance from his bank would react to this advert: “If your bank doesn’t support your business, you need a new bank”. He will want to know more about this ‘new’ bank so he may have a switchover. The person’s emotion is gradually won over and this means that communication has taken place because the goal has been achieved. Four adverts are deliberately sampled from two distinct fields to explore the relevance of implicature and context in understanding the style of the language of advertising. 89 Language and Advertising Advertising is a type of communication aimed at persuading an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals or services. O’Donnell and Todd (1991) observe that the advertiser aims specifically at one thing, “He wishes to capture the attention of members of the audience by means of a short message mostly verbal and sometime visual as the case may be” (p. 107). The message is geared towards influencing people to buy a particular product or change over to a type of service. An example of the visual display is what is found in banks today. The messages are usually typed and pasted at strategic points within the banking hall. At other times, the adverts are placed in electronic boards (rectangular fluorescent lighted boxes) and allowed it to be read at a slow pace of few words at a time. Boulton (1960) posits that, “the statements that cannot be testified usually appeal more strongly to our emotions and thus are probably more successful in attracting customers than those that may be genuine declaration of facts” (pp. 90-1). In other words, Boulton means that ambiguous grammatical constructions tend to have positive effects on the buyers than the very clear and intelligent constructions since the certainty of prove is often not tested before purchase. Grice’s Theory of Conversational Implicature The term ‘implicature’, attributed to the philosopher Paul Grice, is presented in his seminal article ‘Logic and Conversation’ (Grice, 1989). In Grice’s approach, both ‘what is implicated’ and ‘what is said’ are part of speaker meaning. ‘What is said’ is that part of meaning that is established by truth-conditional semantics, while ‘what is implicated’ is that part of meaning that cannot be captured by truth conditions and as such belongs to 90 pragmatics. Carston (2002) views Implicature as “an ostensively communicated assumption that is not an explicature; that is, a communicated assumption which is derived solely via` processes of pragmatic inference” (p. 377). In other words implicatures are derived purely from inferences. Two types of implicature are distinguished: conventional and conversational (Levinson, 2000:131). Meibauer (2009) points out that the most widely accepted type of implicature is conversational implicature. He considers implicatures vis-à-vis illocutions and says even if both are associated with an individual’s speech act, these notions (implicatures and illocutions) refer to different entities (since a speaker can say something and imply another): an additional proposition, in the case of implicature, versus a type of act such as a promise, assertion, request etc., in the case of illocution (p. 365). People utilize conversational implicature to circumvent explicitness in conversation. They employ this to convey other hidden meanings beyond the literal (straightforward) meaning in conversation. Chen (2010) simply puts it that conversational implicature is “hidden meaning between the lines” and “an implied meaning” in its common sense” (p. 147). Expressing a similar proposition to Chen (2010), Xiaolong (2003) suggests that “conversational implicature does not refer to the literal meaning of a sentence studied by semantics, but implicature of the specific context in pragmatic study” (p. 177). He terms the former as “sentence meaning” and the latter as “utterance meaning”. When the two meanings are different, conversational implicature will appear. It is pertinent to note that context plays a momentous role in understanding ‘utterance meaning’. Context requires us to look beyond word formation, sentence structure and meaning derived from the formal properties of language. 91 Sampled Data Analysis “If your bank doesn’t give you a business advantage, you need a new bank.” The sample of the advert above has the picture of a man with his right hand on his cheek apparently thinking and another man pointing to the logo of the bank in question. The posture of the former man conjures a picture of one in quandary. We are able to also name the man in the advert a business man because we have background knowledge that every man’s ‘dream’ as a matter of fact is having brighter prospects. Labeling this man in the advert a businessman may not be wrong because the advert explicitly says so- “If your bank doesn’t give you a business advantage”. Better prospects cannot be achieved by staying indoors. We are not oblivious of the muddle businessmen plunge themselves into. They dabble into so many things in a bid to be wealthy. For instance, they (businessmen) crave for large business empires, multipurpose industries; take huge amounts as loans using the very abode their families live in as collaterals. This list is endless. As expectations failed the posture of hands on cheek, thinking or looking for solutions, become their hallmarks. As regards ‘new’ bank, it is not difficult to answer because of the context. First, the ‘new’ bank is the bank where the advert is situated. Secondly, the other man in the picture also points to the logo of the bank in question. This resolves any form of misinterpretations, ‘traffic jam’ or ‘conversational accidents’ as Leech calls it. It therefore becomes natural to arrive at the conclusion owing to the ‘expected’ implicature that the ‘new bank’ provides great business opportunities for its customers irrespective of social strata by way of providing loans to improve business advantages. 92 “If your bank doesn’t support your dreams, you need a new bank.” This advert has a portrait of a beautiful smiling lady who is obviously looking into the future. Right beside her is a mansion. We are not told in the advert what we need to do for the bank to give us such great buildings. Will it be right to conclude that once a customer has a bank account with them, he automatically qualifies to have a mansion of his own? It is evident that the appropriate implication of the advert is: ‘the bank could support your dreams of having a mansion of that sort (in the picture) and much more if you save money with them’. Such obscure scenarios are usually and deliberately set to dabble at people’s emotions. Customers are lured into opening accounts and saving huge sums. They do so and go home waiting endlessly for the bank to support their ‘dreams’. This advert, like the first, is stated in the imperative mood and thus serves as a challenge to readers of the advert to swing into action. “Sleep on mouka, wake up in Dubai.” In this advert, we see a young lady lying on a mattress. She wakes from sleep with surprise evident on her face and the beautiful city of Dubai with its magnificent tall storey’s and edifices is placed in front of her. ‘Mouka’ is a mattress. Ladies are known for hobbies of travelling especially outside their country. Dubai, the city in the northeastern Arab Emirates is deliberately chosen. Dubai is a beautiful city people go on vacations especially with the intention to shop. This is because of the low prices and wide range to choices of the groceries. Ladies are also known for their excellent flair for shopping. The choice of Dubai is therefore deliberate. Dubai will of course be the dream city of every lady since she may want to have a glimpse of its beauty and also shop. 93 Though not explicitly stated, this advert implies that if a person buys ‘mouka’ foam, he gets a free ticket to Dubai.