5. Advertising and Persuasion: a Literature Review

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Natália Belicová

Advertising Brexit: Elements of Persuasion in the Facebook Campaign Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph. D.

2020

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Natália Belicová

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph. D., for her invaluable advice, guidance, and willingness to meet regularly online whenever I felt the need to discuss a problem. I genuinely appreciate it. I also thank everybody who helped me and supported me when writing this thesis, especially Jakub G..

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 5 2. Aim and data ...... 7 3. Methodology of research ...... 9 4. Historical background of Brexit ...... 10 5. Advertising and persuasion: A literature review ...... 13 6. Analysis of the persuasive elements ...... 19 6.1. Linguistic modes of persuasion ...... 19 6.1.1. Blends and other instances of wordplay ...... 19 6.1.2. Word choice ...... 22 6.1.3. Modality and tense ...... 25 6.1.4. The role of Actor/Agent and Goal ...... 26 6.1.5. Metaphor ...... 27 6.1.6. Form of address ...... 30 6.1.7. Passive sentence construction and nominal phrases ...... 33 6.2. Supralinguistic modes of persuasion ...... 35 6.2.1. Pathos ...... 35 6.2.2. Logos and the hoaxes...... 41 6.2.3. Logical fallacies ...... 43 6.3. Visual modes of persuasion...... 47 6.3.1. The theory of Visual Grammar ...... 47 6.3.1.1. Action processes ...... 47 6.3.1.2. Reactional processes ...... 49 6.3.2. Composition ...... 50 6.3.2.1. Information value ...... 50 6.3.2.2. Salience ...... 54 6.3.2.3. Framing ...... 54 6.3.2.4. Colors ...... 55 7. Conclusion ...... 57 References ...... 64 Summary ...... 71 Resumé ...... 73 Appendix ...... 74

1. Introduction

“Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes”. – Seth Godin

Advertising has been an inescapable part of the everyday life of people for a long time. It is even more so nowadays – with social media sites and the possibility of targeted advertisements tailored to our wants, needs, and opinions. People unknowingly share so much information on social media that it is relatively easy to create an appealing advert that will catch people’s attention and persuade them. A similar situation arose, for example, in the

Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016. As it is now well-known, the referendum's result was that most voters wanted the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. During that time, there was a massive campaign launched by both parties, but the advertisements that supported leaving the European Union were often significantly malicious and deceptive.

Since then, Brexit has polarized not only the United Kingdom but all the countries of the

EU, if not most of the world. Even though Brexit was discussed in newspapers and academic articles countless times, there has not been an analysis of the specific advertisements used in this campaign. However, Lesley Jeffries and Dan McIntyre (2019) carried out an interesting analysis of the word “Brexit” and its derivatives (Brexiteers, Bremainers) and argued that this word put the party advocating leaving the EU in a significant advantage. In addition to that, the newspapers repeatedly reported on the violation of privacy laws by targeting the ads aired on Facebook by the Vote Leave campaign (Lomas, 2019).

Therefore, this thesis will focus on the modes of persuasion – both linguistic, supralinguistic, and visual – used in the advertisements advocating leaving the EU and arguing that the campaigners employed them with one strategy in mind – to elicit strong

(predominantly negative) emotions in the viewers. To focus on all three aspects of the ads

(linguistic, supralinguistic, and visual) might seem like too broad a topic. However, I believe

that an adequate analysis of the ads’ effects can be achieved only by examining them in their entirety. Focusing only on one aspect would mean leaving out potentially important information. I gathered twenty-four banner advertisements in favor of leaving the EU, which are present in the Appendix. In the text, I will use the labels AD01-AD24, which refer to the individual ads present in the Appendix. I chose this type of labeling for easier orientation in the text since referring to the ads by their titles would not be possible. This paper hypothesizes that the negative campaigning employed by Brexiteers could have a significant impact on the voters' decision to vote leave. This research is limited by the availability of the advertisements (my primary source is the Internet) and the fact that there is no precise way to determine to what extent voters were influenced by these adverts. The question of how persuasive an advertisement can be is a matter of long discussions in academic literature.

Some scholars believe advertising is not that effective, arguing by cases when even heavy ad campaign did not help sell the product.

On the other hand, some academics think that good advertising can significantly influence the buyer, even swaying his opinion in the opposite direction. I would say that the most telling argument in favor of the influence of advertising is the very high prices that the manufacturers, sellers, or politicians are willing to pay to both advertising agencies and for a space to display or air these advertisements. The fact that the Leave spent more money on digital advertising and won the referendum did not escape the journalists' attention (Straw,

2019; Tiilikainen, 2020).

This thesis's organization is as follows: firstly, there is a brief explanation of the political and cultural background of the Brexit referendum, which defines the key parties and the desired outcomes of these participants. After that follows the literature review, including the essential studies performed in advertising, persuasion, and manipulation, to establish a firm foundation for the hypothesis. This thesis does not feature an individual chapter describing the

theoretical framework. Instead, I introduce the individual concepts used for the analysis and developed by Fahnestock, Kress, and van Leeuwen in the sixth chapter, together with examples from the corpus. Therefore, the next section represents a fusion of this thesis's practical and theoretical part. In that chapter, I will examine and analyze the specific advertisements aired in the UK, focusing on the most effective persuasive modes I mentioned above. The sixth chapter is divided into three subchapters, the first dealing with the linguistic modes of persuasion, the second discussing supralinguistic elements, and in the third, last subchapter, I analyze the visual forms of persuasion. From this analysis, I will draw results, which will either confirm or disprove the hypothesis. Apart from presenting and summing up the results, the Conclusion describes the differences and similarities between the BeLeave,

DUP Vote to Leave and Vote Leave ads related to their intended target group. It also delineates the situation after the referendum concerning the Brexit campaign on Facebook, the following investigation, the reporting about the Brexit campaign in the press, and possible reasons for Leave’s success.

2. Aim and data This thesis aims to analyze the advertisements related to Brexit published online on social network Facebook. Most of the persuasive rhetorical elements that this thesis will analyze are adopted from the work of Jeanne Fahnestock called Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion (2011). The analysis of the visual aspect of the adverts relies on the theory of visual grammar developed by scholars Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2006). The following are the hypotheses I will try to prove in this paper:

• The Leave campaign used both linguistic, supralinguistic, and visual elements of

persuasion.

• These persuasive elements were employed primarily to provoke anger, outrage, and

in a lesser part, fear in the viewers, who would then reject the European Union and

would vote to leave it.

• There were three sister campaigns active on Facebook – namely BeLeave, DUP

Vote to Leave, and Vote Leave. Each of these groups aimed their ads at a different

target group, with significant differences in strategy. However, several elements

pervaded the whole campaign, regardless of the target group.

I collected the data from the official website of the UK Parliament at https://www.parliament.uk/. The adverts were found on the website by searching the keywords “Brexit” and “advertising.” All adverts occurred in one document submitted to the

DCMS Committee by Facebook as a part of the government’s investigation of fake news and disinformation. This document was freely accessible in July 2020 when I downloaded it for the purposes of this thesis. However, probably due to a relocation to a newer version of the website or due to deletion, it is no longer available on the Parliament's official website at the time of my writing, which is October 2020. Found in the document were several more files containing ads by BeLeave group, DUP Vote to Leave, and 50 Million Ads/Vote Leave, along with spreadsheets containing information such as ad impressions, ad group age gender reach, region reach, and the date on which the individual ads started airing on Facebook.

These ads were published on Facebook by different campaigns – BrexitCentral, DUP Vote to

Leave, 50 Million, and Vote Leave. Some of these pages no longer exist. There was also a campaign page called Veterans for Britain. However, according to Natasha Lomas, Facebook could not disclose these ads because the said campaign did not permit Facebook to do so

(Lomas, 2018). These ads were published primarily on the Internet, which means that there is the issue of transparency. With online ads, we cannot be sure who commissioned them, who paid for them, and even proving the authenticity of ads coming from different sources would

be difficult (especially nowadays, when hoaxes abound). Therefore, I will work only with the set of ads disclosed by Facebook and found in the UK Parliament webpage since I consider it a guarantee of authenticity. Although there were also stills from a video in the document that suggests that there were also video ads, they are not accessible anymore, which is why I will only focus on banner ads related to Brexit. For the analysis, I chose ten adverts from the

BeLeave campaign, four from DUP Vote to Leave, and ten by Vote Leave, which means there are twenty-four adverts in total. I am aware that the number of DUP ads is significantly lower.

That is caused by the fact that there were only four ads present in the document found on the webpage of the UK Parliament.

3. Methodology of research This thesis aims to perform a qualitative analysis of twenty-four adverts concerning Brexit.

As I already explained in the chapter above, I downloaded the ads from the UK parliament's official webpage. Since some ads were similar or even repeated themselves, I chose the ads I deemed the most interesting, both from a linguistic and visual point of view. Subsequently, I performed an analysis of the ads. Concerning the linguistic modes of persuasion, I relied almost entirely on the work of Jeanne Fahnestock (2011) because it encompasses an extensive range of linguistic means of persuasion. The subchapters dealing with word choice, modality and tense, metaphor, a form of address, and passive sentence construction are based on this book. I chose these particular aspects because they are manifested most prominently in the

Brexit ads.

The supralinguistic persuasive elements are based partly on the triad ethos, pathos, and logos developed by Aristotle (2007) and partly on the logical fallacies, which are a well- known concept, but I based my analysis on the description of them found in the book written by Marshall Soules (2015). The third part of the analysis deals with the visual aspect of the ads, and it relies entirely on the theory of visual grammar developed by Gunther Kress and

Theo van Leeuwen (2006). Each chapter and subchapter includes two sections – one providing the essential theoretical foundation and the other providing analysis of the ads. The theoretical sections function as a substitute for an individual chapter comprising the theoretical framework. In the practical part, I analyze the concept as manifested in one or several Brexit ads concerning the effect the concept might have on a viewer. I approached the ads by comparing what the scholars mentioned above wrote about that concept and how it works in the ads. The result is that the use of the concept in most cases corresponded with its theoretical use described by scholars. This analysis will either prove or disprove my hypothesis that the ads use various persuasive elements to provoke strong (predominantly negative) emotions in the viewers. They subsequently voted to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum, which means that the advertising could play a potentially meaningful role in their decision. That can be argued based on the research on advertising and persuasion found in

Chapter 5 and also by the Leave’s victory.

4. Historical background of Brexit Firstly, I will describe the events that lead to Brexit to establish a socio-cultural context. I will do that only briefly, since the situation is complicated enough, and to describe it in all its complexity would be perhaps a matter of a different thesis. Therefore, I will limit myself to the period that began with establishing the first treaties that laid the EU's foundation, up to 31

January 2020, when the UK left the EU.

The beginnings of the European Union were relatively modest. The practical planning started only after World War II, for several reasons. Firstly, after the war's atrocities, they wanted to avoid the possibility of similar conflict happening ever again. Secondly, the countries struck by war needed to rebuild themselves economically, and a union of several

European countries was thought to solve and help with both problems. Thus, in 1950 French minister Robert Schuman, French businessman Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer, a

Chancellor of West Germany, reached an agreement. From this agreement, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) originated two years later, with France, West Germany, Italy,

Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands as member states. As its name suggests, it was only supposed to bring their steel and coal industry under single authority and regulation. In turn, ECSC then gave rise to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958

(McCormick, 2002, p. 56). Of course, it did not end there, and even more treaties had to be established to create the European Union as we know it today. The perhaps most well-known or essential is the 1992 Treaty on European Union, or the Maastricht treaty (McCormick,

2002, p. 78). This treaty proposed establishing a single currency by 1999 – a controversial idea that was opposed primarily by Britain and Germany (McCormick, 2002, p. 81). The universal currency – euro – was finally launched into circulation in 2002, but not every member state adopted it. Countries that did not adopt it were Denmark, Sweden, and the

United Kingdom (McCormick, 2002, p. 81).

To many people, especially those not residing in the UK, it might seem that the referendum on Britain leaving the EU came out of nowhere. The truth is that the UK's relationship with the European Union was troubled from the very beginning. They did not partake in the initial treaties that laid the foundations of the European Union. Instead, they joined EFTA (European

Free Trade Association) in 1960. They did so because the UK was firmly against creating supranational organizations, but they were interested in free trade, as the name of the association indicates. When the United Kingdom finally decided to join EEC, it was twice thwarted by France's president, Charles De Gaulle. The UK eventually joined EEC in 1973, but the membership was still troublesome. As soon as the mid-1980s, the Conservative party started to push for leaving the EU, and it was further accelerated by the creation of UKIP (UK

Independence Party) in 1991 (Morphet, 2017, pp. 8-10). Thus, it is evident that the 2016 referendum did not come suddenly or “out of nowhere.” The inclination to leave the EU was

there for at least two decades, also considering that they were not exactly eager to join in the first place. In 2015, the Conservative Party finally achieved its goal when David Cameron was forced to agree with the referendum, which eventually took place on 23 June 2016. The result was a very narrow victory of the Leave group – 51,9 percent to 48,1 percent (“Results and Turnout at the EU Referendum”, n.d.). However, of course, it did not end there. From many points of view, it was only a beginning.

Further negotiations took place, and eventually, Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May as the PM. Despite the initial date of leaving the EU on 31 October 2019, the UK left the EU on

31 January 2020 (“When Did the United Kingdom”, n.d.). The same aggressiveness that will be seen in the advertisements supporting leaving the EU was present within the party. Janice

Morphet writes that “the ’leave’ group continued its campaign through attacks on the new

Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England while seemingly forcing the UK’s EU Ambassador to resign” (Morphet, 2017, p. 11). This aggressiveness was apparent in how the Leave group expressed their opinions as well as in the intensity and amount of Brexit related articles, advertisements, and such. Simon Wren-Lewis, the author of the book BREXIT: The Lies We Were Told, writes that “pro-Brexit articles outnumber pro-

Remain articles more than 4 to 1” (Wren-Lewis, 2018, p. 172). When it comes to advertising, according to Rebecca Stimson, a Facebook spokesperson, “AIQ ran 1,390 ads on behalf of the pages linked to the referendum campaign between February 2016 and 23 June 2016 inclusive” (“Aggregate IQ”, 2019, para. 150). AIQ, or Aggregate IQ in full, is a digital advertising company responsible for airing these advertisements on Facebook for several pro-

Brexit groups, like Vote Leave, Veterans for Britain, BeLeave, and DUP Vote to Leave

(“Aggregate IQ”, 2019, para. 167). The question of whether to leave or remain has polarized not only UK citizens but also the Conservative Party, which started it in the first place

(Dunin-Wasowicz, 2016; Stafford, 2018; Wager, 2019). That is perhaps not surprising since this decision could have dire consequences for the UK and the people living there.

The decision to leave the EU had evident roots at the beginning of the EU itself. It is not surprising, then, that some of the UK's issues with the European Union are still quite apparent in the advertisements circulating before and after the referendum in 2016, such as the further enlargement of the EU or the undemocraticity of it.

5. Advertising and persuasion: A literature review Now, I will provide a review of essential works performed in advertising and persuasion since it will be crucial for the hypothesis and findings. However, first, I will introduce advertising, as it is defined in the most influential dictionaries. Cambridge Dictionary defines advertisement as “a picture, short film, song … that tries to persuade people to buy a product or service, or a piece of text that tells people about a job”. Indeed, we live at a time when policies are being advertised like goods in a shop that people can choose from. Politicians are selling their personalities, as well as their policies and opinions. However, this metaphor of

“selling” politics is not recognized by the broad public just yet. Most people would perhaps agree that something as complex as politics should not be decided based on simple advertising as if we were choosing a new household appliance.

Nevertheless, before the elections, the streets are flooded with billboards featuring a politician's photography and an appealing slogan meant to persuade people to grant them their vote. Similarly, Merriam-Webster dictionary states that advertisement is a “public notice; especially one published in the press or broadcast over the air.” This definition seems somehow incomplete because it does not recognize the critical role played by online advertising, which is different in many ways from what we were used to from television or the press. Indeed, online advertising is a relatively new field that has not been sufficiently studied, but I would argue that it has even more tremendous potential than press or TV

advertising. I suggest using the definition provided by Encyclopaedia Britannica, which characterizes advertisement thus: “the techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised.”

One of the most influential books written on advertising is perhaps Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. It was published in 1957 because the fifties represented a significant change in politics and campaigning in the United States. Despite that it was a bestseller, the scholars and other professionals were more critical than the public. They criticized the book for being too bombastic and not citing its sources correctly. However, it was misunderstood as well. In her article “The Hidden Persuaders: Then and Now,” written for the occasion of the

50th anniversary of this influential book, Michelle R. Nelson refutes some of this criticism that, as she argues, was due to the misunderstanding of Packard’s work. Packard wrote that those techniques formerly used in advertising and promotion of goods and services are now starting to be used by politicians to “sell” policies, or even their personalities. One of such techniques listed by Packard is the “in-depth interview” (Packard, 2013, p. 172). According to

Dr. Smith, in the in-depth interviews, people are asked to talk freely about the product, both positively and negatively. Based on these emotions and experiences related to the product, advertisers can create more effective commercials (Dr. Smith as cited in Packard, 2013, p.

58). This technique could be compared to the targeting that sometimes happens on social media websites like Facebook. Nelson’s article suggests that there are two primary branches of research of persuasion: behaviorist or motivational. She states that behaviorist theorists

“believed that information provided by mass media was like a stimulus, and the “response” affected all people the same way” (Nelson, 2008, p. 117).

On the other hand, “motivational researchers … believed that techniques from psychoanalytical interviews could uncover unconscious motives and untold emotional

responses” (Nelson, 2008, p. 117). Hidden Persuaders is certainly not without fault.

However, I believe that certain premises are established there, which few of us could oppose.

Firstly, that people can be influenced by advertising even though they do not realize it.

Secondly, that it is impossible to predict whether they will be influenced or to what extent.

Third, that not only that people tend to remember things that align with their viewpoint better, but they are likewise more susceptible to external factors when they already want the product.

In other words, the advertisers “are only accessing needs that are already within the consumer” (Nelson, 2008, p. 118).

This fact brings us to the next keyword, which is persuasion. I will use once more the definition provided by the Cambridge Dictionary, which defines persuasion concerning writing as “also a form of speech or writing that uses argument or emotion to make the listener or reader believe what the author is saying.” Persuasion is not a novel concept. It was known and used in Ancient Greece, where it was an essential tool of rhetors and orators. One of the first scholars that explored the topic of rhetoric and persuasion was Aristotle. In his work called On Rhetoric, he established three basic modes of persuasion – ethos, pathos, and logos. He characterizes them thus: ethos is the persuasion “through character whenever the speech is spoken in such a way as to make the speaker worthy of credence,” pathos means

“persuasion through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion by the speech” and logos represents the “arguments when we show the truth or the apparent truth from whatever is persuasive in each case” (Aristotle, 2007, pp. 38-39).

Of course, Aristotle’s theory is far more elaborate. In his work, he addresses many issues like fear, confidence, the character of the speaker, and logical arguments, but, for this thesis, it will be enough to establish these three modes of persuasion because there are now other more topical works that apply even to the field of advertising. Despite that many years have passed since the development of this simple yet effective triad, it is still being used even in

advertising. An example of ethos in advertising would be the “9 out of 10 dentists recommend this toothpaste” type of commercial, which is very common to this day. Szymon Wróbel writes, that “ancient and modern rhetoric share a conviction that rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (Wróbel, 2015, p. 412). Thus, the rhetorical figures can be used in political speeches or policies and (political) advertising as well. He also argues that “rhetoric has always been in the service of politics …

[and] the main problem of contemporary politics seems to [him] that it is rhetorical throughout[. In] other words, that politics today happens only in speech … and that this speech is primarily concerned with pathos where it is the emotions of the audience that are addressed, not arguments, and where the art of persuasion narrows down to catering to these emotions” (Wróbel, 2015, p. 409). Wróbel’s observation that nowadays, politics happens primarily in speech is without a doubt an interesting one, and it highlights the vital role of language in today’s politics. However, I would like to focus on recognizing the great role emotions play in politics. That will become particularly evident in subchapter 6.2, where I will be analyzing supralinguistic elements of persuasion in the advertisements advocating leaving the European Union.

William J. McGuire, professor emeritus at Yale University, argues that the researchers should focus on the role of figurative language in advertising and thus “standing on the shoulders of ancient rhetoricians” (McGuire, 2000, p. 109). Most scholars since Aristotle or

Cicero agree that figurative language makes the text (be it a speech or an advertisement) if not more persuasive, then at least more interesting. However, as will become apparent in the next chapter, the Brexit ads do not abound in figurative language. Quite contrarily, the ads are simple and straightforward, so their persuasiveness lies in something else. Thus, this campaign does not “stand on the shoulders of ancient rhetoricians” but rejects that tradition

and builds its persuasiveness on deceptive arguments, false information, and depicting the UK as a victim.

I argue that it is necessary to establish that advertising can have a significant impact on the viewers under certain circumstances. That is important concerning the pro-Brexit campaign on Facebook that I will analyze since I believe that the adverts played a role in Leave’s victory. That might seem obvious, but some studies indicate that the role of advertising, primarily online advertising, is not that great as it is often presented. One such study is, for example, the one done by David E. Broockman and Donald P. Green (2014), who investigated the effect of online advertising on people by telephone surveys. As it was apparent from the theoretical part, Broockman and Green do not consider online advertising a powerful addition to the advertising industry, and their research confirmed this hypothesis.

The result of the study “suggest[s] that even frequent exposure to advertising messages may be insufficient to impart new information or change attitudes“ (Broockman & Green, 2014, p.

1). This study’s advantage is that it applies to both political and online advertising, particularly on Facebook.

However, other researchers point to a different conclusion – that online advertising is not so negligible. There is an article by Herbjørn Nysveen and Einar Breivik (2005), who examined and compared the effectiveness of poster, radio, and internet advertising.

Unfortunately, they did not include television ads in their study, which would prove a beneficial addition to their analysis. Nevertheless, they concluded that the least effective means of advertising is the radio. There were no significant differences between internet ads and printed posters (Breivik & Nysveen, 2005, p. 10). This study did not analyze political adverts – they were ads for an airline ticket. However, the benefit of this research is that it compares the three types of media and does not investigate only the effectiveness of one.

When it comes to political advertising itself, Gregory A. Huber and Kevin Arceneaux

(2007) carried out an analysis of political advertising with exciting results. Previous researches have proven that advertisements can inform and engage people in the campaign, but according to Huber and Arceneaux, it was not yet proven that they could persuade people to vote differently than they would without being exposed to the ads. Contrary to the previous studies, Huber and Arceneaux find out that political advertising does little to inform and engage people. However, the authors do not present these results as a universal truth. Instead, they recognize that their results are starkly different from the whole body of previous research and attribute these findings to the fact that “presidential advertisements broadcast during the

2000 campaign had limited effects in this regard” (Huber & Arceneaux, 2007, p. 967).

On the other hand, they discover that political advertising can have powerful persuasive effects, primarily on moderately aware people. It is not my intention to decide which study is right, but it is indisputable that advertising has a certain effect on people in both cases.

Whether it is informing, engaging, or persuading, it influences people to a different extent without them realizing it. There are many more variables to consider to determine how effective online advertising is –whether it is political or not, what type of ad it is, and the overall design. Perhaps the safest way would be to do a case study and compare the print, television, and online ads promoting the same issue in politics because there is a difference between ads related to elections, where people are supposed to choose from several candidates and a referendum. However, until then, I believe it is safe to say that online advertising does affect the viewers to a certain extent, and that should not be overlooked.

Lastly, I will address the topic of manipulation since I believe that it is crucial to establish the difference between persuasion and manipulation. Van Dijk writes that it “involves power, but specifically abuse of power, that is, domination. [It] implies the exercise of a form of illegitimate influence by means of discourse: manipulators believe or do things that are in the

interest of the manipulator, and against the best interests of the manipulated” (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 360). I argue that many of the adverts I will analyze could be labeled as manipulative rather than persuasive. Manipulation could be found primarily in section 6.2, where I discuss supralinguistic elements of persuasion. Van Dijk argues that the difference between these two modes lies in the fact that in persuasion, people are still free to make their decisions, whereas he describes manipulated people as victims. It implies passivity and helplessness in deciding because someone else will decide for those people. That lies in the distortion of information, outward lying, or counting on that people do not have access to correct data and cannot factcheck the manipulators' arguments (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 361).

Now that I have established the importance of advertising in general – especially online and political advertising – I will pass on to specific linguistic modes of persuasion. As I already said in the Introduction, there are many figures and tropes and an even higher number of linguistic features that may have a persuasive effect in specific contexts. That is why I will now describe only the modes of persuasion present in the twenty-four Brexit advertisements I chose.

6. Analysis of the persuasive elements 6.1. Linguistic modes of persuasion 6.1.1. Blends and other instances of wordplay Brexit is not an exciting phenomenon only from a cultural and political perspective, but from a linguistic point of view as well. It represents a blend of the words “Britain” or “British” and

“exit”. Lesley Jeffries and Dan McIntyre wrote a chapter about this phenomenon called “The

Devil Has All the Best Tunes: An Investigation of the Lexical Phenomenon of Brexit” (2019) published in the book Rethinking Language, Text and Context. They argue that the word

Brexit itself helped significantly to promote the Leave campaign. According to them, “[t]he importance of designated terms to describe the processes favoured by the two campaign

groups is that the act of naming a concept produces an existential presupposition about the existence of that concept” (Jeffries & McIntyre, 2019, p. 105). This is significant because there was an analogous term – “Bremain”. However, it was considerably less noticeable and virtually unheard of in Slovakia, for example. That is perhaps not surprising because “exit” is a well-known word understood even by people who do not speak English (fluently). The same could not be said about the word “remain”, which is not generally understandable, and also longer and harder to remember. What does this imply? It implies that while the notion of leaving the EU is pervasive and thus more likely, remaining is not. Thus, the question seems to be on what conditions Britain will leave, not whether it will leave at all. Jeffries and

McIntyre also develop several reasons why Brexit is more influential than Bremain. Firstly, in the word Bremain, the stress is on the second syllable, although most English words that begin with “br” have stress on the first syllable. It is also more challenging to pronounce, and the affix “br” can be easily missed because of the unstressed first syllable. The authors also think that it has to do with the fact that exit is a dynamic verb and remain is a stative verb.

Therefore, exit implies change and has positive connotations. Remain, on the other hand, is associated with inaction and passivity (Jeffries & McIntyre, 2019, pp. 105-106). Moreover, the term Brexit is also in usage much longer than Bremain. Brexit is first mentioned in the national press is on 18 October 2012 in Financial Times, whereas the earliest mention of

Bremain is 9 October 2015 in Mirror. According to the authors of this study, the longer existence lends the term “Brexit” more credibility, although no one is certain what it means

(Jeffries & McIntyre, 2019, p. 112). The superiority of the blend “Brexit” is apparent in the frequency of usage – the highest number of appearances of the word Brexit per million words in NOW Corpus was from January to June 2017, and it was 26,18. In the case of “Bremain”, it was 0 (Jeffries & McIntyre, 2019, p. 114). According to Jon McLeod, chair of corporate, financial and public affairs of Weber Shandwick London (PR agency), the Remain campaign

should have used the word “stay” instead of “remain”, as it has much more “warmth and positivity” (Hall & Jardine, 2016). It is also more striking, shorter, easier to remember, and more in line with the word “exit” that the opposing campaign used. The use of “stay” versus

“remain” was also debated concerning the referendum. Research participants were asked which option is better, and the findings showed a slightly higher preference for the word

“remain”. The reason for that is that the people felt “stay” was too informal and familiar to be used in a referendum (Hollings & Roper, 2015), which is undoubtedly true and supports the idea that it should not be used in the referendum but the campaign. Furthermore, “stay” has provenance in Old English, which, as I will discuss later, evokes the feeling of familiarity and sincerity. “Remain,” on the other hand, has foreign provenance. It is longer and harder to remember. Thus, I agree with McLeod on the fact that using “stay” for slogans would be much more efficient. The campaigners probably used “remain” because it could be blended into “bremain” and thus stay in line with the original blend “Brexit”. Creating such blend with the word “stay” would be more difficult, if not even impossible. On the other hand, it could not have been used to create derogatory terms like “Bremoaner” or “Bremainiac” either.

However, Brexit and its derivatives (Bremain, Brexiteer) are not the only blends used in the campaign. One of the campaigns responsible for airing these ads on Facebook is

“BeLeave”, which has a double meaning. First is the “be leave”, in other words, “to be in favor of leaving the EU”. The second is phonetic. BeLeave sounds like “believe,” and it is also used in this sense, for example, in AD09. It reads: “BeLeave in Britain and pledge to vote on 23 June.” This is a smart and, in my opinion, well-chosen pun. Contrary to the ads' contents, which often aim to evoke negative emotions in the viewers, the word “believe” has a positive, optimistic undertone and represents the right choice, especially for young people, at whom this campaign was aimed. We have to keep in mind that the BeLeave campaign was different in tone than, for example, the Vote Leave campaign. BeLeave focused on the bright

future (mainly for young people) without the EU, not on how horrible the present with the EU is, or how terrible it will be when the influx of immigrants from Turkey arrives, like in Vote

Leave ads.

6.1.2. Word choice Choosing the right words can be difficult, and this choice depends mostly on the effect we want to achieve. According to Jeanne Fahnestock, Old English words are associated with the familiar; they evoke sincerity, clarity, and truthfulness because, for English speakers, they are the oldest words in the vocabulary (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 32). Simeon Potter expressed it well when he said: “We feel more at ease after getting a hearty welcome than after being granted a cordial reception” (as cited in Svartvik & Leech, 2016, p. 38). On the other hand, the words of

French origin are often used in contexts related to fashion, perfumes, and cosmetics because they are associated with elegance, beauty, and good taste (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 33). The

“prestigious” words have different origins in every country. In Japan, the prestigious words are in English. In England, they are often in French. In 1994, France even passed the so-called

Toubon law, which mandates all advertisements (and other public or official writings) to be in

French. However, even so, ads in foreign countries in English increase sales so much that some companies rather risk paying the fine than lose the benefits the English language provides (Piller, 2011, p. 102). The appeal is so great that the advertisement in a foreign language does not have to be grammatically correct. Sometimes it does not even have to make sense. The aura or an image this foreign language creates in people's minds is usually enough.

When it comes to Greek or Latin words, they create the effect of seriousness, formality, and professionality, or well-educatedness (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 34). The following ad amply illustrates the work with word choice – predominant use of simple words from OE, but occasional use of foreign words to create a special effect (bureaucrat).

Fig. 1, Advertising Brexit, AD01, BeLeave Campaign.

The majority of the Brexit ads use reasonably simple language, with most words coming from

Old English. The exceptions from this can be words that do not have an equivalent in Old

English, such as “immigration”. Alternatively, they can be potentially significant words with foreign origin chosen on purpose. Let us look at the very first ad, which confirms this. These ads featuring OE vocabulary create – according to Fahnestock – personal and intimate rapport. In this one, all words except “unelected” and “bureaucrats” have OE provenance, which makes the adverts immediately comprehensible and familiar.

However, the word origin is not the only thing that should be taken into consideration.

Most of us would agree that there is a difference when a person is labeled an immigrant, a refugee, or an asylum seeker. Thus, it is essential which term from the same lexical field we choose because each has different connotations and a different effect on hearers or readers.

The word “bureaucrat” has a French origin. Fahnestock argues that French words have the opposite impact as OE words. They can be associated with something prestigious, often when it comes to fashion, perfumes, or food. However, I argue that this advert aims to associate something foreign and alien with the EU and create negative connotations. Despite the neutral definition of bureaucracy found in the dictionaries, it is often associated with negative characteristics like ineffectiveness, rigidity, and excessive adherence to rules and paperwork

at the expense of common sense. Another word used to describe people working for the EU

(whether for the Parliament, Commission, or other institution) is “regulator” in AD05. A regulator can have both positive and negative meanings, but it is rather negative in this context. In this campaign, several adverts criticize the excessive regulation coming from the

EU, for example, AD04 or AD07. Therefore, the word “regulate” or “regulator” is used to describe regulation that is unwished-for and should be eliminated.

Another potentially important thing regarding word choice, according to Fahnestock, is the level of generality. The persuasiveness lies in the fact that it is easier to relate with more abstract or general expressions. This strategy is frequently used, for example, by politicians.

(Fahnestock, 2011, pp. 64–68). The abusing of generality can be seen in AD06.

Fig. 2, Advertising Brexit, AD06, BeLeave Campaign.

I argue that it is intentionally using vague or ambiguous language to hide the truth. This intentionally vague language also could be called “hedging”. Machin and Mayr state that

“[h]edging can be used to distance ourselves from what we say and to attempt to dilute the force of our statements and therefore reduce chances of unwelcome responses” (Machin and

Mayr as cited in Buckledee, 2018, p. 19). In this case, the truth seems to be that there is no single innovation that would create jobs and grow the UK economy and at the same time would be at the hand of the Brexiteers upon leaving the EU. The phrase “the kind of

innovation” does not seem very convincing, and if there indeed would be such technology, it would sound more plausible and believable if the ad specified what innovation it is exactly or how they want to achieve it. I would also like to point out the possessive pronoun “our” that is present in several ads and serves to strengthen the division into “Us” and “Them”.

Lastly, I would like to mention the word “cuppa” in AD20. In its essence, it is an issue of formal versus informal style (or spoken versus written). In this case, the informal “cuppa” was chosen instead of “a cup of tea”. “Cuppa” is undoubtedly a colloquial, familiar, and perhaps, endearing expression, contrary to the neutral “cup of tea”. It is more typical of spoken than of written register. It is also undeniably the only such word in the twenty-four ads

I chose for the analysis, making it stand out even more. It might be an attempt “to sound conversational” (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 80) and thus to create a feeling of social cohesiveness and highlight the division between “Us” and “Them”.

6.1.3. Modality and tense In other cases, the adverts did the exact opposite of hedging described above, and instead of, for example, using modal verbs, they established the statements as truth. That can be seen in

AD17 provided below or AD20.

Fig. 3, Advertising Brexit, AD17, Vote Leave Campaign.

In the sentence “Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are joining the EU”

(emphasis mine), the present progressive tense is used. That provides no safeguard against the

“unwelcome responses” and at the same time suggests a very high level of certainty of the claim. The progressive tense might also suggest the emergency and imminence of the situation, which might provoke even greater fear in the viewers. That is perhaps not surprising because immigration was one of the referendum's most critical and decisive points. In fact, in the ads I chose, the present tense (both simple and progressive) is used most frequently, with very few exceptions. It suggests simple confidence in one’s own claims, even though they are not always true – like the argument that the EU wants to kill the cuppa. So far, it seems that the campaign is very sure of the maladies of its opponent but rather evasive and vague when it comes to its own statements. It also looks like simply sounding confident is enough to create an aura of credibility and persuade the viewers.

6.1.4. The role of Actor/Agent and Goal It is noticeable that these ads work with the Actor/Goal roles and switch them as necessary to prove their point, and the word choice is directly connected to that. For example, in AD15, the

EU “takes” the money from the UK. In AD24, the UK “sends” the money, and in AD16, the

UK even “hands it over”. The first of the three mentioned ads depict the EU as the proactive element, but not in the right way since taking money from someone is a negative action and makes the UK the victim. However, in AD24, the UK “sends” the money to the EU, suggesting a voluntary action, even proactivity from the UK.

On the other hand, the third example implies complacency and passivity. Thus, there arises the question – which one is correct? Is the UK sending the money voluntarily, does the

EU take it against the UK's will and its citizens, or does the UK passively hands it over? It seems that in this campaign, all three are right, or rather, true is always the one that strikes the right chord in the viewer and provokes the strongest emotion – in this case, anger or outrage

at sending away so much money which could be used for building a new NHS hospital like the ads say, for example.

6.1.5. Metaphor Among all the figures of speech, metaphor is probably the most well-known and the most widely used (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 101). Cambridge Dictionary defines metaphor as “an expression, often found in literature, that describes a person or object by referring to something that is considered to have similar characteristics to that person or object“. The advantage of the metaphor is that it can shed light on a phenomenon by connecting and linking it with other concepts. However, it can also create links that are not desired, at least not by everyone. For instance, the EU is often metaphorically referred to in the advertisements as a burden that keeps the United Kingdom back and gives nothing in return, although not all people hold this view, and many would disagree with it. It is evident that the metaphor is often subjective, or rather, the links created between two concepts do not have to hold for all people.

As I already said, the EU is mostly depicted as a burden. The visual metaphor of the EU as a burden is much stronger than the textual metaphor, but it is there, nonetheless. The EU is

“holding the UK back” (AD03), “keeping it in the past” (AD05), it “blocks” (AD23), it

“restricts” (AD06), it “forces” (AD07), and it needs to be “got out of the way” (AD10).

Interestingly, the portrayal of the EU as a burden is much more frequent in the BeLeave ads, which were targeted primarily at young people. I will come back to this potentially important fact in the Conclusion, where I will discuss the differences and the similarities between the ads belonging to these three campaigns. The issue of freedom is not present only in these ads.

The Brexiteers also dealt with this topic in the tabloid press, where they also used the metaphor of shackles, which represent the EU (Buckledee, 2018, p. 80). Shackles are very similar to the ball and chain featured in AD06, as they are both tools of imprisonment,

although the latter is no longer in use. “The ‘shackles’ and similar metaphors were generally used as shorthand references to what was perceived as excessive EU regulation that created unnecessary costs for businesses and hindered economic growth” (Buckledee, 2018, p. 82).

This portrayal of the EU as a literal burden (ball and chain) or metaphorical burden (male figure) is much more salient in the visual aspect of the ads. Some, like AD19, are relatively straightforward and do not have any metaphorical sense. In AD01, there is a metaphor of the

UK leaving the European Union depicted as a giant foot kicking out some sort of bureaucrat.

That is a metaphor because there is no literal kicking involved in the process; the UK is not only one man, and neither is the EU, but they are symbolically rendered as such for the sake of the metaphor.

Fig. 4, Advertising Brexit, AD05, BeLeave Campaign.

Likewise, in AD03, AD05, AD10, and AD20, the EU is metaphorically depicted as a human being, particularly a man in a suit. In AD06, however, the EU is portrayed as a literal burden or an obstacle, which I already mentioned when talking about verbal metaphor, but it is more significant in the visual. In AD03, the EU is represented as a giant hand stopping a man (UK) from moving; in AD05, it is a man stopping a clock from ticking, and in AD06, it is a ball and chain preventing a man from walking yet again. In AD10, the EU is depicted as a faceless man making a stopping gesture with his hand. The hand is also present in AD20, where it is

depicted as symbolically smashing the table in a gesture of anger and enforcing its own will at the expense of others. Therefore, it is apparent that all these adverts portray the EU as an obstacle in the way of the UK’s progress, whether a literal obstacle like ball and chain or a metaphorical obstacle in the form of a man (bureaucrat, regulator).

There is a brilliant metaphor in the AD15 related to the NHS.

Fig. 5, Advertising Brexit, AD15, Vote Leave Campaign.

It is a simple ad with a bright red background and one wavy white line. The line is supposed to represent the electrocardiogram, and the button in mid-bottom resembles a pill. It is noteworthy that the slogan “Take action” is inside this pill, as if to suggest that taking action, in other words, leaving the EU, is the only remedy against the ailments the EU is causing. It means that in this metaphor, the EU is not a burden, but some sickness or a malady. From all these metaphors, it is clear that depicting the EU as a burden will only provoke anger or create resistance towards it.

Fig. 6, Advertising Brexit, AD20, Vote Leave Campaign.

Lastly, I will analyze AD20, which deals with the cup of tea the EU allegedly wants to ban. It is noticeable that the ad does not say the EU wants to “ban” it or “prohibit” it, which would be perhaps the neutral word choice in this case. However, it says that the EU wants to

“kill” the cuppa. The verb “to kill” something in a metaphorical sense is very strong and imaginative. It suggests a violent action of getting rid of something for good, with no chance of getting that back in the future. Moreover, if we extend this metaphor slightly further, the killing of the “cuppa” implies that the EU is a killer – another negative denomination used to characterize the EU and its practices.

6.1.6. Form of address Skilled writers or speakers can use the form of address to their advantage to achieve the desired goals (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 279). For example, the first-person plural form of address can refer to multiple authors or establish the connection and identification with the addressees

(Fahnestock, 2011, p. 285). The second possible usage is to redirect the attention and, therefore, the responsibility for something – away from specific people. That is the reason why the politicians work very carefully with the forms of address. Of course, “we” is not the only pronoun that can be used. “You”, for example, “deliberately acknowledges the presence of listeners or readers by calling on them in some way or even making some demand on

them” (Fahnnestock, 2011, p. 281). Thus, it is clear that the second person (whether singular or plural) can be a very persuasive feature.

Apart from a couple of exceptions, the creators used almost exclusively the first-person plural pronoun “we” in these advertisements. For example, the AD01 says: “We should make our laws, not far away, unelected bureaucrats”. As has already been said, “we” could refer to multiple authors, or it can establish a connection with the audience. I argue that this is the latter case, and “we” refers to all citizens of the United Kingdom. However, since it establishes a connection and identification, it at the same time also creates a binary opposition. When there is “we”, there also has to be a second party, the “other”. We instinctively associate “we” with good and the other with bad, and in this case, the other is the

European Union. The identity, even national identity, is thus a relational concept, and it is built by differentiating from the other and what it represents on the one hand, and on the other hand by emphasizing the common traits of the in-group (Costelloe, 2014, p. 322). This positive identification with the in-group is invoked the most strongly in the AD20. There is the “our cuppa” and several other tokens characteristic of the UK – the Big Ben, the red phone booth, double-decker, and the British flag. From the presented advertisements, it is clear that the EU is indeed associated with something negative, a burden perhaps, that keeps the UK from flourishing. Fairclough writes about the inclusive “we” that when used in the press, “[t]he newspaper is speaking on behalf of itself, its readers ... In so doing it is making an implicit authority claim … – it has authority to speak for others” (Fairclough as cited in

Costelloe, 2014, p. 320). Therefore, these ads not only speak for their viewers but all of the

UK citizens. In doing so, they claim the authority to do so by using the “inclusive we”. That echoes Costelloe’s statement that “texts often assume national singularity and homogeneity and create what has been labelled discourses of sameness” (Costelloe, 2014, p. 320). That

means that even though not everybody will agree with the ads' statements, the ads behave like everybody indeed does agree, which is in itself a persuasive element.

Therefore, the positive identification of the in-group and the national identity is constructed primarily by using the inclusive we. Naturally, the in-group is associated with positive aspects, and the out-group is linked to negative characteristics. Van Dijk writes that

“the overall strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other presentation is very typical in this biased account of the facts in favour of the speaker’s or writer’s own interests, while blaming negative situations and events on opponents or the Others” (Van Dijk, 2006, p.

373). Indeed, it is true that the Leave campaign is foregrounding the flaws of the opponent while portraying themselves and their opinion as the only right one. The use of inclusive we implies that “we” are in it together, the European Union is doing all of these horrible things, and we, the homogeneous mass of the citizens of the United Kingdom, are outraged by it and want to stop it by leaving the EU. However, not all ads use the “inclusive we”. Some of them work with the you-form, such as AD04, AD08, or AD18. It is clear that in the last two ads, the reason for using you-form is that it is formed as a question posed directly to the viewers, and the inclusive we would not make sense. Why was the you-form used in AD04 is not clear, and there could be multiple explanations for that. One such explanation could be that this ad is very much target-specific. It is aimed primarily at younger people, but even among them, some do not use Uber or similar services. Contrary to that, everyone at some point in their lives takes advantage of the NHS or is affected by the double-quality of the food. Thus, they could reach the potential no-voters that are usually not interested in politics because they do not see the EU’s influence in their day-to-day lives.

It is safe to say that using inclusive “we” was an essential strategy in the Brexit campaign.

Proof of that is that it was used not only in the adverts I analyze in this thesis but also in public discourse. Steve Buckledee, the author of the monography called The Language of

Brexit: How Britain Talked Its Way Out of the European Union (2018), examined the use of inclusive we in public discourse. This public discourse is represented by, for example, Nigel

Farage, leader of the pro-Brexit party UKIP, political commentator Carole Malone, or magazine The Sun, all of whom used the inclusive we as if they were speaking on behalf of every citizen of the UK (Buckledee, 2018, pp. 57-60). However, the inclusive “we” is not only used to create opposition between “Us” – citizens of the UK and “Them” – foreigners,

European Union, or immigrants. It also creates an opposition between “the ordinary people” and the elites. The alignment with ordinary people is apparent from the plain language and the topical focus on the problems of the middle class and youngsters.

Nevertheless, it is perhaps most significantly embodied in the personality of Boris

Johnson. Although he is by no means ordinary or middle class – with his wealthy background and Eton and Oxford education – he often presents himself like one. That is not the case only for Boris Johnson, but for many pro-Brexit politicians, and the fact that he (and others like him) even managed to present himself as “man of the people” or as one of the ordinary people can be attributed precisely to the use of the inclusive we (Buckledee, 2018, p. 56). However, the division into Us and Them does not have to mean only the distinction between Us – the ordinary people and Them – the institution of the European Union, but also Us – the British taxpayers. That can be seen in the AD18, which reads: “EU politicians and bureaucrats

SPEND OUR MONEY ON PRIVATE JETS for short distance travel. This is an outrageous abuse of British taxpayers’ money and MUST BE STOPPED!” Therefore, the pronoun “our” defines Us as the British taxpayers who finance the lavish spending of the EU bureaucrats, not the British people in general, or ordinary people in general.

6.1.7. Passive sentence construction and nominal phrases Similarly, as with using the pronoun “we”, the passive voice can also obstruct clarity and cover up the exact authorship and responsibility. That is further accentuated by the fact that

the pronouns are omitted when using passive voice. Therefore, it seems as if there was no one responsible for things, and these things happening spontaneously of their own accord. Some scholars call it “dishonest” (Fahnestock, 2011, p. 160), presumably because of how politicians and other “persuaders” can use it for their advantage. In her book, Fahnestock wrote a defense of the passive and argues that the passive does not always have this dishonest or immoral function. She states that it must fulfill some language needs because otherwise, it would not have existed at all. However, I argue that the usage of the passive sentence construction in the

Brexit ads is used with this persuasive effect in mind, and therefore, it could be called dishonest.

As I already mentioned, most of the ads use the inclusive we, and in a couple of exceptions, “you-form” is used. However, there are also several cases with passive sentence construction. The agentless passive is present primarily in the DUP ads, in which the text has a slogan-like construction. For example, AD11 reads: “Better for family budgets. Meaning lower bills for hard-pressed families”. All four of the DUP ads have passive sentence construction, and three are without an agent. The one exception is in AD13, and it is this sentence: “Our laws should be made by the people we elect”. This sentence has passive construction, but it has an agent – the people we elect. This sentence construction gives rise to very curt and brief sentences that match the other elements in the DUP ads, such as neutral background without emotive pictures or emotively charged statements.

Indeed, the majority of the Brexit ads are very brief and short. That is perhaps best seen in the DUP ads in which the agent is missing altogether. That aids in making the statements even shorter and more concise. Research done by George Baltas showed that shorter texts are more effective than longer ones. He writes that “lengthy messages reduce direct response. It appears that concise messages stimulate consumer clicking. Long messages involve paying close attention, which visitors are rarely inclined to do“ (Baltas, 2003, Results and Discussion).

6.2. Supralinguistic modes of persuasion 6.2.1. Pathos I have already briefly discussed the definitions of ethos, pathos, and logos according to

Aristotle in the preceding chapter. However, now I would like to focus specifically on pathos, and how it manifests in the advertisements I will analyze. I established that pathos means appealing to the emotions of the hearers or readers. The emotions can be various, both negative and positive. I argue that negative emotions are more powerful than positive emotions, and therefore they can have a more significant impact on people. It will become evident that the Vote Leave campaign uses primarily one strong emotion – anger or outrage – to advocate their cause. Therefore, it is questionable whether employing pathos in the advertisements, speeches, or other forms aimed at persuading the public is “fair”. Logos employs logical arguments, and ethos appeals to the speaker's moral authority or reputation, which can also be seen as a sort of logical argument. We are inclined to believe people who have a clean slate and who are professionals in their field. Pathos, on the other hand, only appeals to the most basic instincts of people. Thus, it can be very easy to get carried away by our emotions and jump to wrong conclusions.

Most of these ads focus on provoking anger or outrage by describing (often) fictitious situations or framing the argument deceptively. For example, the AD01 says: “We should make our laws, not far away, unelected bureaucrats.” This ad makes it sound like the MPs are not elected, but strangers that nobody chose. However, the truth is that the British citizens themselves elect the members of the European Parliament, and the Parliament, in turn, chooses one Commissioner from every member state for the EC. Even then, every legislation coming from the EU is then further debated and decided on by the UK Parliament. On the other hand, if the UK left the EU, it would mean that it would still be subject to the EU legislation, but it would have no control over it (“Does Membership”, n.d.).

Furthermore, the UK has 73 out of 751 MPs, which is not a small figure. Therefore, the truth is that the UK is making its own laws. Framing argument like the UK is not making its own laws seems like a smart way to blame the European Union for every mistake or error.

The British government cannot be responsible because it is not making its own laws. I argue that the ad is deliberately formulating like this to make it seem like unelected strangers who have nothing to do with the UK are running it, which is simply not true. In this way, the ads shape and bend the reality to provoke anger at the EU in the viewers.

A big part of this anger discourse in the ads is the theme of NHS. There are multiple ads aimed at the NHS (or featuring medical experts in the photos), and all of them are focusing on the fact that the UK sends money to the EU that could be used to build an NHS hospital or merely helping the NHS one way or another. This topic is present in AD15, AD16, and AD24. I will use AD24 specifically to illustrate this point.

Fig. 7, Advertising Brexit, AD24, Vote Leave Campaign.

Even if we overlook the fact that this number “350 million a week” the ads are talking about is not correct and therefore another fictitious situation, it is again about angering the viewers. Furthermore, whether it is 350 million or 150 million does not matter that much, since they managed to put a focus on the fact that the UK sends the money to the EU at all, the precise figure does not matter. This way, the attention is on the direct benefit of Brexit

(Soules, 2015, pp. 169-170). Health, and therefore NHS, is (naturally) a top priority for many 36

people, and the euromyths circulating the society can make it difficult for some viewers to see the benefits of the EU. The photo in AD24 itself provokes – contrary to the text – more sympathy than anger. There is a picture of an elderly lady lying in a hospital bed. There is an infusion tube sticking out of her hand. There is also a nurse, which can be seen only partly, touching the patient’s forehead as if to find out whether she is feverish. It works with emotions as well; viewers could feel sorry, sympathetic, or angry because she could get much better hospital care if not for the EU.

As I already said, the ads feature doctors or nurses several times. That is the case in

AD16 as well.

Fig. 8, Advertising Brexit, AD16, Vote Leave Campaign.

AD16 looks like a snapshot of an ordinary day in a large hospital. The people are not looking at the camera, nor are they posing. They are in the middle of work, seemingly unaware of being photographed, which lends the photo credibility. On the right side, we see a doctor or maybe a male nurse, looking at someone or something outside the shot. Further back, there is another man, presumably a receptionist. The possible reason for choosing this kind of photo is that they wanted to show how busy hospitals and the staff are. Coupled with the text, we can also assume that they are also underpaid, understaffed, and could use the alleged 350 million a week that the UK is giving the EU.

Another example of a medical professional in the photos that is supposed to provoke emotion is AD17.

Fig. 9, Advertising Brexit, AD17, Vote Leave Campaign.

There is a portrait shot of a young woman, possibly also a doctor. It focuses on her face, and the background is blurred out. I assume she is a doctor as well, according to the blue piece of clothing she is wearing – possibly scrubs – and a black tube around her neck – probably a stethoscope. She has her hand up to her forehead in a disapproving gesture, as if she just got a headache by the “news” displayed on the left side – that certain countries are joining the EU.

Thus, she is the embodiment of the emotion the viewers are supposed to feel when looking at this ad. It could be outrage, disillusionment, or simple disapproval. We could look at this as employing ethos, that is, the moral authority of a medic. However, it is questionable whether being a medical professional is a sole guarantee of being an authority in political issues. That is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy I will mention in the next section. The images and the text employ pathos, using various techniques to elicit strong emotions in the viewers.

While in the ads above, the strongest emotion was not necessarily anger, but also sympathy for the medical professionals, in the next ads, it will be primarily anger and fear. Perhaps the best example of the anger in these ads is AD19.

Fig. 10, Advertising Brexit, AD19, Vote Leave Campaign.

The neutral word “politician” is accompanied by a slightly negative word “bureaucrat” that I have discussed earlier. Politicians and bureaucrats are the culprits for using private jets for short-distance travel. It is noticeable that contrary to the other ads, there is a direct criticism of this behavior in form of the sentence: “This is an outrageous abuse of British taxpayers’money and MUST BE STOPPED!” There is usually only a dry observation of the

EU’s misdemeanor in the other ads, but no condemnation like in the AD19. Thus, this ad accurately and explicitly names the emotions the viewers are supposed to feel – outrage.

Furthermore, the anger is embodied in the sudden switch to capital letters and the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.

Anger is not the only emotion that the ads can elicit. A substantial part of the campaign is based on fear, which is paradoxical, given that the Remain campaign was criticized for fear campaigning and termed “Project Fear” (Forsyth, 2016; Holmess, 2019;

York, 2019). The fear is caused mainly by the alleged waves of immigrants that will flood the

UK if they do not leave the EU. An excellent example of the fear-mongering is in AD21.

Fig. 11, Advertising Brexit, AD21, Vote Leave Campaign.

According to these ads, the main concern is Turkey, which is allegedly going to be a member of the EU. The higher population, lower salaries, border with Syria, and the threat of terrorism are all used in the ads as reasons why Turkey joining the EU would be a catastrophic scenario.

Apart from Turkey, other countries joining the EU according to the ads are Albania,

Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. In AD21, we see invoking fear from “convicted criminals” from Romania and Latvia, countries that have been members of the EU for a long time. Indeed, immigration is one of the four central pillars of the Leave campaign. The other three are jobs/economy, lawmaking, and the NHS. Linked to this immigration question was also racism. Although Nigel Farage was very cautious in racist remarks of the members of his party, voters of UKIP themselves were not that shy to confess that 42 percent of them are

“little racially prejudiced” and 6 percent said they are “very racially prejudiced” but many of them denied they were racist (Buckledee, 2018, p. 96). However, in the Facebook campaign, they did not shy away from statements that could be labeled openly racist. While some of the ads argued simply for a “better” or “safer” immigration system (AD02, AD12), there is an openly racist claim in AD21. AD17 is a little more subtle, but racist, nonetheless. I am sure that many viewers would not deem these ads racist. However, “[s]uch language implies a degree of risk hardly backed up by hard facts, but professional journalists generally take care

not to be too explicit in linking migrants to criminal acts and avoid criticisms of specific ethnic or religious groups likely to lead to legal action” (Buckledee, 2018, p. 98).

Undoubtedly, claims like these should not be part of either professional journalism or serious advertising.

AD18, AD23, and AD24 are all supposed to appeal to emotions. The first mentioned ad is supposed to appeal to fear. There is a picture of a flooded town and a rescue helicopter flying above it. The picture is too small to recognize the details, but it is enough to provoke fear of floods in the citizens. There is a photo of three polar bears, a parent, and two of their offspring on the left side of the second ad. Without a doubt, it is a charming picture, and there would be very few people who would not be moved by it. This ad's creators probably counted on that majority of the people will want to protect the polar bears and click on the button even though they are not Brexiteers or simply not interested in politics. If we only look at the photo, it might provoke positive emotions, like compassion or even happiness. However, coupled with the text, the effect is the same as with the rest of these ads. What viewers most likely feel is anger that we cannot protect these beautiful animals and what is worse because of the EU. Thus, it is apparent that text is not the only aspect that can appeal to the emotions.

Pictures can do that as well and perhaps even more effectively, as was proved in the passages above.

6.2.2. Logos and the hoaxes As I already discussed, logos relies on logical arguments to argue in favor of or against a particular concept. It would be a misstatement to argue that the Leave campaign only uses pathos and the emotion of anger in their advertisements. They did include rational arguments as well, or rather, arguments that sound rational, but they are not true. For example, certain statements are misleading, and some of them even straightforwardly wrong. Therefore, the

application of logos by Leave is quite fascinating. It appears that it does not matter whether the arguments are right if they sound like that.

As I already outlined in the previous subchapter, the ads indeed feature several hoaxes, euromyths, and deceptive statements. It was disproved by various fact-checking institutions that the figure “350 million a week” that the UK sends to the EU is wrong (Lee, 2020; Stone,

2018; Full Fact, 2017). According to Full Fact, the figure is closer to 250 million a week, but this is not about the numbers. Leave claims that by only leaving the EU, the UK will have this sum (be it 350 or 250 million) at its disposal to spend it. That is not true either – the economic impact of the withdrawal will likely exceed the membership fee (Full Fact, 2017).

Similarly, the claim that Turkey is joining the EU is also false. At the time of the campaign, Turkey was in the middle of negotiations to become a member of the EU, but these negotiations may take a long time, and they are not even a guarantee that a country will become a member. Therefore, using present progressive tense in a phrase such as “Turkey is joining” is highly misleading, and it is only supposed to play into the hands of the Brexiteers by evoking the fear of immigrants in the viewers. I probably need not explain that the statement: “European Union wants to kills our cuppa” in AD20 is a euromyth as well. There is no indication that the EU plans or ever planned to ban the “cuppa”. It is worth considering why the EU would want to ban the cuppa in the first place and how exactly that would be executed.

However, this is not to argue that all the ads' statements are false or deceptive, albeit most are subjective (as to how bright the UK's future is without the EU) or too general to say something valuable. Many of the arguments only echo the misgivings expressed a long time ago, when the EU was still only taking shape. Such misgivings are the EU's undemocraticity mentioned above, future enlargement, and, coupled with that, the uncontrolled immigration.

6.2.3. Logical fallacies Logical fallacies may occasionally be present in advertising. However, most people would agree that they should not be. There were several examples of logical fallacies in the Brexit ads published on Facebook. If people are not acquainted with these errors in arguments, they can be very persuasive. Especially, as Marshall Soules writes, “when skillfully framed with rhetorical devices, ambiguous language, figures of speech and compelling emotional appeals”

(Soules, 2015, p. 27). These are the several types of logical fallacies, which can be found in the Brexit ads:

• Equivocation is achieved by using intentionally vague language to avoid telling

the truth.

• Appeals to authority lie in using opinions and claims of the authority, even though

they do not have to be an authority in that particular issue.

• Appeals to fear are similar to appeals to emotions, but while appeals to emotions

are generally based on positive emotions, this fallacy rests on fear, which is a

negative emotion.

• A red herring fallacy is used to distract people's attention from critical issues by

bringing up a minor or unimportant issue.

• Stereotypes fallacy, similarly to the appeals to emotions, can provoke negative

emotions by invoking stereotypes. Stereotypes are “hasty, often unconscious

generalisations” (Soules, 2015, p. 29), which can trigger emotions like fear or

anger.

• False dilemma argues that only one of the two options presented can be true, when

in fact, both or neither of them must be true.

• Confusing cause and effect arises when two events occur together, and people

wrongly assume that one event causes the other (“Fallacy”, Nizkor Project, n.d.)

(Soules, 2015, p. 29)

Fig. 12, Advertising Brexit, AD02, BeLeave Campaign.

The first logical fallacy is in the AD02, and I argue that this is a case of “confusing cause and effect” type of fallacy because there is no evidence that would point to the fact that less immigration will create more jobs for young people. Just because there is often a lower young unemployment rate in countries with more strict immigration rules, such as in Australia, it does not mean that strict immigration lowers the unemployment rate. Contrary to that, research shows that higher immigration causes unemployment to drop (Bier, 2016). Although this specific ad does not explicitly say it favors lower immigration, the Vote Leave campaign did not hide that they are pro-lower, more controlled immigration.

Fig. 13, Advertising Brexit, AD08, BeLeave Campaign.

A great example of a false dilemma is in the AD08 above and AD18. In the former, the viewers are supposed to choose between the European Commission and the Parliament. In the bigger picture, it is a choice between the EU's interests and their own. I argue that this is a false dilemma because it forces people to choose when, in fact, no choice is necessary. In the end, the UK had both a Parliament and representatives in the Commission for the whole of its membership in the EU. Thus, the choice is not “either-or”, but rather “either Parliament and

EC or only the Parliament”. It is also very persuasive because, given this choice, very few people would – naturally – vote to benefit the other country (or countries) instead of their own.

The second false dilemma in AD18 is even more compelling. In contrast to the previous ad, this is an example of a specific choice – either we stay in the EU, or Yorkshire gets no flood defenses. That is accentuated by the photo of a flooded city, perhaps Yorkshire, with a rescue helicopter. Again, not many people would choose the interest of a foreign country or union of them, especially when their lives and lives of their families and friends could be at stake, or at least influenced by the material damage a flood can cause.

Fig. 14, Advertising Brexit, AD23, Vote Leave Campaign.

In the campaign, there were several ads that, at first glance, did not seem like they had anything to do with Brexit. AD23 featured above is an example of that. Although it expresses

its opposition to the EU by stating that “The EU blocks our ability to speak out and

PROTECT polar bears”, there is no logo or name of the campaign group, as it is in the majority of these ads. I maintain that it is a “red herring” because the ad masks its real goal

(persuade people to vote for leaving the EU) by tackling a minor issue and pretending it advertises animal protection. An unacquainted viewer interested in environmental protection could click on the ad, only to be hyperlinked to the webpage advocating leaving the European

Union. It is also questionable how exactly the EU blocks UK’s ability to protect polar bears.

The ad is again too general and does not specify this. Perhaps we would learn that by clicking on the red button that says: “Click to protect them”, but unfortunately, as these ads are no longer airing, they are also not clickable.

To sum up this subchapter, I will go back to the statement I made earlier that some techniques used in these ads are more manipulative than persuasive. That can perhaps best be seen in this subchapter on supralinguistic modes of persuasion. The ads repeatedly work with figures that are not true (350 million a week), feature hoaxes (banning the cuppa), or appeal to the primal emotions of people like fear or anger (uncontrolled immigration and threat of terrorism). That could be labeled as manipulation as Van Dijk defines it since the campaign uses fallacious claims to persuade people to do what the Leave wants on the pretext that it is in people’s interest. At the same time, the interests of the politicians behind this remain hidden. It could even be said that if the viewers accept all the ads' claims as accurate, they do not have another choice than to vote Leave. Who would not like the idea of more jobs, better security, better NHS, higher salaries, or more freedom in deciding the important matters?

Furthermore, who would like to stay in the EU if it would bring terrorism, the NHS's collapse, or flooded towns?

6.3. Visual modes of persuasion 6.3.1. The theory of Visual Grammar In my analysis, I will also include the theory of visual grammar developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. They established their theory on the work of M. Halliday and his concept of ideational, textual, and interpersonal metafunctions (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 42). However, they renamed the metafunctions and expanded the concept. They argue that these modes are not exclusive to written language but can be found even in visual structures, which tell a narrative. The narrative processes are further subdivided into action processes, reactional processes, speech processes, and others, but, for this thesis, it is enough to clarify further only what the action and reactional processes are. These two categories are the only two found in the Brexit ads.

6.3.1.1. Action processes The action processes are bound to include at least one participant – the Actor. When there are more participants, they are divided into Actor(s) and Goal(s). When it comes to the ideational metafunction, the interaction between two objects can be expressed by a vector (Kress & van

Leeuwen, 2006, p. 42). The vector can emanate from the Actor, or the Actor (or a part of them) can be the vector. Thus, the action processes represent an action that the Actor does to the Goal. When the action done by the Actor has no Goal or is not done to the Goal, the action is called a non-transactional process (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 63).

In AD01, there is a picture of a leg kicking out a man. It is immediately apparent that the foot symbolizes the UK, and the man is the bureaucrat, as mentioned earlier. However, the creators wanted to avoid any misunderstandings and took precautions. Those are the sock with a UK flag and the EU flag, which the bureaucrat holds in his hand. In line with Kress and van Leeuwen's theory of visual grammar, we could say that this is a narrative scene with two participants. Since the leg is kicking the man, it is a transactional scene, in which the leg

is the Actor, and the bureaucrat is the Goal. That is interesting because, in these ads, it is usually the other way around – that is, the EU is the Actor, and the UK is the Goal. However, only a part of the Actor is visible, which could be a “visual analogue, perhaps, of ‘passive agent deletion’” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 64). We could say that the vector emanates from the Actor (his leg), or rather, that the leg is the vector. It is also in line with Kress and van Leeuwen’s theory since they write that the Actors “are often also the most salient participants, through size, place in the composition, contrast against background, colour saturation or conspicuousness, sharpness of focus, and through the “psychological salience”

(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 63). Naturally, it does not comply with all these conditions since it is a relatively simple picture, with only two participants and no background. However, the leg is definitely the more salient element. Not only because of the darker colors but also because it is disproportionally bigger than the bureaucrat. It might suggest that the UK is stronger than the EU and its economy is big enough to do without the European Union.

Fig. 15, Advertising Brexit, AD03, BeLeave Campaign.

While in the AD01, the “faceless” body part belongs to the UK, in this one, it belongs to the

EU. Similarly, it features a picture of a man in a suit with something like a pocket square in the form of a UK flag. The arm has a cuff link that represents the UK flag. However, this man is not a bureaucrat. While in the AD01, the bureaucrat is a caricature, this man is drawn

simplistically and minimalistically, and he certainly does not evoke characteristics of a bureaucrat. He is more of a businessman and implies responsibility, power, and importance.

Here, the double standard of the campaigners can be seen. When the EU is portrayed as a man, it is a caricature of a bureaucrat. However, when the UK is depicted as a man, it is a serious businessman. From the image, we can tell that the man is about to go somewhere when the hand snatches him and stops him. Therefore, the roles in this ad are reverted compared to the AD01. Firstly, here the EU is the Actor who does something to the Goal (the

UK). The UK is now the passive element, but only because the EU keeps it in passivity, so now England is the victim. It is interesting to note how the campaign uses the roles of Actor and Goal (or active and passive element) or the role of the victim to fit their narrative.

The same (or almost) applies to AD05. There, the EU is an Actor as well, although there is no Goal in the right sense of the word. There is only a giant clock to symbolize the past in which the EU keeps Britain. AD06 is an interesting case because it is not easy to decide who is the Actor and who is the Goal. There is only one person, but we only see him from the waist down. There are a ball and chain on his leg, which prevents him from moving forward. That suggests the EU theoretically could be the Actor, but an inanimate object represents it.

6.3.1.2. Reactional processes Reactional processes are those in which the vector is not formed by action but an eye-line, a glance. In that case, the Actor is called the Reacter, and the Goal is called the Phenomenon.

A reactional process is, for example, in AD02. There is a photograph of a young woman facing the viewers and looking directly into the camera. Her facial expression is happy; she is smiling, which could be contrasted with the woman in AD17, whose expression is negative, perhaps angry. She is in the middle of photography and represents the Centre. The interior of public transport and people in the background belong to the Margins. She is the nucleus, the

element with the biggest informational value. That is further accentuated by the focus, which is on her, while the background is blurry. This ad suggests that the focus is on young people and their future, not on families or older people, who might be sitting in the background, and that is why they are blurred out. The woman is facing the viewers directly, which suggests a sense of interaction between the viewers and the woman depicted in the ad (Kress & van

Leeuwen, 2006, p. 43). We could compare this with the AD17, as mentioned earlier, in which the woman is not looking into the camera and is therefore subject to the scrutiny of the viewers (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 43). Since there is no Goal, she is the Reacter, and the depicted scene is reactional.

I argue that the reactional processes are present more often in the Vote Leave ads. They are in AD16, AD17, AD23, and AD24 as well. In AD16, there is a doctor or a male nurse, whose imaginary line of glance forms the vector. He is looking at someone (or something) on the left side, which is out of the picture. The same goes for AD23, in which there are three polar bears, two of them looking somewhere into the distance. In AD24, the nucleus comprises an elderly lady, and the lady’s glance at the nurse who is touching her forehead is the vector.

6.3.2. Composition The composition is an integral part of every analysis of the visual structures. It is generally divided into three parts – information value, salience, and framing, which I will describe further in the next section (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, pp. 177).

6.3.2.1. Information value Information value is concerned with the placing and layout of elements in the visual plane.

The way it is done adds a new layer of meaning to the whole structure. If we changed the layout, the meaning would change as well. When it comes to the left and right division, left is the Given and right is the New information (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, pp. 180-181).

Given information suggests that it is a well-known and accepted piece of information within the target group, community, or culture. The New information, on the other hand, is still questionable, not proven, or contestable. Kress and van Leeuwen write that: “This structure is ideological in the sense that it may not correspond to what is the case either for the producer or for the consumer of the image or layout. The important point is that the readers must read it within that structure, even if that valuation may then be rejected by a particular reader” (Kress

& van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 181). I will come back to this statement later when I analyze the particular advertisements.

However, the horizontal division between left and right is not the only way to divide the visual structure. There is also the vertical axis and the top and bottom division. Whereas left and right represent the Given and the New, the top and bottom symbolize the Ideal and the Real. The top is usually the Ideal; it generally does not show the product itself, but rather, it suggests the pleasure and prestige that comes with the product. The bottom is the Real; it shows the viewers the actual product, it sticks to the reality and “provid[es] more or less factual information about [the product]” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 186). It is connected to how people read – in western cultures, from left to right and from top to bottom. In cultures that read from right to left, it is switched – given information is on the right and the new on the left.

Of the 24 ads, five ads are sharply divided into a textual and a pictorial part. In those cases, the text is on the right side and the picture on the left. That corresponds with Kress and van Leeuwen’s argument that the Given information is on the left, and New on the right side.

In AD05, there is a picture of a man trying to stop the time and keep the UK in the past. That is the Given information; it is accepted, and its truthfulness is not contested. On the right is the New information that we, meaning the UK citizens, cannot let the European regulators continue this. AD08 is similar; on the left, there is (probably) Jean-Claude Juncker, former

president of the European Commission. The left side is assigned to the EU, and it says:

“unelected, unaccountable” and “Commission”. Again, this is the Given information that embodies the current state of affairs. On the right, there is a picture of a ballot box with a hand casting a vote. The right side symbolizes the UK, or “you”, the viewer. The text says:

“elected and accountable” and “Parliament”. That is the New information, and it is true because the referendum of 2016 was indeed a novelty. This division of the ad into Given and

New information and the false dilemma makes it seem like the UK did not have a parliament when it was still a part of the EU, which is not true. AD18 is an exception since the text is on the left side and the photo on the right as if to suggest that the choice between the UK and EU is a known, inevitable fact, while the flood is only a possibility that will arise when people choose to stay in the European Union. In AD03 and AD06, the businessman walks from the left to the right, which also corresponds to Kress and van Leeuwen’s division into old versus new information. It implies moving towards the future, new things or change, while leaving the old behind. By the same token, in AD20, there is the firm fist of the European Union's laws and regulations on the left side. There are all things British on the right – the cup of tea, double-deckers, phone booth, and the British flag. That might suggest moving from the strict rule of the EU (left) back to the British traditions (right).

Some of the ads are also divided into upper and lower sections, with a big picture and a strip of text in various positions in the picture. This composition does not necessarily follow the rules of Ideal and Real, but instead, the text might be placed in its position to fit with the picture well. In other words, the strip with text in AD06 is placed in the middle because it would cover up essential parts of the picture, such as ball and chain, if it would be placed on the bottom.

Fig. 16, Advertising Brexit, AD04, BeLeave Campaign.

AD04 and AD07 are similar in strategy and unusual considering the composition. Both are straightforward without any visual metaphor whatsoever. AD04 deals with the EU’s decision to place regulations on the mobile application Uber. There is a photo of a hand holding a mobile phone and a blue car in the background. The focus is on the hand, and the background is a little blurred out. The composition is interesting because this is one of the few ads that used you-form instead of the inclusive we in the text. I already discussed the reason why the creators decided to use you-form, among which was the target-specificity. Indeed, the photo is taken from the viewers’ point of view to identify symbolically with the person holding the phone. In this way, the visual echoes the you-form used in the text. The same goes for AD07, which features a laptop with some streaming service open in the background. Again, the photo is taken from the audience’s perspective – it is you who sits in front of that laptop and watches a movie. That is related to the target-specificity, although this ad does not employ the text's you-form.

Both AD02 and AD09 feature photos of young people. That makes sense since the

BeLeave campaign was aimed predominantly at young people (at least in theory, I will come back to this in the Conclusion). In AD02, a young woman is traveling by public transport. She is facing and looking directly into the camera. In AD09, there are five young people,

presumably members of the BeLeave campaign, according to the billboard they are holding.

They all have badges, and they are also smiling into the camera. A photo like this could reinforce the identification with a group.

6.3.2.2. Salience Some aspects of the visual structures are more salient than others. The most salient elements have the biggest potential to attract the viewer's attention. The salience can be achieved through various means – for example, the position concerning the other elements, colors, focus, sharpness, and size. When there is a picture divided into left and right, the right side is usually the more salient. Equally so with top and bottom, where the top is usually more salient. However, this is not a rule, and the salience depends on more aspects than the composition (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, pp. 201–203). The picture is more salient in the ads that feature both pictures and text, irrespective of whether it is on the ad's right or left side. The reason is that they are immediately consumable and decodable, contrary to the text, which is consumed linearly and takes a longer time. Even within the images, some elements are more conspicuous and, therefore, more salient. They are the miniature EU and UK flags found in AD01, AD03, AD05, and AD06. They make the ads more readily understandable even without the presence of text.

6.3.2.3. Framing Framing (or lack of it) can reinforce the sense that some visual aspects belong or do not belong together. By doing that, it also enhances their similarities and differences. It can be realized symbolically or by literal frames or frame lines. The more conspicuous the framing is, the stronger the separation between the two (or more elements) (Kress & van Leeuwen,

2006, pp. 203–204). Several ads are divided into the textual and the pictorial part by a difference in background colors. Such are, for example, the AD01, AD02, and AD05. In these ads, the framing is conspicuous, and it enforces the division into left and right, and therefore,

into Given and New information. In other ads, the text is separated from the picture only by a thin strip of different color background (AD03, AD04, AD06, and others), or not separated at all, as in the DUP ads.

6.3.2.4. Colors Colors are undoubtedly an essential part of advertising. Scholars and artists have been trying to figure out what the individual colors “mean” or symbolize for a long time. However, as with almost everything, what the colors are supposed to mean strongly depends on the context

(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 227). Not only that the colors can have specific meanings for people, but they are also used to elicit specific reactions or emotions in people. For example, green color can have a soothing, calming effect (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 230). Several aspects should be kept in mind when analyzing colors, such as value, saturation, hue, modulation, differentiation, and purity. Value means the spectrum from the lightest to the darkest color. Saturation is the “intensity” of color, from the most saturated, vivid, or pure version, to the dullest, softest, or pastel variation. The level of saturation can tell us many things. Kress and van Leeuwen write that “[h]igh saturation may be positive, exuberant, adventurous, but also vulgar or garish. Low saturation may be subtle and tender, but also cold and repressed, or brooding and moody” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 233). Modulation is achieved when other colors, shades, or tints are added. Therefore, the spectrum runs from a fully modulated color to a flat color. Whether a fully modulated or flat color is chosen depends on what we are trying to say. Flat color expresses a piece of generic information or an “abstract truth”, whereas modulated color depicts visual structures as seen and perceived in an individual situation (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 234). Hue is the division into warm – red spectrum, and cold colors – blue spectrum.

The coherence in colors is especially evident in BeLeave ads. The background of the text is always the same shade of pastel blue color, while the text itself is white. Indeed, they

make use of the blue color often. Even the photos sometimes have a bluish, cold hue, such as

AD04 or AD09. There are exceptions, such as AD06, which has a red background, but no matter the actual color, the BeLeave ads use predominantly soft, pastel shades, at least in the ads featuring computer graphics, not photography. They are flat colors without modulation, which corresponds to the point made earlier – that it expresses generic information, abstract truth, not a specific situation. Specific situations are usually depicted by photography, so the colors are also more modulated and vivid.

On the other hand, the DUP ads use blue, red, and white colors in combination, which are the colors of the British flag. In these ads, the colors are a bit more vivid and bright. While in three of four ads (AD11, AD13, and AD14, respectively), the flag is only suggested by the colors, and there are only abstract shapes and lines, in AD12, a part of the flag is truly there.

The Vote Leave ads are less coherent in the use of colors than BeLeave or DUP, but they make effective use of blue, red, and white as well. Red and blue are excellent choices because they can be used meaningfully concerning the NHS, one of the central topics of this campaign. For example, in AD15, there is a bright red background, which can not only easily attract attention, but it also suggests blood. Red is also a color of alarm, warning, the possibility of danger. On the other hand, AD16 is photography done in bluish colors. That is again understandable because blue is used frequently in a hospital environment. We see that the scrubs are blue, the reception desk is blue, the curtains are blue, and the chairs are possibly also blue, but the background is too blurry to tell. Thus, both red and blue are colors closely associated with hospitals, and therefore, health.

The AD08 and AD18 are also color-coded. In AD08, there is a choice to be made between “you” and the “EU”. The background of the question “Which do you prefer?” is a pastel purple, the same as the background of the left side (YOU) and the button “YOU” in the upper part of the ad. Likewise, in AD18, the choice is between the “350 million a week to the

EU” or “flood defenses for Yorkshire”. Noticeably, the EU is done in red color, which can symbolize danger or alarm. “Yorkshire” has a blue background, and it is also written in bold letters. This way, the ads give the viewers a cue which answers are correct.

7. Conclusion The fact that the campaign worked with false information and hoaxes is not a novelty. That is why the British government launched an investigation. It was supposed to inquire into the disinformation and “fake news” regarding this campaign. Several online news coverage websites reported that the ads are not only using false data and misleading information, but they also worked with information gathered from Facebook users illegally. The Parliament's official investigation concluded that:

“AIQ worked on both the US Presidential primaries and for Brexit-related organisations,

including the designated Vote Leave group, during the EU Referendum. The work of

AIQ highlights the fact that data has been and is still being used extensively by

private companies to target people, often in a political context, in order to influence their

decisions. It is far more common than people think.“

(“Aggregate IQ”, 2019, para. 192).

This report recommends placing more responsibility on the companies for the content they air and adopting cybersecurity measures (“Regulation and the Role”, para. 14). It also advises that the “[p]olitical advertising items should be publicly accessible in a searchable repository—who is paying for the ads, which organizations are sponsoring the ad, who is being targeted by the ads—so that members of the public can understand the behavior of individual advertisers. It should be run independently of the advertising industry and political parties” (“Advertising and Political Campaigning”, para. 25).

The government was not the only one interested in the issue of the Brexit campaign.

Various journalists wrote about the way the Vote Leave campaigned, not only on Facebook. It

is an even more salient issue because the Leave group won the election. Some people, such as

Paul Burke, wonder how the Bremain campaign could lose if they fought for a “superior product”. He mentions attacking the intelligence of the Brexiteers by Bremainers or denouncing them as racists on social media like Facebook and Twitter as one of the possible reasons. The Bremainers Burke mentions were not just ordinary people but also people like himself working in the advertising industry. He writes that they were “[a]lienating the very people they should have been persuading” (Burke, 2016). Thus, it seems both parties – whether Brexit or Bremain – made their fair share of mistakes and unethical steps. This opinion gives rise to a question of whether it is right to give the full credit for their victory to the Leave campaign and whether the Remain camp did not help them win by employing such an ineffective, even harmful strategy.

Will Straw, who founded the organization Britain Stronger in Europe and was part of the

Bremain campaign from the beginning, also thinks that the Remain made mistakes, although different from what Paul Burke mentions. According to Straw, Remain could learn from the

Leave campaign in more than one aspect. Firstly, he emphasizes the role of emotions in the

Brexit campaign. He writes that in case of a new referendum, “a new campaign will need an emotionally resonant message rather than relying solely on the ‘facts’. They [their pollsters] insisted that voters simply wanted facts on the economic impact“ (Straw, 2019). Secondly, he pinpoints the remain campaign's unpreparedness to battle the Leave’s arguments in favor of leaving the EU, especially in the question of immigration. Third, he argues that the Leave campaign did a better job at disqualifying its opponents and spending more money on advertising because the Remain camp invested the money into unnecessary items, such as the daily tracker poll (Straw, 2019).

The disinformation and fake news are at the core of Isa Tiilikainen’s article about the

Brexit outcome. She emphasizes the euromyths that were and still are circulating the public

discourse and the UK's troubled relationship with the EU from the very beginning, and the sense of British exceptionalism. She argues that the euromyths and hoaxes the Leave campaign aired were not meant to be believed by the public but to distract the Remainers into battling these false claims. Thus, they managed to control the debate. Tiilikainen also mentions the voter-targeting on social media to “find persuadable voters and target them with suitable triggers“ (Tiilikainen, 2020).

I dealt with some of these issues in my own analysis of the adverts, such as the euromyths, disinformation, and controlling the debate, so I will not discuss them further. It is evident now that the Remain has its own share in the Leave’s victory, and no side is without error. The only difference is that Leave managed to win despite, or perhaps, thanks to these errors. It is too late to change the course of history, but it is not too late to learn from our mistakes. The first step would be to make the social media safer for its users and liable in case of a similar violation of the users’ privacy.

It was proven that there are stark differences between the three campaign groups that published the ads, which in itself could be perceived as a persuasive element. Some of those differences are apparent at first glance, and some must be looked for deeper. I argue that these differences are linked to the age of their target group. Some elements were employed in all three campaign groups and thus pervaded the whole campaign.

Four of the BeLeave ads feature a computer graphics image instead of photography, and one is a combination of computer graphics and photography. That might be linked to the fact that BeLeave was a sister campaign supposed to target young people. Those are perhaps more accustomed to computer graphics as opposed to a straightforward photography. The

BeLeave ads simply look more modern and up-to-date with their target group. I also argue that some of the BeLeave ads would be understandable even without the text. Those are, for example, AD01, AD03, AD06, and to a lesser extent, also AD05. Although they are

metaphorical, it is evident which figure is supposed to represent whom, based on the little details, such as the cuff link and the pocket square in the AD03. The independence of the images from the text means they can be decoded more quickly.

They also discuss different topics than the DUP and the Vote to Leave ads. Four of them are dealing with the statement that the EU is a burden for the UK and stalls progress.

Although the metaphor of the EU as a regulation-imposing, restricting ball and chain on the imaginary leg of the United Kingdom pervaded the whole campaign – from the politicians’ speeches to articles in the tabloid press – this metaphor is perhaps most conspicuous in the ads aired by BeLeave, a group targeted at young people. In his book about the language of Brexit,

Steve Buckledee names one of its chapters like this: “Free: A little word that did a big job for

Brexit,” and it is indeed true. By simply framing the narrative in this way – unfree with the

EU, free without the EU – the Leave campaign achieved one crucial success. The reason that ads dealing with freedom or restraint were published primarily by the BeLeave group could be that the notion of freedom is perhaps more important to younger people, many of whom were already born into a globalized world used to travel more. The focus is on the future, and it is the young who have their future ahead of them. Two ads tackle problems that are more important to younger generations: streaming platforms and the mobile application Uber. One ad promises more jobs for young people. In AD09, there is a picture of five people, all of them probably in their twenties. Therefore, it is apparent that the BeLeave ads are targeted at young people. However, later inquiry showed that BeLeave ads were viewed mostly by older people. The reporters of The Guardian, Jim Waterson, Pamela Duncan, and Alex Hern state that three-fifths of the viewers of the ads aired by BeLeave were more than 35 years old. That might have been caused by a fact that although BeLeave was presented as a “separate campaign with a unique skill in producing social media messages that could reach younger voters“, in reality, it functioned as “a simple proxy for Vote Leave’s overall campaign“ which

allowed the campaign to spend more money on Facebook advertising than the legal limits allowed them to. For this, the Electoral Commission fined both Vote Leave and BeLeave a sum of £61,000 (Waterson et al., 2018).

DUP Vote to Leave ads all look very similar. They have simple graphics that implies seriousness, unlike the graphics in the BeLeave ads. There are four of them, and they each tackle one crucial topic – family budgets/economy, immigration, security, and employment.

These ads are probably targeted at middle-aged people, who already might have families and care about the essential everyday questions like economy and laws, not Internet applications.

Text in these ads is also very concise and brief – the sentences have passive construction without an agent. That is a “no-nonsense” strategy that avoids unnecessary, metaphorical words.

For the most part, Vote Leave ads feature photos instead of computer graphics. Eight out of ten ads use either only photography or a combination of photography and computer graphics, such as in AD20. This campaign is aimed at older generations. It is clear from their appeal at the traditions represented in AD20 not only by the “cuppa” but also in other elements like Big Ben, double-deckers, red phone booths, and flags. The traditions are also highlighted by patriotic elements such as the UK flag in AD22 and the text “Britain is a great nation”. They are being threatened allegedly by the EU and by the waves of immigrants that will flood the UK according to AD17 and AD21. Thus, ads with a racist undertone are also generally aimed at older generations and aired by the Vote Leave campaign.

There are not only differences but also a couple of similarities. The most significant is the division into “Us” and “Them”, good or bad, insiders and outsiders. The ads also work with false or deceptive information irrespective of the group which aired them. In all three groups, the NHS is a frequently mentioned subject, as it is vital to everybody regardless of their age or gender. All of the ads also have in common that they only work with the possible

benefits of leaving the EU, but none of them address the possible fears and insecurities that it might cause, and many experts and political scientists fear.

As I mentioned earlier, there was also a campaign by Veterans for Britain, which did not disclose their ads. That is unfortunate since I think it would be quite interesting to compare these ads to the three groups above and see the differences and similarities between them.

Nevertheless, even without them, it is clear that each of these three groups had their strategy in appealing to their target group. BeLeave appealed to young people and students, DUP Vote to Leave and Vote Leave, targeting the middle and older generations. Together, they covered almost all of the target groups.

This thesis focused on analyzing twenty-four pro-Brexit banner adverts found on the official website of the British government. These ads have initially been part of three campaigns – BeLeave, DUP Vote to Leave, and Vote Leave, which were active on Facebook and aired them. I analyzed the ads from the linguistic, visual, and supralinguistic points of view, since, as I believe these ads should be taken as a whole and studied in their entirety. For the analysis of linguistic elements of persuasion, I relied on the work of Jeanne Fahnestock

(2011), in which she gathered an immense number of rhetorical figures and modes of persuasion. Analysis of the visual aspect of the adverts is based on the theory of visual grammar developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (2006). The subchapter dealing with supralinguistic persuasive elements draws partly from the persuasive triad ethos, pathos, and logos developed by Aristotle and partly from logical fallacies described in a chapter written by Marshall Soules. The analysis showed that the Leave campaign used persuasive elements to provoke strong emotions in the viewers – whether fear, anger, or sympathy. They managed to do that by:

• Word choice – the EU was represented by a bureaucrat or regulator, words with negative

connotations

• Using modality and tense to create an impression of confidence in their claims

• Manipulating the role of Actor and the Goal, that is, portraying the UK as a victim

• Depicting the EU as a burden, either metaphorically or literally

• Creating a division between “us” and “Them”

• Taking advantage of false information or stating their arguments deceptively using

logical fallacies

• Featuring emotionally laden photography

• Color-coding

• Addressing only the benefits of the withdrawal while ignoring the possible

disadvantages

• Targeting no-voters by dealing with minor issues important only to a very narrow group

(Uber, streaming services)

As the conclusion of the Literature review shows, advertising might influence the voters to a certain extent, whether by informing them, engaging them in the campaign, or even persuading them to change their opinion. The Leave campaign used all the techniques described above to create antipathy towards the EU and could play a role (together with advertising in other mediums) in Leave’s victory.

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Summary This Master’s diploma thesis aimed to analyze persuasive and manipulative elements present in the advertisements related to the Brexit referendum of 2016. I chose twenty-four ads published at the time of the campaign on the social network Facebook and later subject to investigation by the UK government for disinformation and targeting viewers by obtaining personal information about them from Facebook. The visual aspects of these ads were analyzed according to a theory of visual grammar developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van

Leeuwen (2006). The linguistic elements were analyzed primarily with the help of the extensive monography written by Jeanne Fahnestock (2011) and Leslie Jeffries, and Dan

McIntyre (2019). This diploma thesis hypothesizes that the UK citizens were persuaded and manipulated into adopting a positive stance towards Brexit by manipulating not only facts but also the visual, linguistic, and supralinguistic elements of these adverts. How this manipulation was achieved is the subject matter of this thesis and is analyzed in depth. This work is divided into two parts: theoretical and practical. The third chapter of this paper provides background information on the European Union's history, focusing primarily on the relationship between what was to become the EU and Britain. The next chapter is the

Literature review, which aims to establish several propositions, like the importance and effectiveness of advertising, and support the hypothesis that this campaign could potentially help the Leave camp's victory. In it, I also discuss persuasion and how the theory of it evolved from the time of Aristotle to the present. The sixth chapter comprises both theory and practical analysis of the ads, and it has three subchapters – the first dealing with linguistic, the second with supralingustic, and the third with visual modes of persuasion. I argue that these ads were created to elicit negative emotions in the viewers – whether fear or outrage concerning the European Union – who subsequently voted to leave the EU. The conclusion provides a look into the events following the Brexit referendum – the British government's

investigation and how the online press reported on the Leave victory concerning the campaign. It also deals with design and strategy differences between ads aired by the three different Facebook pages (BeLeave, DUP Vote to Leave, and Vote Leave).

Resumé Cílem této práce bylo provést analýzu persuazívnych a manipulativních prvků přítomných v reklamách týkajících se odchodu Spojeného království z Evropské unie. Bylo vybráno

čtyřiadvacet obrazových reklam, které byly v době probíhající kampaně publikované na sociální síti Facebook a později podrobeny vyšetřování (z důvodu nelegálního sběru dat od uživatelů a šíření dezinformací). Vizuální stránka reklam byla analyzována pomocí vizuální gramatiky lingvistů Gunthera Kresse a Thea van Leeuwena (2006). Lingvistické prvky jsou analyzovány především podle monografie Jeanne Fahnestock (2011). Hypotézou této práce je,

že obyvatelé Británie byli zmanipulování a přesvědčeni k přijetí kladného postoje vůči

Brexitu prostřednictvím manipulace nejen faktů, ale i vizuálních, jazykových či supralingvistických prvků. To, jakým způsobem byla tato manipulace dosažena, je předmětem této práce a je detailně prozkoumána. Práce je rozdělena na sedm kapitol. Kapitola

„Historical Background“ přibližuje historii členství Británie v Evropské unii. Pátá kapitola se zase zabývá přehledem literatury, ve kterém jsou načrtnuté jisté teorie, zjištění a výzkumy týkající se (nejen) politické reklamy. Šestá kapitola spojuje teoretické poznatky s praktickou analýzou vybraných čtyřiadvaceti reklam. Poslední kapitolou je „Conclusion“, neboli shrnutí, které poskytuje závěry a možné interpretace této analýzy, jakož i zjištění, že hypotéza této práce byla potvrzena.

Appendix

The appendix lists twenty-four pro-Brexit adverts that were analyzed in the thesis. They are divided into three categories – based on the campaign group that aired them – into BeLeave,

DUP Vote to Leave, and Vote Leave ads. The order is as it was in the document where I found the ads, retrieved from https://www.parliament.uk/. The numbers in the brackets refer to the total number of ads in each category. The individual ads are referred to as AD01-AD24 in the text for easier orientation.

BeLeave ads (10) AD01

AD02

AD03

AD04

AD05

AD06

AD07

AD08

AD09

AD10

DUP Vote to Leave ads (4) AD11

AD12

AD13

AD14

Vote Leave ads (10) AD15

AD16

AD17

AD18

AD19

AD20

AD21

AD22

AD23

AD24