MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Bachelor thesis
Brno 2016
Supervisor: Author: doc. Mgr. Martin Adam, Ph.D. Lukáš Opavský MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Discourse Analysis of Smartphone TV Advertisements: From the Introduction of an iPhone to the Present Day
Bachelor thesis
Brno 2016
Supervisor: Author: doc. Mgr. Martin Adam, Ph.D. Lukáš Opavský
Declaration
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. I agree with the placing of this thesis in the library of the Faculty of Education at the Masaryk University and with the access for academic purposes.
Brno, 30th March 2016 …………………………………………. Lukáš Opavský
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. Mgr. Martin Adam, Ph.D. for his kind help and constant guidance throughout my work. Lukáš Opavský OPAVSKÝ, Lukáš. Discourse Analysis of Smartphone TV Advertisements: From the Introduction of an iPhone to the Present Day; Bachelor Thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, English Language and Literature Department, 2016. 56 p. Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Martin Adam, Ph.D.
Annotation
This thesis focuses on the discourse analysis of smartphone advertisements. The objects of the study are smartphones from the introduction of the first iPhone until today. Smartphones quickly became widespread tools of day to day communication since the day Apple revolutionised this industry by the introduction of their new iPhone in 2007. Since that time, many companies have started producing their own smartphones and there is a huge market potential today for these devices. The main focus of this thesis is on the textual part of the advertisements, its language features and the advertisements are examined from various perspectives concerning stylistics, semantics, lexis, text structure and pragmatics. The aim of this thesis is to find out whether elements of the language can influence the customer’s decision and whether they are aimed at particular groups of people, regarding their sex and age.
Keywords: advertising, television, discourse analysis, smartphones, graphetics, lexicology, semantics, stylistics, pragmatics.
OPAVSKÝ, Lukáš. Analýza diskurzu televizních reklam na chytré telefony: od uvedení iPhonu až do současnosti; bakalářská práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Pedagogická fakulta, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2016. 56 stran. Vedoucí bakalářské práce: doc. Mgr. Martin Adam, PhD.
Anotace
Tato práce se zaměřuje na analýzu diskurzu reklam na chytré telefony. Předmětem studia jsou chytré telefony od uvedení prvního iPhonu až do dneška. Chytré telefony se rychle staly rozšířeným komunikačním nástrojem od doby, kdy Apple učinil zásadní převrat v tomto odvětví uvedením jejich nového iPhonu v roce 2007. Od té doby začalo mnoho společností produkovat jejich vlastní chytré telefony a dnes existuje obrovský tržní potenciál na trhu s těmito přístroji. Hlavní důraz této práce je kladen na textovou část těchto reklam a její jazykové charakteristiky, jenž jsou podrobeny zkoumání z různých úhlů týkajících se stylistiky, sémantiky, slovní zásoby, organizace textu a pragmatiky. Cílem této práce je zjistit, zda jazykové prostředky mohou ovlivnit rozhodnutí zákazníka, a zda jsou zaměřeny na určité skupiny zákazníků, pokud jde o jejich pohlaví a věk.
Klíčová slova: reklama, televize, analýza diskurzu, chytré telefony, grafetika, lexikologie, sémantika, stylistika, pragmatika.
Contents
Introduction ...... 1
I. Theoretical part ...... 3
1. Advertising ...... 3
1.1 The definition of advertising ...... 3
1.2 The history of advertising ...... 3
1.3 Advertising strategies ...... 4
1.4 TV advertising ...... 5
2. Smartphones ...... 6
2.1 Definition of smartphones ...... 6
2.2 Use of smartphones ...... 6
3 Discourse analysis ...... 8
3.1 Definition of discourse analysis ...... 8
3.2 Methodology for the practical part ...... 8
3.2.1 Graphetics ...... 10
3.2.2 Lexicology ...... 11
3.2.3 Semantics ...... 12
3.2.4 Stylistics ...... 13
3.2.5 Pragmatics ...... 14
II. Practical part ...... 16
4 Introduction ...... 16
5 The Levels of Analysis ...... 17
5.1 The Graphetic Level ...... 17
5.2 The Lexical Level ...... 17
5.3 The Semantic Level ...... 17
5.4 The Stylistic Level ...... 17
5.5 The Pragmatic Level ...... 17 6 The Analysis of the Data ...... 18
6.1 Acer Liquid Z220 commercial ...... 18
6.2 Acer Liquid Z520 commercial ...... 19
6.3 Alcatel Onetouch Idol 2 S commercial ...... 20
6.4 ALCATEL ONETOUCH PIXI 3 Family commercial ...... 21
6.5 ARCHOS Helium Plus commercial ...... 21
6.6 ASUS ZenFone 2 and ZenFone Zoom commercial ...... 22
6.7 ASUS ZenFone Max commercial ...... 22
6.8 BlackBerry Classic commercial ...... 23
6.9 BlackBerry PRIV commercial ...... 24
6.10 BLU Life Pure Mini commercial ...... 25
6.11 Blu Vivo 4 8 commercial ...... 25
6.12 Cubot S600 commercial ...... 26
6.13 Doogee F5 commercial ...... 27
6.14 Elephone M2 commercial ...... 27
6.15 Elephone P6000 Pro commercial ...... 28
6.16 Gionee S Plus commercial ...... 29
6.17 HTC One M9+ commercial ...... 29
6.18 HTC One max commercial ...... 30
6.19 Huawei Ascend G6 commercial ...... 30
6.20 Huawei Mate S commercial ...... 31
6.21 iNew L3 commercial ...... 32
6.22 iNew U5 commercial ...... 32
6.23 iPHONE 5 commercial ...... 32
6.24 Lava Pixel V2 commercial ...... 33
6.25 Lenovo Vibe S1 commercial ...... 34
6.26 Lenovo VIBE X2 commercial ...... 34 6.27 LG G3 Commercial ...... 35
6.28 LG V10 commercial ...... 36
6.29 Micromax Canvas 4 Plus commercial ...... 36
6.30 Micromax Canvas Knight commercial ...... 37
6.31 Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL commercial ...... 37
6.32 Motorola Moto E commercial ...... 38
6.33 Motorola Moto X Pure Edition commercial ...... 38
6.34 Nexus 6 commercial ...... 39
6.35 Nexus 6P commercial ...... 39
6.36 Nokia Lumia 1520 commercial ...... 40
6.37 Nokia Lumia 920 commercial ...... 40
6.38 OnePlus 2 commercial ...... 40
6.39 OnePlus One commercial ...... 41
6.40 OPPO Find 7 commercial ...... 41
6.41 OPPO Neo 7 commercial ...... 41
6.42 Philips Xenium V787 commercial ...... 42
6.43 Samsung GALAXY A commercial ...... 42
6.44 Samsung Galaxy Note 5 commercial ...... 43
6.45 SISWOO Darkmoon R9 commercial ...... 44
6.46 Sony Xperia A4 commercial ...... 44
6.47 Vertu Aster commercial ...... 44
6.48 Xperia E4g commercial ...... 45
6.49 ZTE Axon Elite commercial ...... 45
6.50 ZTE Blade Vec commercial ...... 46
Conclusion ...... 47
Introduction This thesis will be focused on the recent phenomenon of smartphones. Before the emergence of the first iPhone, created by Apple Inc. in 2007, no one could have imagined the vast possibilities achievable with this new kind of phones. Before the iPhone, smartphones had two main functional purposes: to establish voice calls and to send and receive short text messages and later, multimedia, i.e. picture messages. After the introduction of the iPhone, the whole industry got redefined and various new ways of communication have emerged. With the success of the iPhone, other companies have seen the opportunity in this kind of product and many companies have started producing their own smartphones. The emergence of various smartphones logically brought the necessity to promote these, and the smartphone commercials became common. The relatively short time since the beginning of the production of the first smartphone to the present presents a unique opportunity to study this phenomenon from the perspective of a discourse analysis, a relatively broad and loosely defined linguistic discipline. There are many approaches to the phenomenon of discourse analysis, as well as various sub-branches, and there is no definite and generally established methodology to the phenomenon and, therefore, a methodological approach used in this thesis must have been devised for the purpose of this thesis. The corpus consists of fifty smartphone advertisements in the form of YouTube videos, freely accessible at the time of writing this thesis. The practical part of this thesis will deal with an analysis of the textual part of the aforementioned videos from different linguistic perspectives, namely pragmatics, stylistics, semantics, lexicology and graphetics, with stress on the supersentential levels of discourse analysis. This thesis does by no means aspire to be an exhaustive analysis of all the features present in the corpus; for the sake of brevity and to meet the set criteria for this thesis only the prominent features of the selected commercials will be analysed. The corpus consists of randomly selected fifty TV ads retrieved from a YouTube channel called The Phone Commercials, consisting of numerous smartphone and tablet commercials from various technology companies involved in manufacturing smartphones. The criteria for selection of the commercials for this corpus were: To have at least some textual information in the ad present To have no more than two commercials from the same brand To have the textual information in English
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The second point was added mainly to promote variability in the corpus. At the time of writing this thesis, all the commercials were accessible from the aforementioned YouTube channel.
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I. Theoretical part 1. Advertising
1.1 The definition of advertising Advertising is defined by the online Oxford English Dictionary as “[t]he activity, trade, occupation, or profession of advertising or producing advertisements, now [typical] for a commercial product or service.” Pope postulates that advertising attempts to persuade its audience to purchase a good or a service. But “institutional” advertising has for a century sought to build corporate reputations without appealing for sales. Political advertising solicits a vote (or a contribution), not a purchase. Usually, too, authors distinguish advertising from salesmanship by defining it as mediated persuasion aimed at an audience rather than one-to-one communication with a potential customer. The boundaries blur here, too (1-2). Nowadays, advertising as a whole accommodates a wide range of activities from direct presentation of products inside or outside of shops, billboards and posters, radio presentations, TV advertising and lately Internet advertising, which contains both poster-like advertising and the one similar, if not the same in its form, to TV advertising, just to name a few. Such a broad range of advertising possibilities is, according to Cook, incomparable with the past times, in his own words, “advertising in the era of colour magazines, television, and the Internet is a new phenomenon, both in nature, quantity and effect” (Cook 6).
1.2 The history of advertising The history of advertising is as old as mankind itself, manifesting itself for the first time in places more densely populated, where a competition for a promotion of product arose. As the civilisations developed, so did the means of advertising. From rewards for runaway slaves inscribed on papyri in ancient Egypt, inscriptions on houses in ancient Greek and Rome promoting businesses, and the institute of a ‘crier’ – a person who orally promoted a tradesman and his goods, established in all the aforementioned cultures, these phenomena of what can be called the first occurrences of advertising for products and services were quite elaborate and successful (Sampson 33-42). During medieval times, due to almost non-existent literacy among people, reserved almost exclusively for the clergy, only the institute of ‘crier’ was self-same to the times of
3 ancient civilisations. ‘Criers’ at the times had an exclusive, sinecure position as they were the only officially persons appointed to and allowed to make public announcements. After the invention of the printing press and with the literacy of the common people slowly increasing, placards with texts started to appear against the shops, trying to attract the attention of a potential customer. Posters for various entertainment events started to appear as well, to draw the attention of the public (Sampson 43-60). The invention of newspapers and new printing techniques, namely the rotary press, came with new possibilities for advertising. The 20th century has a record of being very fruitful in devising new ways how to face people with advertising. Pope claims that in the 1920s, “[t]he rise of mass circulation magazines, radio broadcasting and to a lesser extent motion pictures provided new media for advertisements to reach consumers” (3). From the 1920s onwards, advertising has grown rapidly, and thanks to the widespread expansion of radio and television broadcasting, and later the Internet, made advertising omnipresent and almost inescapable (Pope 3).
1.3 Advertising strategies Pope states that “[u]sually the ad is trying to sell a product.” Yet, as Pope explains, this definition is too narrow, as the advertising may aim to persuade first time buyers to select a particular product, or try to convince buyers to switch brands between one particular type of product. On the type of product, as Pope points out, depends the strategy used to advertise it (3). Generally, all “commercial advertising aims to win sales, but some advertisements seek primarily to gain the reader’s attention or stimulate interest in hopes that purchases will follow” (Pope 3). Pope also notes, that the advertisement for familiar products of daily use uses another strategy – they “aim to short-circuit the conscious consideration of purchase decisions [and] stimulate the consumer to pick up the [familiar product] as [one] moves down the shopping aisles” (Pope 3). There are numerous additional strategies, depending on what is the intended impact on the consumer. Pope lists a few questions related to advertising strategies: Does the advertisement offer a “reason why” to buy the product? Or is it oriented more to emotional appeals? Does the ad feature the product or does it focus on the people using it? Does it address the reader directly with suggestions or commands? Does the ad offer a reduced price or a premium? Does a celebrity provide an endorsement? Does it play on fear or anxiety or make positive appeals? (5)
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Every minute bit of an advertisement may be intentionally designed to serve a purpose of addressing the target audience and to deliver a message to persuade a potential customer to select a particular product. Such is the attention advertising companies invest to design advertising to address the target audience.
1.4 TV advertising With the mass expansion of the television, new way of conveying advertising to potential customers shaped a new era for the advertising business. With the ability to reach a vast number of consumers, TV advertising is the most expensive one and is not limited to commercial spots, but also includes sponsorships and product placement in films and TV shows. With the Internet becoming another powerful medium for communication, TV-like commercials have permeated the Internet streaming and for the sake of simplicity will be considered the same within this thesis.
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2. Smartphones
2.1 Definition of smartphones According to the online version of Encyclopædia Britannica, a smartphone is defined as a: mobile telephone with a display screen (typically a liquid crystal display, or LCD), built-in personal information management programs (such as an electronic calendar and address book) typically found in a personal digital assistant (PDA), and an operating system (OS) that allows other computer software to be installed for Web browsing, e-mail, music, video, and other applications. A smartphone may be thought of as a handheld computer integrated within a mobile telephone. (Hosch) The fact that for the purpose of this thesis was set the criterion for the smartphones to be post- iPhone released is that the introduction of the first iPhone in fact redefined the whole smartphone industry, not only for the newly introduced features, but also for the course that Apple Inc. with this product set and which shaped the whole industry afterwards, when numerous other producers started to develop their own models of smartphones and, therefore, contributed to the development of new ideas and features of smartphones. In fact, the capabilities of smartphones are growing with every new model introduced and new features and ways of communication with other devices, such as computerized wristwatches, are constantly being developed, alongside with improving the existing technologies. It is then no surprise that the smartphone-producing companies are stressing these new capabilities and functionalities in their commercials. The vastness of the potential customer pool makes the smartphone industry very attractive, as many people find the possession of smartphone a necessity of modern life, mainly for the ease of communication with other people and the broad range of functions the smartphone is offering.
2.2 Use of smartphones Unlike the phones from the era before smartphones with a relatively limited number of functions, smartphones can be and undoubtedly are used for a wide range of activities, effectively substituting most of the functionalities previously confined to the domain of personal computers. With relatively easy access to the internet, people have theoretical access to the unimaginable amount of knowledge at their hands, through the screen of their smartphone. With the expansion of various social networks, there has been a revolution in communication between people, and with the capability of the smartphones to facilitate this kind of communication over smartphones, this way of communication can be done virtually
6 anywhere nowadays. Generally, the capabilities of smartphones are growing every day as there are devised new ways to use smartphones, new useful applications and new ways of communication and integration with other systems. All the various ways to use smartphones without any doubt contribute to the attractiveness of them, so there is logically great competition among producers of smartphones, in order to attract potential customers to their particular products.
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3 Discourse analysis
3.1 Definition of discourse analysis
According to Brown and Yule, [t]he term ‘discourse analysis’ has come to be used with a wide range of meanings which cover a wide range of activities. It is used to describe activities at the intersection of disciplines as diverse as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophical linguistics and computational linguistics. Scholars working centrally in these different disciplines tend to concentrate on different aspects of discourse. (viii) Such a wide scope leads inevitably to the fact, that there are numerous methods of approach to discourse analysis and also various styles, but there is no unified or generally accepted methodology of linguistic discourse analysis. Therefore, the method chosen for this thesis is a linguistic discourse analysis, based primarily on the book Discourse analysis written by Brown and Yule, as it is beyond the aim of this thesis to perform a critical discourse analysis, psycholinguistic, or any other form of discourse analysis.
3.2 Methodology for the practical part The lack of a generally acknowledged method brings a need to establish a method that will be applied to the data amassed in the corpus. After a careful consideration, the method closest to the intended purpose of this thesis and the subsequent analysis of the data is the one presented in the book Discourse Analysis written by Brown and Yule, alongside with the concepts outlined in the book The Discourse of Advertising written by Guy Cook. The main area concerned, in accord with the two books, will be pragmatics, the structure above the sentential level, with additional sentential and sub-sentential levels added. The coverage of the aforementioned areas may not be proportionally the same, though, as it has to be taken into consideration that, as Brown and Yule claim in their book Discourse Analysis, [a]ny analytic approach in linguistics which involves contextual considerations, necessarily belongs to that area of language study called pragmatics. ‘Doing discourse analysis’ certainly involves ‘doing syntax and semantics’, but it primarily consists of ‘doing pragmatics’. (26) As this is the way this thesis plans to follow, the suprasentential relations and the meaning associated with them is of the main concern of the methodological part of this thesis.
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The relationship between the participants – an addresser and addressee – was described by Roman Jakobson in the article “Closing statement: Linguistics and Poetics” published in the book Style in Language. Jakobson outlines the principles of communication as between an addresser who encodes and sends the message and the addressee who receives and decodes or, at least, tries to decode it. Code, context and contact have to be, at least partially, be common to both the addresser and addressee in order to the both of them stay in the communication. (Jakobson 353-7)
CONTEXT ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESSEE CONTACT CODE Fig. 1. The act of communication schema by Jakobson (353)
Jakobson also determines six functions of language the act of communication as:
REFERENTIAL EMOTIVE POETIC CONATIVE PHATIC METALINGUAL Fig. 2. Language functions schema by Jakobson (357)
According to Cook, each language function performs a different task according to this table: emotive – expressing feelings and states conative – influencing behaviour of addressee referential – imparting information phatic – checking or establishing contact metalingual – negotiating or checking the language poetic – foregrounding linguistic structures (149) According to Cook, many things must be taken into consideration when it comes to the analysis of advertisement, not only the text itself but also the context, into which he claims belong: 1 substance: the physical material which carries or relays text
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2 music and pictures 3 paralanguage: meaningful behaviour accompanying language, such as voice quality, gestures, facial expressions and touch (in speech), and choice of typeface and letter sizes (in writing) 4 situation: the properties and relations of objects and people in the vicinity of the text, as perceived by the participants 5 co-text: text which precedes or follows that under analysis, and which participants judge to belong to the same discourse 6 intertext: text which the participants perceive as belonging to other discourse, but which they associate with the text under consideration, and which affects their interpretation 7 participants: their intentions and interpretations, knowledge and beliefs, attitudes, affiliations and feelings. Each participant is simultaneously a part of the context and an observer of it. Participants are usually described as senders and receivers. (The sender of a message is not always the same as the addresser, however, the person who relays it. In a television ad, for example, the addresser may be an actor, though the sender is an advertising agency. Neither is the receiver always the addressee, the person for whom it is intended. The addressees may be a specific target group, but the receiver is anyone who sees the ad.) 8 function: what the text is intended to do by the senders and addressers, or perceived to do by the receivers and addressees. (4) As the language of advertising is a very specific one, the main areas of study brought to focus in this thesis consist of graphetics, as texts of the ads are the main concern of this thesis, followed by the study of a syntactical, lexicological and semantical features of the texts, with the main stress on the pragmatics, the study of the meaning of the message the ads are delivering to the consumer. It is imperative to bear in mind that the levels are related at certain points and are forming a linguistic complex. The different levels are described below in detail.
3.2.1 Graphetics On the graphetical level, for the purpose of analysing texts of ads, the approach outlined by Guy Cook will be used. He claims that In all . . . instances, a typeface is used to signify the product, in addition to, or sometimes instead of, the word or words which signify it arbitrarily in the code. It is difficult to categorize this kind of signification using the semiotic terms . . . In part, the 10
connection is indexical: we associate a particular kind of print with a particular product. But there is also an element of mood evocation, of ‘brand personality’, which is hard to define. The signification is both indeterminate and powerful. (92) The focus will be brought up to, where present, the prominent graphetical features in the texts.
3.2.2 Lexicology
Lexicology is a branch of linguistics that is, according to Jackson and Zé Amvela, as “the branch of linguistics that investigates, describes and theorizes about vocabulary” (215) and “may be defined as the study of lexis, understood as the stock of words in a given langauge [sic], i.e. its vocabulary or lexicon (from Greek lexis, ‘word’, lexikos, ‘of/for words’). This working definition shows that the notion of ‘word’ is central to the study of lexicology” (2). Into the scope of interest of this thesis fall these word formation phenomena: denotation: the meaning of a word in terms of its reference to an object, concept, etc. in the real world; contrast ‘connotation’ connotation: the emotive overtones of the meaning of a word, e.g. champagne has overtones of luxury or celebration; contrast ‘denotation’ homonymy: two or more lexemes that have the same spelling and the same pronunciation, e.g. hide /haɪd/(conceal, skin of animal), sound /saʊnd/ (noise, stretch of sea) polysemy: having many meanings; dictionaries distinguish the ‘senses’ of polysemous words multiword lexeme: a lexeme composed of more than one orthographic word, including phrasal verbs (take off), open compounds [fire engine), phrasal compounds [will o’ the wisp), etc. idiom: a more or less fixed expression with a non-literal meaning, e.g. face the music, a storm in a teacup inflection: a bound morpheme expressing grammatical meaning, e.g. ‘plural’ of nouns, ‘past tense’ of verbs derivation: the process of word formation involving the addition of prefixes or suffixes to a stem compound word: [words] formed by combining one or more roots, e.g. horsebox, seatbelt, house-proud, treasure hunt
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conversion: the process by which a new word is formed, simply by assigning it to a different word class, without any alteration to its form (spelling or pronunciation), e.g. bottle, noun and verb blends: a word formed by combining usually the beginning of one word with the end of another, e.g. motel from motor and hotel clipping: the formation of a new word by omitting some of the sounds/letters, e.g. pram from perambulator, fridge (originally frig) from refrigerator synonymy: a meaning relation between words of ‘sameness’ or ‘similarity’, e.g. big - large, change - mutate antonymy: the meaning relation of oppositeness, holding between pairs of words such as tall - short, parent - child, buy - sell hyponymy: a hierarchical meaning relation of inclusion, in which a hyponym is a 'kind of hypernym, e.g. fork is a kind of cutlery meronymy: a hierarchical meaning relation, in which a ‘meronym’ is in a ‘part of relation with its superordinate term, e.g. heel is part of foot collocation: a combination of words that has a higher than chance expectancy of co- occurrence, e.g. kettle and boil formality: a dimension of language variation affecting the choice of vocabulary leading to some words considered to be ‘formal’ or ‘informal’/'colloquial’ restricted language: a language with a limited vocabulary used for a very specific purpose, e.g. in recipes or card games (Jackson and Zé Amvela 241-5)
3.2.3 Semantics
The semantical level of the discourse analysis will primarily deal with textual coherence, cohesion and cohesive devices, as outlined in the work of Brown and Yule, in part inspired by the work of Halliday and Hasan, namely their book Cohesion in English. The concept of formal markers of conjunctive cohesive devices will be adapted from Halliday and Hasan. The markers are divided into four categories: additive, adversative, causal and temporal (238-67). In connection with Halliday and Hasan’s theory, there should be mentioned endophoric and exophoric reference, alongside with the anaphoric and cataphoric referent. Exophoric reference has no cohesive ties and cannot be interpreted from the text.
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Endophoric reference, on the other hand, can be interpreted from within the text and forms cohesive textual ties. Endophoric reference is of two types: Anaphoric, which points back in the text to its referent. Cataphoric, which points forward to its referent (Brown and Yule 192-3). Other possible cohesive devices mentioned by Brown and Yule provided with examples are: a. Repeated form: The Prime Minister recorded her thanks to the Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister was most eloquent. b. Partially repeated form: Dr E. C. R. Reeve chaired the meeting. Dr Reeve invited Mr Phillips to report on the state of the gardens. c. Lexical replacement: Ro’s daughter is ill again. The child is hardly ever well. d. Pronominal form: Ro said she would have to take Sophie to the doctor. e. Substituted form: Jules has a birthday next month. Elspeth has one too. f. Ellided [sic] form: Jules has a birthday next month. Elspeth has too. (193) A theory adopted for the purpose of this thesis will be based on Brown and Yule’s suggestions, namely the concepts of referring expressions, use of pronouns in discourse and interpreting pronominal references in discourse. For referring expressions, the categories are the indefinite expressions, proper names and definite noun phrases (208-222).
3.2.4 Stylistics
The level of stylistics will be focused primarily on elements such as field, mode, tenor and register. Halliday and Hasan provide these definitions for the terms: The field is the total event, in which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer; it thus includes the subject-matter as one element in it. The mode is the function of the text in the event, including therefore both the channel taken by the language – spoken or written, extempore or prepared – and its genre, or rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive, ‘phatic communion’ and so on. The tenor refers to the type of role interaction, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved. The register is the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings. The fact that
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we can say of any given text, with some assurance, whether or not it satisfies a description of the context of situation . . . shows how real the notion of register is. (22-23)
3.2.5 Pragmatics
As for the last level of this discourse analysis considered in this thesis, the level of pragmatics, this level will be the core of the interest in the textual analysis of the corpus data. The aim of the study will focus on studying presupposition, inference and implicature (Brown and Yule 27). Closely connected is also the concept of Grice’s conversational maxims and the cooperation principle and these will be also included in this section, as well as the theory of speech acts devised by John Searle. Presupposition, according to Brown and Yule, is an assumption that the addresser supposes the addressee shares with the addresser and therefore the addresser is the source of the presupposition in a discourse. (29) Inference is, according to Brown and Yule, a situation where, [s]ince the discourse analyst, like the hearer, has no direct access to a speaker’s intended meaning in producing an utterance, he often has to rely on a process of inference to arrive at an interpretation for utterances or for the connections between utterances. (33) In other words, a situation where there is a need to deduct the meaning of the utterance, often based solely on socio-cultural knowledge. Implicature, according to Brown and Yule, is a term used to “account for what a speaker can imply, suggest, or mean, as distinct from what the speaker literally says” (31). According to Grice, who introduced this term, there are two types of implicatures. Conventional implicature, according to Grice, is a representation of a conventional meaning of the words uttered. (44) Conversational implicature, according to Grice, is closely tied with and stemming out of conversational maxims and the cooperation principle mentioned below (45). Conversational maxims, introduced by H. P. Grice, fall into four categories and are defined as maxims of: Quantity – 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
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purposes of the exchange). 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Quality – with a supermaxim ‘Try to make your contribution one that is true’ 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation 1. Be relevant. Manner 1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). 4. Be orderly. (45-6) Cooperation principle is, according to Grice, the principle to be followed by the participants of a conversation; to make one’s “conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (45)
Some entries in the list above, though defined in one certain category, have overlapping tendencies, for example, referential expressions mentioned in the section devoted to semantics can easily fit into pragmatics as well and presupposition is on the contrary by some researchers devoted to the category of semantics. As TV advertisement naturally consists of video, sound and/or accompanying text, for the purpose of this thesis, the main stress will be deliberately put on the textual part of the advertisements. The text is defined by Widdowson as “an actual use of language, as distinct from a sentence which is an abstract unit of linguistic analysis. We identify a piece of language as a text as soon as we recognize that it has been produced for a communicative purpose” (4). Therefore, only the advertisements containing at least some stretches of written texts were selected, the sound and video parts of the advertisements will be put into an inferior position in the overall analysis on purpose, in accord with the main aim of this thesis, although, as Cook insightfully claims, “[m]usic and pictures are part of the discourse of ads, and to ignore or downplay them is a serious distortion” and therefore “[a]dvertising, unlike analysis, operates in all modes and media at once, and must be treated accordingly” (44). In the practical part, where there will be a significant requirement to mention these parts, i.e. music or video, they will be noted in the respective analysis of the advertisement.
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II. Practical part 4 Introduction In the practical part, the data from the corpus will be analysed on different linguistic levels. It is implausible, taken into consideration the purpose and the desired length of this thesis, to perform an exhaustive analysis of all the features of the texts and accompanied visual and audio features of all the advertisements in the corpus on all linguistic levels and therefore only a selection of the most prominent or interesting ones will be presented. As the primary object advertised is the phone presented in a respective advertisement, the main focal point of the said advertisements is quite easy to establish. Yet there are substantial differences in the overall presentation of said object; a substantial number of the advertisements present the phone only in a form of close-ups, while some other present it in different ways. In fact, almost half of the advertisements have the close-ups as the only way how to present the product, while the vast majority of the rest have this feature as a significant one present in the advertisement. Only a few commercials use the close-ups only marginally (1, 2, 6, 19, 43). This is interesting information, taken into consideration the variability of the advertisement industry as a whole, that the majority of the companies have the same recurring motif in their advertisement clips, while only a few dare to experiment outside the phenomenon of showing the advertised phone from a close range or alternatively showing the inside of the phone. The interesting features of certain advertisements will be dealt with later in the practical part individually.
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5 The Levels of Analysis
5.1 The Graphetic Level The visual part is the paramount one in advertising, namely in TV advertising. Though in this thesis the analysis of video sequences is intentionally suppressed in favour of the texts analysed, it shall not be omitted altogether and will be mentioned in cases where it has a significant role in a respective advertisement. The texts, as the major focal point of this thesis, will be analysed from the graphetic perspective for their prominent features, namely the use of logos, type sizes of the texts and use of colours.
5.2 The Lexical Level The lexical level of the analysis deals with the texts on the level of words, as was mentioned in the theoretical part of this thesis. This analysis will focus on interesting features and specific approaches in the advertisements on the lexical level.
5.3 The Semantic Level The semantic level will take into consideration the cohesive devices and the coherence of the textual information present in the advertisements and focus on the prominent features, common approaches and possible deviations in the textual information.
5.4 The Stylistic Level The stylistic level of the analysis will provide an insight into the particular stylistic devices used in the discourse of advertisements and will deal with the use of particular registers as well as other stylistic devices mentioned in the theoretical part. It will also, as the other levels of this analysis, focus on prominent features of the texts present in advertisements from the corpus.
5.5 The Pragmatic Level The pragmatic level of this analysis will deal with discourse structures above the sentence level, mainly with implicatures and presuppositions and also with other devices described in the theoretical part.
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6 The Analysis of the Data The smartphones will be analysed one by one, in alphabetical order, with the focus on prominent features of the respective advertisement. As the main focus of this analysis will be on the textual parts of the advertisements, the source of all the textual information discussed below is the transcription of the texts present in the respective advertisements, attached in an appendix to this thesis and all the advertisements in the appendix are numbered in concord with the numbering in the thesis.
6.1 Acer Liquid Z220 commercial The Acer Liquid Z220 commercial uses, as one of the few commercials analysed in this thesis, full-screen video based on a series of short clips connected with the textual part of the ad. The ad starts with a logo of the product, the name of the series, “Liquid” capitalized and in a green colour, which is also the colour of the main logo of the company. Why the company selected this particular word for its smartphone product range could not be found on the company’s official website and one can only wonder of its connotations, as it is not even remotely connected with the product itself. After the logo, three uppercase words are provided, one after another: “CONNECT”, “CAPTURE” and “GO”, all three are imperatives. In the first instance, the words are in the middle of the screen, accompanied by a full-screen video picturing some real life situations that can be associated with the respective word presented. In the second instance, the words are repeated in the same order, with the same video sequence, only a bit hastened, that shrinks into the screen of the advertised smartphone and with a text resembling an orthographic sentence, but missing a full stop, expanding on the respective headword repeated. The word “capture”, having itself many connotative meanings and used in this particular case in its verbal form, is expanded by the text “5MP main camera with 89-degree wide-angle lens”, from which can be inferred that the imperative “CAPTURE” is persuading the potential customer to use the phone’s camera to capture the various important moments of one’s life in the form of photographs. The other two headwords and the accompanying texts are serving the same function. It is also important to mention that the information “5MP”, MP meaning megapixel, is rather a technical term that must be known to the recipient of the information to be correctly interpreted. The advertisement ends with the name of the particular phone type advertised and yet another reiteration of the three headwords, strengthening the process of remembering them in
18 the recipient’s mind. The very last picture of the ad is devoted to the logo in the green colour and the trademarked slogan of the company “explore beyond limits”, that is, according to Michael Birkin, Chief Marketing Officer of Acer, “‘a reflection of our new approach to product design and a more market-oriented mindset. The desire to create easy, intuitive, user- oriented products is engrained in our design DNA as we strive to enhance users’ total experience.’” The scarcity of the textual information and the video accompanying the texts is an interesting approach to delivering the message to the customer by activating one’s imagination of the possible situations one can encounter in life while promoting the particular product, i.e. building mental associations in the target recipient’s mind.
6.2 Acer Liquid Z520 commercial The Acer Liquid Z520 commercial as another of the few that use video of real-life situations to a large extent in the ad. The advertisement starts with a product name assembling next to the picture of the said product and is the only one of all the samples from the corpus that has its textual information accompanied with the same information voice-over, except the said initial product name and the closing logo and slogan. Throughout the advertisement, there is a series of sentences, not orthographically ended with a full stop. It is clear, and it has to be stated at the beginning, that the main motif of this advertisement is the focus on the phone’s camera. The first sentence “The camera’s always ready, your word is its command” implies the phone’s camera to be voice-activated, directly addressing the target recipient with the use of the possessive pronoun “your”. The second sentence is a rhetorical question, inferring a future uncertainty and, introducing the set of three following sentences. All the three following sentences have the same denominator introduced by the first sentence, all three using language associated with taking pictures. The first sentence “Hit me with your best shot!” clearly infers the meaning of shooting multiple photographs and picking the best one chosen by the photographer, a fact that is buttressed by the visual part of the clip, as this sentence without context has other possible meanings. The sentence “Do you want some cheese on your toast?” contains an interesting wordplay with the word cheese, implying both having the child in the clip eating a sandwich filled with cheese and also at the same time introducing the informal idiom ‘say cheese’ used by the photographer when taking a picture of someone to make that one smile more, the latter tying the scene coherently with the main motif of the advertisement. The third sentence “Wanna take a selfie?” is an informal interrogative sentence containing a neologism “selfie”, i.e. a 19 photograph taken by oneself by a front-facing camera, a practice associated almost exclusively with smartphones. The last sentence, “Better photos, hands down” suggests by using the idiom “hands down” the ease of creating photos of better quality without any doubt. A fact worth mentioning is that all sentences ending with a question mark or an exclamation mark are orthographic sentences, whereas declarative sentences are missing full stops, thereby not qualifying to be orthographic sentences. Another fact is that the sentences are addressing the recipient directly using personal pronouns, except the rhetorical question and the last statement. The advertisement ends with the identical logo as the aforementioned Acer Liquid Z220 commercial.
6.3 Alcatel Onetouch Idol 2 S commercial The Alcatel Onetouch Idol 2 S commercial is one of the many commercials consisting mainly of close-up video of the advertised phone combined with video sequences embedded into the phone’s screen, in this particular example with one very short exception in the Formula 1 scene. The textual part consists in the first part of a set of phrases or single words: “Brushed metallic finish”, “Diamond-cut edges”, “Refined details”, “Immersive”, “Crystal clear”, “Bright”, “Vivid”. Adjectives present in these examples are attributing quality to nouns, when present, and they are modifying and invoking a connotative meaning of a product of a quality. There is also an interesting example of rhythm in the collocation “Slim and trim”, while “Beyond style” is an idiom with its distinct meaning. The other group of textual information consists of information about the phone technical specifications – “7.4 mm”, “5’’ HD IPS display”, “4G LTE cat 4 up to 150 Mbps”, “Quad core 1.2 GHz CPU”, “Sound powered by: ARKAMYS” this information, more specifically its meaning, except for the first example denoting the width of the phone, is a part of restricted language, the language of technical details either in information and communications technology or computing. For the proper understanding of these terms, the target recipient of the advertisement must be at least to a certain extent acquainted with the terminology to correctly infer the proper meaning of such information. The third group of textual information consisting of “Brighten up your life !”, “Everything you see is true to life”, “Witness true speed”, “Forget complicated finger movements”, “Now pump up the volume !” addressing the target recipient directly through the use of the personal pronoun “you” that is sometimes elided. To this group can be added a
20 subgroup: “Steady as a rock”, “Everything fast and smooth”, “Crisp and super clear”, all of these referring to the qualities of the product. The product logo appears as the second text in the advertisement and in the second instance as a part of the second last text. The last textual information is the company logo and the logo of the product line.
6.4 ALCATEL ONETOUCH PIXI 3 Family commercial The ALCATEL ONETOUCH PIXI 3 Family commercial is a straightforward advertisement predominantly aimed at the younger target recipients. Apart from the initial and final product logo and the logo of the company and the product line at the end of the advertisement, which is the same as in the previous advertisement analysed, the whole advertisement consists of simple imperative phrases consisting of two or three words with the last word preceded with hashtags and a sizeable typeface of the textual information and is interwoven with corresponding visual information. The use of a hashtag is a rare occurrence of this phenomenon among all the advertisements analysed and is connected with the social network Twitter.
6.5 ARCHOS Helium Plus commercial The ARCHOS Helium Plus commercial is the typical advertisement from the ones analysed in this thesis. The company logo and slogan appear at the beginning and at the end of the advertisement and are identical, the personal pronoun “your” is in green and in a different font, appealing to the target recipient. The visual part consists of close-ups of the product and its interior with accompanying texts, all in the form of uppercase phrases. The phrases are “SATIN SILVER FRAME”, “LUMINOUS GLOSS FINISH”, “PEAK PERFORMANCE”, “SUBLIME PICTURES”, consisting of adjectives attributing quality to nouns they are modifying and invoking a connotative meaning of a product of a quality. Halfway into this category belongs the text “CRISP HD IPS SCREEN”, a mixture of the preceding with a technical information. The texts “4G SPEEDS”, “13 MP” contain pure technical information, while “64-BITS QUADCORE PROCESSOR POWERHOUSE” represents an interesting mixture of a technical information and a collocation connoting a massive computing performance. The advertisement ends with the same logo and slogan as at the beginning.
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6.6 ASUS ZenFone 2 and ZenFone Zoom commercial The ASUS ZenFone 2 and ZenFone Zoom commercial has a full-screen video about real-life situations assembled into a story where the product plays the major part in connecting the people that are appearing in the story. The textual part consists of a series of sentences in the form of headings, i.e. all the words except prepositions are capitalized and a full stop at the end of the sentence is missing. Several sentences are featuring technical information: “Backlight (HDR) Mode to See Through Shadows”, “85-degree Wide Angle Selfie”, “140- degree Selfie Panorama”, “Steady 12X Zoom with OIS to See Details”, “Low Light Mode for 400% Brighter Images in Dark” – where some of the information can be retrieved fairly easily, whereas some of the technical terms, e.g. “HDR” or “OIS” require further knowledge to successfully infer the meaning of the aforementioned initialisms. In the sentence “Real- Time Beautification by One Touch”, there is an interesting example of word formation process, the class-maintaining derivation of the noun beauty into “beautification”, the meaning of which can be inferred due to the visual information in the advertisement at the moment of the appearance of the aforementioned textual information. The product logo and slogan appear closely to the end of the advertisement; the slogan is in uppercase and claims “SEE WHAT OTHERS CAN’T SEE”, an imperative direct address to the target recipient, implicating an appeal of exclusivity obtained through an ownership of the advertised product. The last scene of the advertisement is a company logo and slogan, again in uppercase, that claims “IN SEARCH OF INCREDIBLE” – a slogan of the company that makes the recipient of this advertisement imply the company is striving for never-ending improvement of their products.
6.7 ASUS ZenFone Max commercial The ASUS ZenFone Max commercial has its visual part of the advertisement a mixture of animations and static photographs, with close-ups of the advertised product in the latter part. The advertisement begins with an animated visual symbol of a battery being drained instantly – a symbol, that sets the tone for the first half of the advertisement. The first textual information, in uppercase, claims “SEE YOUR WORLD WITH ULTIMATE ENERGY”, an imperative addressing the target recipient. The following texts “High efficiency.”, “Long-lasting battery.”, “5000mAh”, “ULTIMATE ENERGY FOR EVERY
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SCENARIO”, “STANDBY 38 DAYS”, “3G Talk Time 37.6 hours”, “WIFI Web Browsing 32.5 hours”, “Music Playback 72.9 Hours”, “Video Playback 22.6 Hours”, “POWER BANK FUNCTION”, “Your go-everywhere power bank” are mostly phrases, declaring information and all the information presented imply outstanding battery life. Apart from the information presented, it is worth mentioning some inconsistency on the two phrases “High efficiency.” and “Long-lasting battery.” appearing in the form of capitalized first letter and the full stop at the end, whereas the other information, except the ones in uppercase, lack the full stop and, moreover, they are in a form of headings, but the first two – “3G Talk Time 37.6 hours”, “WIFI Web Browsing 32.5 hours” lack the capitalized “H” in the word “hours”, yet the other two, “Music Playback 72.9 Hours”, “Video Playback 22.6 Hours” have it capitalized, which shows an inconsistency in graphic style of the advertisement. The other textual information present in the advertisement is technical information “LASER AUTO FOCUS”, “13 MegaPixel clarity.”, “0.03 SENCOND [sic]”, “64-BIT SUPER QUAD-CORE PROCESSOR”, “BACKLIGHT HDR MODE”, some semi-technical information regarding camera and its accompanied accessories functions “LOWLIGHT”, “BEAUTIFICATION”, “SELFIE PANORAMA”, “DUAL LED REAL TONE FLASH”, or information about the product’s user interface “BRAND NEW ZenUI™”. The aforementioned information needs the target consumer to possess an overview about the technical information to properly decode the presented information. In the advertisement, there is also information praising the design of the product “DETAILED DESIGN THAT GOES WITH STYLE”, “Metal-effect bezel”, “Look sharp”, “Luxurious rear cover”. All this information are elided sentences with declarative function. The last part of the advertisement consists of the product logo, followed by the company logo and slogan that is identical with the one from the previous advertisement.
6.8 BlackBerry Classic commercial The BlackBerry Classic commercial has a simple visual information consisting of close-ups with accompanying textual information, all in uppercase. The text begins with an introductory sentence “INTRODUCING THE BLACKBERRY CLASSIC”. The following information reiterates the introductory information, namely the stress on the “classic” in the phone’s name, with the sentences “CLASSIC TRACKPAD AND NAVIGATION KEYS”, “CLASSIC DESIGN”. Another group of information introduces the changes made to the phone while it still has the notion of maintaining its ‘classicism’. Such sentences are “BEST- IN-CLASS PHYSICAL KEYBOARD”, “FASTER RESULTS”, “60% MORE SCREEN 23
SPACE”, “UP TO 50% MORE BATTERY LIFE”. The first sentence contains a superlative, all other contain comparatives evoking positive attitude to the qualities of the advertised product. Another similar example consists of sentences “BROWSE 3X FASTER”, containing a comparative and directly addressing the recipient. The information praising the classicism and the new, better qualities later in the advertisement channels into sentences “THE SMARTPHONE YOU TRUST”, “WITH THE POWER YOU COULDN’T IMAGINE”, “YOUR POWER UPGRADED”, directly addressing the recipient of the advertisement, evoking the classic, known, and acclaimed has been mad even better, persuading the target recipient to have positive feelings for the advertised product, especially when the recipient had positive feelings for the original, older product. The advertisement ends with a declarative slogan “SERIOUS MOBILITY FOR SERIOUS BUSINESS” and with a company logo accompanied by a product name.
6.9 BlackBerry PRIV commercial The BlackBerry PRIV commercial’s visual information consists of close-ups of the product and animated visuals of its use, accompanied by corresponding textual parts. The textual information begins with the product logo, “PRIV”, which is a clipped form of the word ‘privacy’. That itself sets the tone of the advertisement and is later buttressed with following textual information “BLACKBERRY SECURE SMARTPHONE POWERED BY ANDROID™”. That privacy is at the centre of attention demonstrate sentences “Know when your privacy is at risk”, “Take action with DTEK”, “DTEK Monitors your overall security by rating and suggesting action”, “Know when application access puts your device at risk”, “PRIVACY MATTERS”, “LIVE SECURE”, “PRIV” This sequence of sentences from the latter part of the advertisement directly addresses the recipient with imperatives starting with “Know”, “Take action”, “LIVE SECURE” persuading him to actively act on addressing such issues. Another part of the advertisement’s textual information is filled with technical details about the product, its physical attributes and software functions. The information about the product’s camera features a superlative “Dazzling photo quality” and so does the information about the battery capacity “Colossal 3410 mAh battery”, “22.5 hours of mixed use”, which is accompanied by a small print containing legal technicalities: “Many factors affect battery life, including network connectivity, application usage, feature configuration and battery age.
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Actual results may vary.”, and thereby falling into legal field stylistically. This text consists of orthographic sentences. The textual information of this advertisement ends with the same product logo and text as at the beginning of the advertisement.
6.10 BLU Life Pure Mini commercial The BLU Life Pure Mini commercial is visually not very rich advertisement consisting of close-ups of the product with accompanying the textual information. The first uppercase textual information, “ASTONISH DESIGN” is clearly missing an -ing suffix to be considered grammatically correct. The rest of textual information consists either of neutral, declarative technical specifications, e.g. “4.5’’ HD Display”, “1280 x 720 Resolution”, “Unibody Housing”, “1.5Ghz Quad Core CPU under it”, “16GB of Internal Memory”, “1GB of RAM”, “8.0MP Camera”, “2MP Front Camera” or adjectivally modified nouns denoting quality “Intuitive User Interface”, “Massive Battery”, “IN ONE BRILLIANT DEVICE”. The end of the advertisement contains texts “INTRODUCING”, the product name “LIFE PURE MINI”, the company logo “BLÜ”, an acronym of the company slogan “BOLD LIKE US”, the very last textual information in the advertisement.
6.11 Blu Vivo 4 8 commercial The Blu Vivo 4 8 commercial is in its visual and even textual structure similar to the previously analysed advertisement from the same company. Most of the advertisement’s textual information is related to technical details of the product and its proportions and physical qualities. The two interesting examples of the language used in this advertisement are the opening statement claims “PREPARE TO BE AMAZED”, a declarative sentence with elided personal pronoun functioning as a directive, and the declarative sentence “IT’S EYE-GASMIC”, containing a blend of the words eye and orgasmic, which is an interesting approach how to exploit one of the cornerstones of advertisement – sex. The end of this advertisement is similar to the previously analysed, containing text “INTRODUCING”, the product name “VIVO 4.8 HD” with the text “SUPER HD AMOLED”, where the “O” in “AMOLED” is created in colours of a rainbow, the name itself is a brand of a technology for LED panels used in smartphones. The last part of the
25 advertisement consists of the company logo “BLÜ”, an acronym of the company slogan “BOLD LIKE US”, the very last textual information in the advertisement.
6.12 Cubot S600 commercial The Cubot S600 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and its frame, full-screen video animations and on-screen video sequences and static pictures. The textual information of this advertisement consists of capitalized headlines containing mostly technical and physical information about the product and some of the headlines are accompanied by rather long texts expanding on a respective feature presented in the advertisement. Some of the headlines and all of the long texts are suffering from bad punctuation, bad choice of words and grammar. For the sake of brevity only one example will be presented: Please make assured to use the finger print sensor which uses Silead GSL6163MSB2 press finger print chip , it has the largest touch area in the market till now ,more suitable for people with bigger palm . more sampling point ,more accurate for recognition , you lock your privacy with this hardware level finger print sensor with nobody stealing your sampling ,yourself either . Despite the obvious mistakes in the text above, it poses little challenge to imply the intended meaning, but such obvious errors do harm to the product because of such text gives evidence of an unprofessional work, that can be subsequently connected with the qualities of the advertised product itself. There is also a number of non-gradable adjectives present in the textual information of this advertisement, e.g. “amazing”, “perfect”, as well as comparatives and superlatives, e.g. “bigger”, “largest”, praising the qualities of the product, yet contrasted with the poor language of the advertisement, the target recipient may not be entirely convinced of the qualities of the product. The advertisement surprisingly does not end with any company or product logo, but a sentence “more information on cubot pls focus on us” followed by the company’s YouTube, Facebook and Twitter account. The aforementioned sentence contains not very well chosen wording, but contains an interesting occurrence of the word “pls”, a shortened ‘please’, 26 usually confined to the use in informal textual communication, which may imply a friendly, familiar tone of the last sentence, bearing resemblance to a text sent by a close friend and therefore evoking a positive attitude in the target recipient.
6.13 Doogee F5 commercial The Doogee F5 commercial is yet another advertisement consisting almost exclusively of close-ups of the product, as far as the visual part of the advertisement is discussed, along with accompanying textual information. The majority of the textual information consists of neutral, declarative technical details and physical qualities of the product. Some texts are evoking emotions of rarity, e.g. “Thin Light Luxury”, “Exclusive form cutting”, beauty, e.g. “Handsome appearance”, or safety, e.g. “Security at your fingertip”, “Strong material for outer frame”. The advertisement ends with the product name and the product slogan “I like who i [sic] am”, where the second instance of the personal pronoun “I” is not capitalized, which can be explained either as a violation of grammatical rules, or an artistic expression of the creators of this advertisement. The very last textual information is and the company logo and its website address.
6.14 Elephone M2 commercial The Elephone M2 commercial is one of the few that is using a full-screen visual information of several loosely connected sequences forming a story-like setting, buttressing by its visual information features of the advertised product the creators are highlighting in the advertisement. Textual information consists of neutral, declarative technical details and physical qualities of the product. The text “Precise navigation” implies a notion of quality by modifying a noun with an adjective. There are two interesting texts in the advertisement: “Mentallic feeling”, clearly a misspelling of the word ‘metallic’, and “entinguished screen”, a word that is not present in a dictionary and I personally have no idea what the meaning of it may be. The final part of the advertisement consists of a product name and a slogan “Not only for business”, a statement that might seem slightly strange, given into consideration the variability of ways how to use a smartphone nowadays.
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6.15 Elephone P6000 Pro commercial The Elephone P6000 Pro commercial uses combined approach towards the visual presentation of the information, combining close-ups and shots of the inside of the product in the first part with footage of the assembly process in the latter part. The textual part of the advertisement consists of series of wh- questions accompanied by corresponding technical information explaining to some extent the question that is accompanied by emotionally marked sentences attributing qualities to the product. The questions are all lacking the final question mark, thereby escaping the confines of orthographic sentences. The sentences present are all but one related to the technical details of the product: “What is 3GB RAM”, “What is 64-bit Octa core”, “What is 4G LTE”, “What is Android 5.1”. Only the last question is emotionally marked to convey a message of exclusivity: “How does the art piece break cocoon”, though the use of the collocation “art piece” is not the best choice in this particular case, as this collocation is used almost exclusively for visual art and it can be hardly attributed to the smartphone, unlike the collocation ‘work of art’ that can be used in much broader range. Some answers to the aforementioned questions are not purely technical and contain adjectivally modified nouns attributing quality to nouns they are modifying and invoking a connotative meaning of a quality product, such as “Rapid algorithm speed run big games easily”, “outstanding performance”, “Fast [sic] stable and energy efficient”, “Brand new color interface”, “Fluid and purposeful motion effect”, “More comprehensive functions hardly tear yourself from it [sic]”. Not all the sentences were able to escape misspellings, such as the first one, or ungrammatical constructions, such as the last one. The latter part of the advertisement consists of a video presenting various steps during the assembly and stress testing process in a factory, accompanied by textual information consisting of two sentences: “Carefully [sic]quality control for each step in the process” and “Peg away at every test before leaving the factory”. Both of the sentences are implying that the product reaching the customer is fault-free, yet both sentences are flawed. The first one contains an adverb ‘carefully’ instead of an adjective ‘careful’ and the second one contains rather informal collocation ‘peg away’, which is not a grammatical flaw, but stylistically does not fit into the otherwise formal textual information. The last part of the advertisement is the product name and a slogan “Upgrade for passionate love”, direct address at a target recipient, a declarative sentence with elided personal pronoun functioning as a directive, followed by the very last piece of textual information, the website address of the company producing the smartphone.
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6.16 Gionee S Plus commercial The Gionee S Plus commercial has its visual information constructed on close-ups, with an interesting opening sequence depicting the phone as if it was born out of liquid. The textual information is corresponding with the visual and the first part presents the product from the outside with these sentences: “Technology Imitates Nature”, “Liquid Inspired Design”, “Extreme Metallic Texture”, “Bright, Glossy Finish”, “Detailed to Perfection”, “Limited Edition Style”, all of these sentences inferring unrivalled quality of the phone’s rendition. The second part of the advertisement deals on the textual level with technical information that are, except for the camera and sound specifications, accompanied by a textual information expanding the technical information, e.g. “Faster and Easier”, “Fast charge”, “Immersive Display with Tactile Feedback”, declaratives with adjectives attributing positive quality to the nouns and also “Turn it On. Sense the Difference”, a commissive pledging the recipient a positive experience through his/her senses, in this particular case throughout the process of unlocking the phone. The advertisement ends with the product logo, “S PLUS”, where the plus symbol is interestingly used to form a part of the letter p in “plus” and the slogan “SENSE THE PLUS”, an interesting wordplay with the similarity of the slogan and the product’s name. The very last textual information is the logo of the company.
6.17 HTC One M9+ commercial The HTC One M9+ commercial has its visual part consisting of a series of connected parts depicting the creation of the outer case of the product. It has a voice-over different from the textual part. The textual part consists of five sentences: “Manually tested by experienced craftsman”, “More than 70 exacting processes”, “Only 5% make it to the final product”, “Over 300 minutes from start to finish”, “Dual tone anodizing”. These sentences were most probably meant to imply an exclusive and attention-to-detail approach in the process of making the outer case of the phone, but it can be also perceived negatively, especially in the light of the facts that “Only 5% [of the phone cases] make it to the final product” and “[It takes o]ver 300 minutes from start to finish” that such an approach is not the best example of
29 a lean production procedure and may negatively affect the overall price of the product. Such an ambiguity is usually avoided in the advertisements as the vast majority presents only the positive information without possible negative connotation. The advertisement finishes with the company and product logo, the company logo in green colour, and a slogan “The One. Made from the passion of many.”, a wordplay connecting the product’s name with the slogan and establishing a link connoting exclusiveness. It can also infer the Latin adage ‘E pluribus unum’, meaning out of many, one.
6.18 HTC One max commercial The HTC One max commercial has a very lively visual part featuring close-ups, video on the phone screen, presenting various features of the product, that is sometimes accompanied by the full-screen video. The textual part consists of a series of texts, the first one, “Premium metal body and big screen”, denoting a positive quality with adjectives modifying the nouns and attributing quality to them. The rest of the text, up to the final logo, is devoted solely to different functions of the product. With one exception, “Sweep Panorama”, it consists of a headline and accompanying text expanding on the headline. „Fingerprint Scan”, “Change how you activate your phone”. “Dual Capture”, “Change your point of view”. “Htc Zoe™”, “Your gallery brought to life”. “Video Highlights”, “Change to effortless editing”. “HTC Scribble”, “Change your live creations”. Many of the expanding texts are featuring the personal pronoun “you” or “your” to directly address the target recipient of the advertisement, sometimes the pronoun is elided, e.g. “Change to effortless editing”. The texts “htc BlinkFeed™”, “Live home screen” and “Htc BoomSound™”, “Dual frontal stereo speakers” have the accompanied text in the form of declarative. The advertisement finishes with the company and product logo, the company logo in green, and the text transforms into a slogan in uppercase “CHANGE TO PREMIUM”, with the spaces between the words omitted. This slogan also directly addresses the target customer with the intention to persuade him/her to buy the product. The very last textual information is the company logo, in green.
6.19 Huawei Ascend G6 commercial The Huawei Ascend G6 commercial has its visual information playing a major part, as it is formed into a series of connected sequences with one motif – a wedding. The features of
30 the product that are presented during the advertisement are closely tied to the visual part of the advertisement and there is a voice-over that is different from the textual information. The textual information is represented by a set of phrases in the form of headlines, all in uppercase. Some of the phrases are pure technical information, e.g. “8MP REAR CAMERA”, others are names for the features of the phone, e.g. “AUTO FACE ENHANCEMENT”, “SELFIE PREVIEW WINDOW”, “AUDIO PHOTO”, “AUTO SCENE RECOGNITION” and are all accompanied by corresponding visual information adding the meaning to them. All the phrases are accompanied by a small print containing legal technicalities stating that the respective feature “demonstration is created by visual effect”, the LTE information is accompanied by additional small print stating that “Download speed depends on the individual configuration of the mobile as well as on network configuration and other physical conditions Information provided for reference only”. None of the small print in this advertisement is in the form of orthographic sentence, as it is missing the full stop. The advertisement ends with the product logo and the slogan “Share Better”, followed by another screen with the text “MAKE it POSSIBLE | 4G LTE” and the audio voice-over saying “Make it possible with 4G LTE”, thereby forming a coherent tie of this statement to the previous slogan. The very last text of this advertising is the company logo and its website address.
6.20 Huawei Mate S commercial The Huawei Mate S commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups and videos appearing on the phone screen. The textual information of the advertisement consists of phrases in the form of headlines with capitalized words and small print in the form of orthographic sentences. The first four phrases are related to the physical qualities of the phone, e.g. “2.5D Gorilla Glass”, “Super Slim Profile”, “Diamond Cut Bezel”, “Full Metal Body”. The following headlines focus on the usage of the product, e.g. “Fingerprint Control”, “Force Touch”, “Double Knuckle Screen Capture”, „Knuckle Crop” in forms of declaratives, and “Knuckle W for Instant Messaging”, “Knuckle C for Professional Camera Mode” in forms of direct address to the target recipient. The small print consists of several sentences containing legal technicalities stating that “Visual effects optimized for demonstration only.” and “Product color, shape, interface and functions are for reference only. The actual product may vary.” All the sentences are in passive.
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The advertisement ends with the product name, the slogan “Touch. Made Powerful” denoting the main usage communicated to the recipient through the advertisement and the logo of the company.
6.21 iNew L3 commercial The iNew L3 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups, with one very short exception of a full-screen video combined with the same video appearing on the phone screen. The textual information of the advertisement consists of short phrases in the form of headlines and capitalized, some of them featuring hyphenated compound adjectives, e.g. “High-definition Camera”, “Ultra-thin Handset”, “Nano-coating water-resistance”, “HD Large Screen”. The rest are declaratives, e.g. “Metal Frame”, “Corning Gorilla Glass”, “PDAF Fast Automatic Focus”, the second and the third containing technical information. The advertisement ends with a product name and a company logo.
6.22 iNew U5 commercial The iNew U5 commercial has its visual part consisting of animations and close-ups. The textual part consists of four phrases and a sentence. All the phrases – “5.0 Inches IPS screen”, “Infrared remote control”, “High-definition Camera”, “CPU Quad core 16GB ROM + 1GB RAM” contain technical information about the product. The phrases contain compound adjectives, e.g. “remote control”. The sentence “Enter ‘Music’ interface by drawing ‘M’” contains information about the use of the product and is in the form of a directive with elided subject. The end of this advertisement is very similar to the previous one, only with a different product name.
6.23 iPHONE 5 commercial The iPHONE 5 commercial visual part consists of close-ups of the phone and animations of the phone and its accessories. The textual part consists of sentences, clauses and phrases. The textual part can be divided into headlines and supplementary textual information. The advertisement begins with “Introducing iPhone 5 With Widescreen Retina Display”, a
32 declarative sentence with elided subject in the form of a headline, followed by the product slogan “Extend the possibilities”, another declarative with the elided subject. The following textual information can be divided into six major groups, each one having a separate headline and followed by the additional textual information. The headlines are “All New Design”, “Hardware Enhancements”, “New Mini Dock Connector”, “New Nano Sim Card”, “Fingerprint Scan to Unlock”, “iOS Software Enhancements” and some of them have separate sub-headlines. The headlines are implicating significant changes to the presented product and intriguing curiosity of the target recipient of the advertisement. Expanding the “All New Design” headline, there is a significant proportion of texts containing gradable adjectives, e.g. “taller”, “thinner”, “lighter”, the “Hardware Enhancements” section contains “dramatically thinner”, the “New Mini Dock Connector” section contains “smaller”, “faster”, all these creating an appeal toward the target recipient to create a positive attitude towards the product. Interesting fact to point out is the multiple occurrences of “new”, seven times throughout the advertisement, and “all new”, occurring three times. This also sends towards the target recipient a persuasive message to obtain this “new” product. The advertisement finishes with the same text as was in the beginning, except the initial word “Introducing” and the company logo.
6.24 Lava Pixel V2 commercial The Lava Pixel V2 commercial has its visual part revolving around close-ups and static pictures on the phone’s display. The textual information consists mainly of phrases. The first half of the advertisement is devoted solely to presenting technical information about the product’s camera, the only non-technical information from the first half of the advertisement is “Amazing selfies”, a non- gradable adjective modifying the noun, and also an interesting compound-like word “Beauty- Fi” resembling a class-maintaining derivation ‘beautify’. The second half of the advertisement presents the battery performance, physical qualities of the product and also the phone’s altered operating system. The information is presented in a favourable tone and the phrases are consisting of compounds such as: “ultimate performance”, “Optimised battery performance”, “Super tough”, “Advanced”, “Smooth Oleophobic Coating”. All these examples are the adjectives modifying the nouns, except for “Optimised battery performance”, where there is a verb in adjectival position. All these examples have an impact
33 on the target recipient and are implicating a positive attitude towards the product, as words as optimised, ultimate, or super tough are generally beyond measure. The advertisement ends with the company logo, the product name and the slogan “Smartphone photography redefined”. The slogan aptly sums up the main focus of this advertisement, i.e. the focus on the camera and its affiliate functions. The very last textual information is yet another appearance of the company logo.
6.25 Lenovo Vibe S1 commercial The Lenovo Vibe S1 commercial has its visual part consisting of a few close-ups of the phone and its dismantled frontal cameras and also static pictures and dynamic full-screen videos. It features a voice-over not matching the textual information, and this voice-over is clarifying the visual part of the advertisement. The textual information of the advertisement consists of a few sentences while the rest of the text is in the form of phrases and nearly all the text is in uppercase. The whole advertisement is focused on a single part of the phone, the dual front camera and the process of creating and altering selfies. The first text comprises of the phrase “GET READY FOR THE POWER OF TWO” which is clearly flouting the maxim of manner, but it is clarified shortly by the second phrase “INTRODUCING THE WORLD’S FIRST DUAL SELFIE CAMERAS”. The rest of the text, except, e.g. “8MP PRIMARY CAMERA”, “2MP SECONDARY CAMERA”, that is concerned with technical information, is focused only on selfies and post processing of them. The text consists mostly of noun phrases, e.g. “SELECT BLUR EFFECT”, “PASTE ON ANY BACKGROUND” and verb phrases, e.g. “SEE EVERY DETAIL”, “SLIDE TO BLUR”, “PLACE YOURSELF OVER A LIVE SHOT”. The phrases are directly addressing the target recipient. The advertisement ends with a slogan “A REVOLUTIONARY NEW SELFIE EXPERIENCE”, which sums up the main message of this advertisement, for the message itself is focused on selfies only, and the product name and the company logo as the last textual information.
6.26 Lenovo VIBE X2 commercial The Lenovo VIBE X2 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups and on- screen video sequences.
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The textual part of the advertisement starts with the product name and is followed by a technical information about the main object presented in this advertisement, the “5 MEGAPIXEL SELFIE CAMERA” and followed by the sentence “FIND THE RIGHT EXPRESSION”, distributed over three screens in the advertisement and having the form of directly addressed directive. The next sentence, “INTELLIGENT BEAUTY” is a feature similar to previously mentioned ‘beautification’, which is a post-processing feature employed to alter the photographs to look better. “LOOK THE BEST”, “BLINK TO CAPTURE”, “WAVE TO CAPTURE”, “AVOID CAMERA SHAKE” are directives in the form of suggestions. The advertisement finishes with the product name.
6.27 LG G3 Commercial The LG G3 Commercial has its visual part consisting of abstract shapes, close-ups, on- screen videos and sequences of assembling and disassembling of the parts of the phone, and also presenting some of the phone accessories. The textual part consists of phrases in the forms of headlines and there are several fields of focus in the advertisement. The first set of phrases focuses on the physical shape of the phone, the second on the display, the third on the camera, the fourth on the sound system and the fifth on the battery capacity. The next sets are concerned with the use of the phone and the last ones are focused on the phone accessories. Apart from the technical information present in almost every smartphone advertisement, there are a few interesting points worth mentioning. The “Floating Arc Design”, a compound used by the LG company, is a design described in their press release to provide “an extremely comfortable grip for everyday one- handed use” (With New G3). This concept follows the “Simple is the New Smart” concept, which is also the slogan of this product. Another noteworthy information is, that all the information is provided in the form of declaratives and there is not a single occurrence of direct address of the target recipient. The advertisement ends with an assembly of the G3 logo and the aforementioned slogan and the name of the company. On the very last screen, there is the company logo and the slogan “Life’s Good”.
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6.28 LG V10 commercial The LG V10 commercial has its visual part consisting of full-screen video sequences, close-ups of the phone, sequences featuring assembling of parts of the phone, sequences of the inside of the phone and on-screen videos and static pictures. The textual part of the advertisement consists of single words in the beginning and phrases throughout the rest of the advertisement. The single words, with which the advertisement begins, all have the first letter identical and it corresponds with the letter of the product model, i.e. “V”. The words are all in uppercase and they are: “VALUABLE”, “VERIFY”, “VISION”, “VOGUE”, “VARY”, “VOYAGE”. Although their denotation does not fall into one category, these words affect the target recipient and set the mood for the rest of the advertisement, working with the presupposition of the recipient. The rest of the advertisement presents certain features of the phone, e.g. camera, audio system, battery, CPU and a second screen. The interesting language in this advertisement is undoubtedly the presence of the blend “Groufie”, with the meaning of a group selfie and also the compound “Strong Beauty”, connoting the mixture of two qualities the advertisement is trying to associate with the product, the durability of the phone, as implied in the phrase “Durable Build” and “Distinctive Durability Dura Skin / Dura Guard” on the one hand, and the aesthetic experience of the physical shape of the phone on the other hand. The advertisement ends with the product slogan “Be You” a direct appeal to emotions of the target recipient, the product logo, the company slogan “Innovation for a Better Life” and the company logo “LG”, an initialism of the slogan “Life’s Good”.
6.29 Micromax Canvas 4 Plus commercial The Micromax Canvas 4 Plus commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and its interior, full-screen and on-screen video sequences and disassembling of the parts of the phone. Its textual part consists of mostly uppercase phrases. All the technical and software details in the advertisement are introduced by a set of sentences with elided subject, all of them containing the verb “can”. This is an allusion to the first half of the name of the product, “Canvas”. These “can” statements are trying to build a positive feeling to the product in the target recipient by using adjectives, e.g. “CAN BE SLEEK”, “CAN BE BRILLIANT”, “CAN BE ADDICTIVE”. The advertisement ends with a product name and a rendered logo.
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6.30 Micromax Canvas Knight commercial The Micromax Canvas Knight commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and on-screen static pictures and video sequences. The textual part is very similar to the previously analysed advertisement and consists of mostly uppercase phrases containing technical details of the product and a set of preceding sentences beginning with uppercase “CAN” with the rest of the sentences in lowercase and ending with an exclamation mark, with the only exception of the last such sentence, which is completely in uppercase and without the exclamation mark. As in the previously analysed advertisement, these “can” statements are trying to build a positive feeling to the product in the target recipient. An interesting sentence is “CAN make a style statement!”, which addresses the target recipient implicating the important fact that some smartphone producers are trying to achieve – that the smartphone can be appraised not only for its technical details, e.g. speed or quality of its components but also for its extraordinary physical appearance, in other words, producers are trying to persuade the customer not to perceive the product as a mere tool, but also as a fashion accessory. Another interesting feature of this advertisement is the product logo, where the “I” in the noun “KNIGHT” takes the form of a sword, which is a symbol easily associable with the concept of a knight. The last textual information in the advertisement is the logo of the company accompanied by a lowercase slogan “nothing like anything”, an interesting slogan meaning ‘incomparable to anything else’ in its literal meaning.
6.31 Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL commercial The Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950 XL commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone, on-screen static pictures and video sequences, disassembling of the phone into parts and also a presentation of the phone accessories and uses with other hardware. The textual part consists of technical information, statements positively referring to qualities of the product, e.g. “Super sharp imaging”, “Consistent Windows 10 experience”, by using adjectives. In some sequences are the texts accompanied by a small print containing legal technicalities. The main focus of this advertisement lies in the comparison of the phone with a computer that can be perceived in sentences “Built for performance”, “Consistent Windows 10 experience”, “The phone that works like your PC.” This last sentence is the only sentence, with the exception of the small print, that is orthographic. The three sentences
37 inferring the ability to use the phone in the exact same way as one uses a computer are the main focus of the advertisement aiming at the target recipient. The advertisement ends with a product name and company name and logo.
6.32 Motorola Moto E commercial The Motorola Moto E commercial has its visual part consisting of a few close-ups and the major part of the advertisement’s video consists of an animated sequence of static pictures. The textual part consists of very few phrases in the form of headlines with capitalized words except particles and conjunctions, the first one, “Choose to Start” is a direct address to the target recipient, the rest informs of technical details of the product. The main amount of text is the small print containing legal technicalities. The amount of small print in this advertisement is fairly extensive and, therefore, it is not possible to read it as a whole, moreover, it is suppressed by the presence of headlines and the visual part of the advertisement. The small print clarifies and relativizes bold claims made by the headlines, e.g. the statement “All-Day Battery” is accompanied by this small text: All battery life claims are approximate and based on average mixed use profile that includes both usage and standby time. Actual battery performance may vary and depends on many factors including signal strength, network configuration, age of battery, operating temperature, features selected, device settings, and voice, data, and other application usage patterns. As in every advertisement, the headlines are drawing attention of the potential customer towards the qualities of the product the producer is claiming it has through the process of inference the target recipient forms in his mind by perceiving the advertisement. The advertisement ends with the company logo, the product name and hashtagged “choosetostart”, a slogan that made its first appearance at the beginning of the advertisement. At the bottom of the screen, there is another small print delimiting trademarks and copyrights.
6.33 Motorola Moto X Pure Edition commercial The Motorola Moto X Pure Edition commercial has its visual part consisting of close- ups of the phone and on-screen static pictures and video sequences. The textual part consists of uppercase sentences and phrases and a substantial amount of small print in the form of orthographic sentences. The phrases are either containing
38 technical details or using adjectives to set a positive attitude towards the product, e.g. “PURE ANDROID™ EXPERIENCE”, “GENUINE WOOD AND LEATHER”, “PURE EDITION”. The adjective pure has several occurrences throughout the advertisement, as it corresponds with the product’s name and denotes something good, clean and unspoilt. The advertisement ends with the company logo, the product name and slogan “Choose the phone that loves you back.”, a lovely example of personification and hyperbole. At the bottom of the screen, there is another small print delimiting trademarks and copyrights.
6.34 Nexus 6 commercial The Nexus 6 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and static pictures and dynamic on-screen videos. The textual part consists of technical information about the product and a few phrases referring to the qualities of the product. Yet there is an interesting element in the textual part of this advertisement, a sentence with elided subject starting with an additive cohesive device, a sentence “And features Lollipop”. The following sentence expands on the topic by stating “The sweetest release yet from Android”, an interesting metaphorical wordplay with the presupposition that the target recipient knows the fact that Google names all the releases of its Android operating system after sweets. The advertisement ends with a single digit “6”, referring to the product’s name and the company logo.
6.35 Nexus 6P commercial The Nexus 6P commercial has its visual information consisting of close-ups of the product. The textual information consists of technical information about the product and a few phrases referring to the qualities of the product and the overall information structure closely resemble the previously analysed advertisement. It features the reference on the phone’s operating system” “Featuring Marshmallow.”, that is followed by a sentence “The fastest and freshest Android yet.” It has a metaphorical overlap, creating a connection between the freshness of a marshmallow and a symbolic link between the operating system’s name and the qualities the latter sentence attributes to it. The advertisement ends with “6P”, the product’s identifier, and the company logo.
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6.36 Nokia Lumia 1520 commercial The Nokia Lumia 1520 commercial has its visual part consisting of a full-screen video sequence, close-ups of the phone and on-screen static pictures and dynamic videos. The textual information of this advertisement consists of uppercase texts, except the small print, comprising of a few technical details about the product, but the advertisement begins with a name and occupation of the character in the full-screen video. The story presented at the beginning of the advertisement is implicated later in the advertisement by the phrase “NOKIA STORYTELLER” and the question directly addressing the target recipient, asking “WHAT’S YOUR STORY?” at the end of the advertisement. This question evokes in the recipient a positive connection between the product and the process of conserving the recipient’s memories in the form of data on the phone. The advertisement ends with the product name and the company logo.
6.37 Nokia Lumia 920 commercial The Nokia Lumia 920 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone, one static full-screen picture and on-screen videos. The textual information of this advertisement consists of a list of features the phone contains. There is one occurrence of a superlative in the phrase “World’s best touchscreen”, but generally, the texts in this advertisement are declaratives with a pure informational function. Some are trademarks, e.g. “PureView™”, “PureMotion™”, evoking in the target recipient something good, clean and unspoilt. The advertisement ends with the product name and the company logo.
6.38 OnePlus 2 commercial The OnePlus 2 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and one static on -screen picture. The textual information of this advertisement consists of uppercase phrases containing only technical information about the product, with one exception, i.e. the slogan at the end stating “NEVER SETTLE”. According to the producer’s website, “Never Settle means that we will strive for the best user experience and not rest till we've found it” (What does ‘Never Settle’ mean?). By using this slogan, and supposing the target recipient infers the intended meaning, the advertisement is influencing the recipient to form a positive attitude towards the product.
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The advertisement ends with the company logo.
6.39 OnePlus One commercial The OnePlus One commercial has its visual part consisting of a full-screen video sequence of the designing and manufacturing process, a sequence of disassembling of the parts of the phone and close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists exclusively of technical information about the product, the colour variations the manufacturer offers and one reference to the physical shape of the product, “Subtle Curvature”, which is a gradable adjective modifying a noun to add a positive quality to the noun it modifies. The main message of this advertisement lies heavily on the visual part of the advertisement, i.e. on the story of the creation of the phone, as the textual information is very scarce. The advertisement ends with the logo of the company.
6.40 OPPO Find 7 commercial The OPPO Find 7 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone, full-screen and on-screen video sequences and transformer-like assembling of the phone, as the whole video is a blend of Transformers 3 film sequences and the sequences of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists mainly of technical information about the phone, with the exception of the opening sentences “The Rules Have Changed”, “A New Era Has Begun”, an allusion to the visual part consisting of sequences from the film, and the slogan at the end of the advertisement stating “Find More”, “Find 7”, a direct appeal to the target recipient arousing an interest in the product, but it is also the name of the product itself, so the meaning is ambiguous. The advertisement ends with the company logo next to the film poster.
6.41 OPPO Neo 7 commercial The OPPO Neo 7 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and full-screen video sequences. The advertisement has a voice-over at the end of the advertisement, but it is not in English, except the very last part of it, and, therefore, will not be considered in the analysis. The textual information of this advertisement consists of uppercase texts, the first one stating the name and occupation of the person starring in the advertisement, the rest of the text
41 is, except these two examples: “ELEGANT DESIGN”, “CREATIVE CAMERA MODE”, addressing directly the target recipient using emotively marked idioms and collocations – “EXPRESS YOURSELF”, “SHOW THE BEST”, “BREAK THE RULES”, “GRAB YOUR MOMENT”, “RISE AND SHINE”. The aforementioned texts influence the recipient to react emotively and associate the product with the urge to be an active participant in his/her own life. The advertisement ends with the company logo.
6.42 Philips Xenium V787 commercial The Philips Xenium V787 commercial has its visual part consisting of full-screen and on-screen video sequences and close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists mainly of technical information about the product and its physical qualities. The rest of the texts creates an appeal toward the target recipient to create a positive feeling towards the product, e.g. “Classical”, “Metal body and design”, “A life content that you’ll never miss”, “You get what you see”. The sentence “Connecting the world with speeding”, though, contains a superfluous -ing suffix, which renders the sentence ungrammatical, yet the intended meaning can be easily inferred. The advertisement ends with the slogan “Discover the profound power”, a direct appeal at the recipient of this advertisement, and the product’s name and substantially long small print at the bottom, followed by another slogan “innovation+you”, which is another emotively marked appeal to convince the recipient into thinking he/she is directly involved in the innovation process. The company logo is the last information in the advertisement.
6.43 Samsung GALAXY A commercial The Samsung GALAXY A commercial has its visual part consisting of a full-screen video sequence throughout the whole advertisement and a few close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists of series of uppercase rhetorical questions featuring the personal pronoun I/my, e.g. “WHERE SHOULD I START?”, “WHAT AM I GOOD AT?”, “HOW CAN I MAKE A DIFFERENCE?”, “WHAT ARE MY LIMITS?”. These questions create a direct appeal at the target recipient, making him/her subconsciously think about these answers or even answering them. The next question, “WHAT’S NEXT?” creates an interest in the recipient and this interest is quenched with the
42 next two sentences, “THE ANSWER IS IN YOU”, “YOU ARE THE ANSWER”, where the “A”, in the word “ANSWER” in the last sentence, having a different font and colour, forms a shape of the product’s logo, thereby associating the textual information with the product. The cohesion of the texts following the questions – answers pattern is prominent here, as is the subconscious association of the discourse with the product in the end of the advertisement. The advertisement ends with the name of the product.
6.44 Samsung Galaxy Note 5 commercial The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 commercial has its visual part consisting of full-screen video sequences and static pictures, on-screen video sequences and close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists of a substantial amount of information about the qualities of the phone and also a substantial amount of small print. The amount of technical information about the product is inferior, compared to other texts. This advertisement resembles in structure the iPHONE 5 commercial, as it has separate headlines followed by additional textual information. The advertisement begins with a series of directly addressed at the target recipient. The first sentence “You wanted more from your phone” is followed by three sentences cohesively linked with the first one through the word “more”. The following sentences are: “More screen space”, “The ability to do more”, “To create more”. This set of sentences creates an appeal towards the recipient and prepares the ground for the advertiser to present all the features of the advertised product. The following sentences are almost identical with the iPHONE advertisement: “Introducing SAMSUNG Galaxy Note5” and “All new design”, the latter is, similarly to the iPHONE advertisement one of the main headlines followed by series of sentences expanding on the topic. There are other three main topics, “All powerful pen Captivating experience”, “Charging : Faster than ever”, with sentences elaborating on the respective topics. Another striking similarity with the iPHONE advertisement is the repeated use of the words “all” and “new”, as in “All new design. All powerful pen.” Use of these words works as a persuasive device on the target recipient. The advertisement ends with the product name, the slogan “NEXT IS NOW”, which implies that the producer of the phone is a leading company in innovation. The company logo is the last textual information of this advertisement.
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6.45 SISWOO Darkmoon R9 commercial The SISWOO Darkmoon R9 commercial has its visual part consisting of on-screen video sequences and static pictures and close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists mostly of technical information about the phone’s specification. The initial logo of the product has a specific typeface, with the first half of the word in black and the second in white. The compound word “Darkmoon” was chosen on purpose for the phone’s feature of having two screens, the latter designed as an E-book, which means it emits less light and is, therefore, darker and more pleasant for the reader to use, as is mentioned in the advertisement in sentences “Passive light source to reduce visual burden” and “Low power consumption”. The advertisement ends with the producer’s website address.
6.46 Sony Xperia A4 commercial The Sony Xperia A4 commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists mostly of single words, e.g. “Compact”, “warmth”, “Comfort” and phrases “Friendly warmth”, “Fit Your Style”, creating a positive attitude to the product from the target recipient’s point of view, as most of these words have positive denotations. The advertisement ends with the product logo, text “NTT docomo”, the slogan “BE MOVED”, a direct emotional appeal to the target recipient, and the company logo.
6.47 Vertu Aster commercial The Vertu Aster commercial has its visual part consisting only of close-ups of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists of uppercase texts, where only one refers to the quality of the product, e.g. “SAPPHIRE CRYSTAL SCREEN & TITANIUM BODY”. The rest of the sentences are declaratives not directly addressing the target recipient and the aim of these sentences is to evoke a feeling of luxury and associate this feeling with the product. It can be illustrated in sentences as “HANDMADE BY A SINGLE CRAFTSMAN”, “RANGE OF LUXURY LEATHERS”, “ACCESS TO INVITATION-ONLY EVENTS”, “VERTU CONCIERGE & EXCLUSIVE SERVICES”.
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The advertisement ends with the slogan “EXTRAORDINARY ENGLISH CRAFTSMANSHIP” and the name of the product preceded by the adjective “new”, “THE NEW ASTER”, an appeal used as a persuasive device on the target recipient. The last textual information is the name of the company and another slogan “HANDMADE IN ENGLAND”, which is reiterating and buttressing the information conveyed in the previous slogan and, therefore, inculcating it into the target recipient’s mind.
6.48 Xperia E4g commercial The Xperia E4g commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups of the phone and also on-screen video sequences. The textual information of this advertisement consists of a few technical information, information about several software features and also indirect information about the product’s physical appearance. The information about the product’s appearance are phrases, e.g. “Acclaimed craftsmanship”, “Ergonomic design”, which contain adjectives modifying nouns to attribute a quality to them and create a positive feeling in the target recipient. An interesting sentence present in this advertisement is: “Easy transfer from your old phone to your new phone”. Not as interesting on the lexical level as on the pragmatic one, as this evokes in the target recipient the positive feeling to have no worries about switching to this product for the ease of the transfer of his/her important data. The advertisement ends with the product logo, small print at the bottom and the company logo as the last textual information.
6.49 ZTE Axon Elite commercial The ZTE Axon Elite commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups, on-screen videos and sequences of assembling and disassembling of the parts of the phone. The textual information of this advertisement consists of mostly uppercase texts, most of them dedicated to presenting technical information about the product. There are some interesting points in the advertisement worth mentioning. The advertisement is creating a mood of an outstanding product right in the first sentence, a rhetorical question “WHAT MAKES A PHONE TRULY SHINE?”, implicating an affirmative response after a series of positive statements about the product’s features. Another point worth mentioning is the sentence “INNOVATIVE HEAT SINK DISSIPATION TECHNOLOGY”, a purely technical information, yet the only occurrence in all the analysed advertisements. The fact that the
45 cooling mechanism is mentioned in the ad is obviously targeted only at those customers that are aware of the fact that every computer chip is generating an amount of heat as a direct product of its operation, the more powerful the chip, the more heat it generates, and that this heat is, in fact, a liability that has to be channelled away and neutralized. Those customers not aware of such fact can, of course, benefit from the speed of the device and the smoothness of operation of its applications, but might not primarily be aware of the fact that the manufacturer of the phone is stressing the phone’s performance by directly mentioning the heatsink. The advertisement ends with the phone’s logo and the slogan “IT’S ALL YOU.”, followed by a company logo and a slogan “Tomorrow never waits”. The slogan “Tomorrow never waits”, according to the company’s press release, “reflects the company’s ongoing commitment to providing customers with access to technology solutions that will define the future” (ZTE Unveils).
6.50 ZTE Blade Vec commercial The ZTE Blade Vec commercial has its visual part consisting of close-ups, full-screen video sequences and on-screen video sequences and static pictures. The textual information of this advertisement consists mostly of technical information about the product. The texts are using adjectives to create a positive mood towards the product, e.g. “meticulous”, “Powerful”, “Wonderful”, “Sentient”. A point worth mentioning is that there are some misspellings and ungrammaticalities in this advertisement, e.g. “88 Wide angle lence”, where it should have been “lens”, or wrong use of the adjective “meticulous” in the sentence “Ultra-thin Slim and meticulous 7.5mm”. Such errors hold little appeal for the target recipient and may harm the product sales. The advertisement ends with the slogan “Bringing you Closer”, which addresses, according to Shi Lirong, the president and CEO of ZTE, “‘corporate high concern for humanity, the company’s global vision and insight, the value of dedication to the development of the communications industry’” (Mobile Data Demand). The last textual information in this advertisement is the company logo.
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Conclusion The purpose of this thesis was to analyse advertisements of smartphones from the chosen linguistic perspectives and to identify specific features of these advertisements. The TV advertisement is a rich and diverse phenomenon, yet the narrow focus on smartphone advertisement revealed interesting information about this specific genre. Compared to the TV advertisement as a whole, the majority of smartphone advertisements showed striking similarities both in the visual aspect and also in the use of the textual information in general. Technical information was present in the vast majority of the advertisements, together with sentences of a persuasive tone, which is, considering the topic of the advertisements, nothing that could not have been anticipated. Advertisements were using the textual information to create a feeling of luxury, uniqueness or novelty. The advertisements contained a number of interesting language features, e.g. wordplay, rhyming, derivations, compounds, or rhetorical questions, to name a few. The texts were mostly short, in the form of phrases or short sentences, sometimes capitalized, sometimes in uppercase. Some of the advertisements surprisingly contained language that was flawed and one of the advertisements contained such a number of mistakes that a recipient of said advertisement must have questioned the professionalism of the producer of said advertisement, as for a public presentation of a product is such an incompetence beyond comprehension. Although the affiliated function of a smartphone as a stylish accessory was explicitly mentioned in only one of the advertisements, the notion of a smartphone as a symbol of a style, or even a symbol of a social status is implicated in many of the analysed advertisements and is the main theme of one of the advertisements. That is why so many advertisers adopted the visual style of close-ups of a phone in their advertisements, accompanied by texts praising the physical characteristics of said phone, besides the information about functions and performance. Also the fact that some of the advertisements are focused on only one feature of the many a smartphone generally encompasses points out to the fact that the advertisement is deliberately trying to address a specific customer segment. Some advertisement, therefore, may appeal to people who prefer and seek a smartphone with significant performance, whereas other advertisements aim at people predominantly oriented on other functions the smartphone provides, e.g. people preferring to use the phone for creating selfies and for social networking. These features are becoming dominant and the primary purpose of the phone, i.e. to make a call, is diminishing and in the advertisements is seldom mentioned.
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Smartphones have become inseparably connected with many people around the world and have altered many daily habits of their owners. The ownership of the device capable of accessing unimaginable amounts of information on the Internet, which is also capable of performing numerous other tasks, including various ways of communicating with other people brought a new level of human communication. The way one uses the smartphone significantly differs and the companies producing smartphones are trying to cover the most profound trends in the advertisements of their products.
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Works Cited "advertising, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 3 May 2015.
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Widdowson, Henry G., ed. Discourse analysis. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print. “With New G3, LG Aims to Redefine.” Lg.com. 27 May 2014. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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Corpus samples: All the samples are listed in alphabetical order and numbered from one to fifty. 1 The Phone Commercials. “Acer Liquid Z220 commercial.” YouTube. YouTube, LLC, 1 Mar 2015. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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9 The Phone Commercials. “BlackBerry PRIV commercial.” YouTube. YouTube, LLC, 29 Oct 2015. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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2015. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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26 The Phone Commercials. “Lenovo VIBE X2 commercial.” YouTube. YouTube, LLC, 4 Sep 2014. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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43 The Phone Commercials. “Samsung GALAXY A commercial.” YouTube. YouTube, LLC, 31 Oct 2014. Web. 21 Mar 2016.
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