Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature (Linguistics)
Zuzana Karulová
The Role of Cultural Specificity: Defamiliarization in Advertising Master‟s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Ludmila Urbanová, CSc. 2012
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary materials listed in the bibliography......
Author‟s signature
In these few lines I would like to express my enormous gratitude to Doc. PhDr. Ludmila Urbanová, CSc. for her unfailing support and encouragement she has given to me throughout the process of writing this diploma thesis. I would like to thank her also for her warm attitude and willingness to help me whenever it was needed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction ...... 1
1.1. Corpus Description ...... 3
1.2. Theoretical Preliminaries ...... 6
1.3. Hypotheses ...... 7
I. THE LINGUISTIC PART ...... 8
2. Advertising Discourse ...... 8
2.1. Discourse Elements ...... 8
2.2. Advertising & Accompanying Discourses ...... 11
2.3. Advertising & Society ...... 12
2.4. Advertising & Cultural Specificity ...... 13
2.5. Copy Adaptation in Advertising ...... 16
3. Prosody in Advertising ...... 24
4. Linguistic Deviations ...... 39
5. Storytelling Advertisements ...... 57
II. THE NON-LINGUISTIC PART ...... 65
6. Paralanguage in Advertising ...... 65
6.1. Graphetics in Advertising ...... 68
6.2. Graphetic and Phonetic Deviations ...... 70
7. Conclusions ...... 75
Bibliography ...... 78
Summary ...... 83
Resumé ...... 84
Appendix ...... 85
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Alliteration – a phonological parallelism, a letter sound is repeated.
Backgrounding – a placement of certain advertising element in the background.
Connotation – an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning (Oxford English Dictionary).
Denotation – “the literal, dictionary definition of a word, its barest factual meaning” (Goddard 2002. 125).
Euphemism – “a polite which seeks to avoid directly naming an idea which makes speakers uncomfortable” (Goddard 2002. 125).
Foregrounding – making particular elements central.
Graphological – “relating to all the visual aspects of texts, including layout and images” (Goddard 2002. 126).
Homonym – each of two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins (Oxford English Dictionary).
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)” (Cook 1992. 1).
Parallelism – a use of paired sounds, words or constructions.
Polysemy – “A semantic process by which certain words have several meanings” (Goddard 2002. 127).
Prosody – the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry; the patterns of stress and intonation in a language (Oxford English Dictionary).
Pun – “A comic play on words as a result of a word having more than one meaning or two words with different meaning having the same sound ” (Goddard 2002. 127).
Rhetorical Devices – verbal devices employed to attract the reader to the advertisement and to evoke response, e.g. alliteration, metonymy, personification and so on.
Typographical – “relating to aspects of typeface, for example different print sizes, fonts and styles” (Goddard 2002. 128).
1. INTRODUCTION
Each language and its vocabulary are constantly changing. This corroborates the fact that new words enter unceasingly into lexicon. The changes on the language level are reflected also in the language of advertising.
In this thesis I would like to elaborate on the role of cultural specificity in advertising. I will concentrate on how the cultural context determines the successful understanding of advertisements and on the role the cultural background plays in advertising. The second purpose of this thesis is to illustrate that defamiliarization in advertising is on the increase.
Needless is to say that I have focused my attention on printed advertisements.
Living in present-day society leads us to appreciate our free time thus we carefully decide if we spend it by reading advertisements. To gain our attention the advertising strategies are constantly developing, admen are trying to create a better piece of ad, more interesting, more colourful and therefore new attention seeking devices are being applied. Borrowing of songs, poems, quotes of famous people are a common phenomenon.
In my thesis I want to prove that advertising strategies are developing, that various techniques are combined and that very attractive advertisement can be found nowadays.
Creation of new words, puns, syntactic and another linguistic deviation are frequently used and without any problem easily found in all kinds of magazines. In all of my advertisements there are some innovative or atypical elements to discuss, therefore the term defamiliarization in the title.
This thesis is divided into two sections: the linguistic and non-linguistic part. I will conduct the analysis of both parts based on theory postulated by various linguists. After the theoretical part a practical part will follow. Nonetheless, the analysis will also be accompanied by theoretical comments.
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First part comprises five chapters:
Chapter 1 covers the description of the corpus, a short comment on theoretical preliminaries and the hypotheses stated.
Chapter 2 deals with advertising as a discourse type, using the theory postulated by different authors. In this chapter we will elaborate on the role of advertising in society and how it is related with the culture of some country.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to prosody in advertising. This term covers various phenomena like the rhythm, rhyme or numerous figures of speech. We will discuss the borrowing of songs, books or movies.
Chapter 4 comments on the linguistic deviations found in the texts. We will analyse atypical syntactical constructions, foregrounding or functional conversion in advertisements.
Chapter 5 is devoted exclusively to such advertisements which are written with the storytelling technique and these will be analysed.
The non-linguistic part is much shorter (for obvious reasons) and consists of Chapter
6 which deals with paralanguage in advertising, i.e. with the graphetics and phonetics. We will see numerous possibilities how the graphology can be used in advertising.
Chapter 7 will represent the conclusion where the findings will be stated and hypotheses verified or rejected.
In the Appendix selected advertisements will be available. The Appendix will not contain all advertisements because many of them are of the same structure thus there is no purpose in inclosing them all.
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1.1.Corpus Description
My corpus includes sixty advertisements which have been obtained from different sources. These sixty one-page advertisements are selected by the following criterion: all of them were about to be used in a print medium.
The first source represents the web page Ads of the World, from where the majority of my advertisements have been extracted and which encompasses an enormous database of ads of all kind of products, media and origin. I selected such advertisements which were depicted in the Media subcategory: print. The web page is divided into three big categories: archive, forum and blog; being the archive the category which is of our interest. The archive of Ads of the World advertisements is divided into four categories which later encompass other subcategories:
Media: Print, Outdoor, Online, Radio and so forth.
Region: International, Americas, Europe and so forth.
Country: including huge list of countries in alphabetical order from Afghanistan
to Zimbabwe.
Industry: including categories like: Alcoholic drinks, Automotive, Education,
Electronics & Technology, Health & Beauty, Public Interest, Recreation &
Leisure, Transport & Tourism, Other and so forth.
Other samples under investigation have been found in English and Americans magazines which promote various ranges of products, being either luxury goods or ordinary products; including also the organization and services advertisements. My other samples have been collected from the following magazines: Us, Glamour, Professional Photographer, New York
Times Style Magazine, She and OK! magazine. The magazines which predominate are fashion and gossip magazines.
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The last and the smallest number of advertisements has been extracted from other advertising web pages. However, they are not famous as The Ads of the World they deserve to be mentioned: Petapixel, Furman Foto or Coloribus what is a creative advertising archive.
In the process of selection I was trying to respect several criteria to find such advertisements which would be suitable for my investigation. My samples are examples of both: the non-commercial and commercial advertising but I will discuss mainly the commercial consumer ads. The first type represents, for instance, the political propaganda, the charity collections and other activities of various associations. Under the head commercial we understand the following subtypes:
the commercial consumer advertising by which we are „bothered‟ everyday.
the next type represents such kind of advertising which does not necessarily advertise
some product or service but it is rather the name of the company or some brand which
are in the centre of our attention. “This type of advertising aims at creating long-term
goodwill with the public rather than at an immediate increase in sales” (Vestergaard,
Schrøder 1985. 1). Such type of advertising wants to remind people of the name of the
company – to keep it in the people‟s minds and it is called prestige or good-will
advertising.
industrial or trade advertising: a product of some company is being advertised to
other company in some specialized magazines or journals (see Vestergaard, Schrøder
1985. 1-2).
Let us move on to the criteria which I have selected during the searching process. Of my interest are such advertisements:
Where the culture-specific element is overarching and knowing the cultural context is
essential for the comprehension of the advertisement.
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Where the storytelling technique is applied to prove that however nowadays: “One
attention seeking strategy developed in recent years to increasing levels of
sophistication is the startling image” (Goddard 2002. 10) the textual can also serve as
an attention-seeking device.
Where defamiliarization devices have been used such as the use of neologisms, puns,
metaphors, rhetorical devices as repetition, alliteration, etc. and which possessed such
elements which somehow deviate from the norms of language, be it syntactical or
morphological rules.
Which are unique from typographical and graphical point of view. The typography
will be discussed at large.
Needless is to add, in the majority of the cases it is not possible to make a clear-cut distinction and assign each advertisement exclusively to one field. All advertisements are multifunctional and there is a tangle of elements which coexist at the same time. We will see that there are advertisements which are culture-specific but also contain neologisms and are full of repetitions and alliterations.
It is also clear that occupying ourselves with all the features in detail in the present work would be impossible and would cover many more pages that is the scope of our thesis. To sum up, the predominant element will be preferentially analysed and will be considered as overarching. Nevertheless, I will try to comment on the other elements when needed.
For a better orientation I have made a chart which depicts various categories of products which are represented in my corpus. They are expressed as a percentage. Various sub-classes have been created including such categories as Cosmetics, Health & Beauty; Sport & Sports
Accessories; Transport & Tourism; Food, Drink & Gastronomy; Organizations &
Companies; Car industry; Electronics & Technology and Other (see Chart 1).
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Chart 1 Types of Products
Types of Products
Sport & Sports Accessories, 6, 10% Cosmetics, Electronics & Health & Cosmetics, Health & Beauty Technology, 9, Beauty, 8, Sport & Sports Accessories 15% 13% Transport & Tourism Car Industry, 7, Food, Drink & Gastronomy 12% Transport & Organizations & Companies Other, 6, 10% Tourism, 7, 11% Other Car Industry Organizations & Electronics & Technology Companies, 10, 17% Food, Drink & Gastronomy, 7, 12%
1.2.Theoretical Preliminaries
In this part I would like to make a short comment on the secondary literature I have departed from, i.e. on books which have provided me with the most important theoretical base for my thesis. I drew on the following books:
Let us begin with the Discourse of Advertising by Guy Cook (1992). The book is structured into three parts and 10 chapters. Cook sees advertising as a complex discourse type and tries to discuss the ambivalent status of advertising in the contemporary society. The
Chapter 4 is crucial for me as it deals with paralanguage and the employment of phonology and graphology; then the Chapter 6 entitled Prosody, parallelism, poetry and the Chapter 10 where the social function of advertisements is being discussed. As Cook says, advertising:
“helps to create, a new global culture which ignores national boundaries, it can also reflect differences between cultures, even among advanced industrialized capitalist societies” (Cook
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1992. 15). Cook also speaks about the complicated status of advertising, one of the most controversial discourses nowadays; probably because it reflects existing social divisions.
The second book which is of great importance for my thesis is work of the leading Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka called Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human
Interaction (2003). This comprehensive publication consists of eleven chapters where the author deals, among other things, with different cultures, languages and how these are reflected in speech acts; with cross-cultural pragmatics and different cultural values. She also elaborates on speech genres across different languages and cultures. The book shows that in different countries different norms of human interaction are used and how these norms reflect various cultural attitudes and values.
I have also studied the book of the same author: English, Meaning and Culture (2006) where Wierzbicka, speaking about English as lingua franca, tries to investigate the „universe of meaning‟ which is present in the grammar and vocabulary of English. She realizes that, however, everybody counts with English as with a neutral language, English grammar and vocabulary are in fact loaded with the “cultural baggage”.
Another book which I have relied upon is Goddard‟s The Language of Advertising (2002)
– the book which is the be-all and end-all for all students who start writing some work about advertising. Goddard‟s book about advertising discourse is full of analysis of various advertisements. She discusses its layout, graphology, the role of images and mentions also cultural variations. She puts an emphasis on how the advertisements are interpreted by participants and on the interaction between these two.
1.3.Hypotheses
In this subsection I would like to formulate the hypotheses related to this thesis.
I have stated the following hypotheses:
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1. Defamiliarization in advertising is on the increase because the vocabulary and
language are constantly developing, which has an impact also on the language of
advertising.
2. The cultural context and historical background, to a large degree, determine the
content of each advertisement and a person living out of this culture can meet with
misunderstanding during the interpretation of it.
3. Advertisements written with the storytelling technique background the visual image
and the text serves as an attention-seeking device.
4. Graphetics and phonetics also contribute to the progress of defamiliarization in
advertising.
I. THE LINGUISTIC PART
As has been stated in the introduction, the thesis will be divided into two main parts: the linguistic and the non-linguistic one, in which we will discuss the linguistic and non- linguistic features, respectively. Let us begin with the linguistic part which is dominant.
2. ADVERTISING DISCOURSE
2.1. Discourse Elements
Let us depart from the structural analysis of the discourse from Cook‟s (1992) point of view.
When thinking about advertising as about the discourse type we must always keep in mind that the discourse does not implicate that we are going to deal with the language only.
The focus is also put on other aspects and a wider context: who is communicating in this discourse, on which conditions: where the communication takes place, in which society, which medium is used to convey a message, which speech acts are involved and how they are
8 interrelated. Furthermore, when speaking about the printed ads, we have to take into consideration also the picture, in other words the visual part, if it is combined somehow with language used, because it also constitutes the important part of the ad (see Cook 1996. 1).
Discourse, according to definition of Cook is: “text and context together, interacting in a way which is perceived as meaningful and unified by the participants” (Cook 1996. 2). What is understood according to his definition by text is: the linguistic forms, everything that is outside of the context, which is composed of several elements: substance – the physical material, be it book or screen, etc.; paralanguage – gestures, touch, facial expressions or the size of letters; situation – relations of objects and people related to the text; co-text- the text which belongs to the discourse of the analysed text; intertext – text which belongs to other discourse; participants also create the context (we can divide them into senders, addressers, addresses and receivers) and finally the function or what is intended and perceived by the participants (see Cook 1992. 1-2).
According to Cook an advertisement is constituted of all these elements which are combined and have an effect upon each other. He argues that these components are dynamic because the change on one level will influence the change of the whole, as we can see in the figure below (see Cook 1992. 3).
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Chart 2 Interaction of elements in ads according Cook
participants a society
function paralanguage
substance language
AN pictures a situation AD
music other ads
other discourse
Advertising depends also on other discourses and on the situation in which it appears. By the term accompanying discourses Cook covers all discourses in which advertising occurs or the discourses in which it is embedded and to which it makes no direct reference. He argues that the terms situation and intertext, the basic elements of context which characterize the majority of the discourse types, are not sufficient for the description of advertisements (Cook 1992. 29).
Goddard maintains the position that text includes both visual and verbal elements. She compares the advertising text with the literary one which also has a complex set of addressers and addressees and which tries to convey various messages to a variety of audiences (see
Goddard 2002. 6). To sum up: “advertising texts are seen as potentially involving complex notions of audience, where different readers have to work hard to decode messages and understand different address relationships” (Goddard 2002. 8).
To conclude, the discourse of advertising is worthy to study because of many reasons.
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2.2.Advertising & Accompanying Discourses
According to Fairclough (2003) we can distinguish between the external and the internal relations of the text, be our text an advertisement. By analysing the internal relations of the text we understand semantic relations, grammatical relations, vocabulary or lexical relations and phonological relations. On the other hand, the analysis of the external relations of text encompasses its relation to social elements which include various social practices and social events. Are the external relations very important? The answer is for sure positive.
While studying the discourse of advertising we should be aware that each advertisement is set in some context and culture. Wierzbicka (2003. 9) speaks generally about the limitations of human studies: “It is impossible for a human being to study anything – be it cultures, language, animals or stones – from a totally extra-cultural point of view. As scholars, we remain within a certain culture, and we are inevitably guided by certain principles and certain ideals which we know are not necessarily shared by the entire human race” (Wierzbicka 2003. 9). Departing from this idea, we also cannot study advertising from an extra-cultural point view. Each advertisement and its interpretation depend upon its external relations.
Various linguists try to delimitate the notion of the context. Urbanová states that: “My delimitations of the context comprises the social, political, cultural and other norms of expectations and their effect on the understanding of the message hic and nunc” (Urbanová
2003. 21). Firth (1964) says that each context is placed “within a wider context of culture”.
Lyons (1995. 4) states that: “Most language-utterances, whether spoken or written, depend for their interpretation – to a greater or less degree – upon the context in which they are used.
And included within the context of utterance, it must not be forgotten, are the ontological beliefs of participants: many of these will be culturally determined and, though normally taken for granted, can be challenged or rejected”.
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To sum up, the linguists are in accord that the context of both written and oral utterances is culturally determined. I would say that the relationship between the utterance and context is reciprocal. Each context is placed within a wider cultural context, the cultural context at the same time influences the utterance, and what is more, the interpretation of the utterance is again determined by the cultural context.
2.3.Advertising & Society
Various theorists speak about the role of advertising in contemporary times and its effect upon our society: “Advertising is a prominent discourse type in virtually all contemporary societies...Because of this prominence, advertising can tell us a good deal about our own society and our own psychology” (Cook 1992. 5). Advertising is also seen as “the most pervasive, influential and inescapable discourse of the twentieth century...” (David Birch in
Goddard. 2002. Introduction). Kress and van Leeuwen stress the power of advertising over people. They put: “The growing enterprise of „critical discourse analysis‟ seeks to show how the apparently neutral, purely informative discourses of newspaper reporting, government publications, social science reports, and so on, may in fact convey ideological attitudes just as much as discourses which more explicitly editorialize or propagandize, and how language is used to convey power and status in contemporary social interaction”. They also state that in nowadays world full of information it is important to be able to „read between the lines‟ (see
Kress, van Leeuwen 1996. Introduction). The contemporary readers are prompted to select information and sort it.
Before moving on to the analysis of first advertisements let us have a look how the word cultural is described in the dictionary (The Oxford Dictionary further referred to as OED):
Relating to the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a society (the cultural
diversity of British society)
Relating to the arts and to intellectual achievements (a cultural festival)
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We see that the word cultural maintains a connection with society and therefore if we want to understand advertising – which is the product of society, we have to understand the culture which advertising embodies. We can make a statement that the society reflects advertising, but at the same time advertising influences society. (The amount of advertisements offering a diet product promoted by super thin model.) It is a continuous process; one thing influences the other and vice versa.
As Cook puts it, there are various relationships between advertising and society:
The first opinion is that advertising can influence society, both in a good and in a bad
way.
According to the second judgement advertising is amoral and the only thing it does is
that it reflects the states and changes in the society, again both good and bad.
The last view is that advertisements are always bad; because the social concern is only
apparent and therefore false: “a veneer of feminism masks deeper sexism; superficial
environmental concern still cynically sells pollution” (Cook 1992. 17).
To speak about the position of advertising in society, and whether its effects are good or bad, is a complicated issue. However, it is by all means its inseparable constituent.
2.4. Advertising & Cultural Specificity
Nowadays modern companies create advertisements which are about to be spread in different countries, so to say, worldwide. Not even there are differences in the strategies used within various countries; different strategies are also being applied in Britain, America or
Australia, where they speak the same language. We also have to take into consideration the selection of speech acts which are determined by cultural norms of a particular country. “The cultural norms reflected in speech act differ not only from one language to another. There are considerable differences between Australian English and American English, between
13 mainstream American English and American Black English, between middle-class English and working-class English, and so on” (Wierzbicka 2003. 26).
It is without any doubt interesting to compare advertisements of different origin and realize which ideas and concepts are being promoted; even more if the product which is advertised is the same. Different cultures appreciate different values and if the advertisement is about to be successful the team of creators have to think and appeal to aspects that are enrooted in the particular country.
The difference in the comprehension of the advertisement can be explained by the prototype theory formulated by Rosch and mentioned in Cook (1992). According to it “we choose or understand a word by reference to a mental representation of a typical instance”
(Cook 1992. 8). It means that each of us has in his head a prototypical representation of each entity and these representations of course vary not only among various people but from culture to culture as well. If we adopt this postulate and apply it to advertising text, the result is that, in a similar way, there are advertisements which are prototypical for each person, but this prototype again differs between individuals even more if they are of different origin and culture. Therefore, such advertisements which are about to be published in various countries have to rely on the previously accepted traditions of each country. On that account the Volvo company promoted: the safety of cars to Swiss and English, its economy to Swedish audiences, its status to French and its performance to German audiences (see Goddard 2002.
60). The differences comply with the differences in the value hierarchy. We can support this idea by the studies of Wierzbicka. Wierzbicka (2003. 69) states four points which are fundamental for „cross-cultural pragmatics‟:
1) In different societies, and different communities, people speak differently.
2) These differences in ways of speaking are profound and systematic.
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3) These differences reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values.
4) Different ways of speaking, different communicative styles, can be explained and made sense of, in terms of independently established different cultural values and cultural priorities.
Goddard also emphasizes the importance of knowledge of the textual system in our culture: “For readers to understand the references that are being made, they have to have some knowledge of the textual systems in their culture – that is, what types of text are in existence and the way texts of all kinds work. This knowledge is cultural knowledge, in that different cultures may well have different categories of texts and different rules about how they operate” (Goddard 2002. 59). The interpretation of the text differs among cultures because the cultural context is different: “different cultures bring different attitudes and values to the reading of any text. If advertisers do not take account of these differences, or if they try to break them down, they need to expect difficulty, if not outright failure.” (Goddard
2002. 60).
The consumers or the target group have to be also taken into consideration. Some product can be an item of interest for woman/man only; for some age group or for the class – rich people and so forth. These factors are again socially determined and culturally varied.
Particularly it is extremely difficult to categorize people and to designate the categories. The advertisements can be targeted according to gender, age, personalities of individuals, lifestyle, some concrete life period, etc. What is more, many of these categories overlap. We have to add that: “The factors of medium, product, technique and copy length also interact”
(Cook 1992. 11).
To sum up, there is a relationship between linguistic choices and the social world. It is reflected in language and influences the linguistic choice. “„Cultural‟ dimensions include the contrast between oral and literate societies, rural versus urban patterns of life, or a
15 mainstream versus a subcultural environment. Other social dimensions of variability with which the linguistic choice-making is interadaptable include social class, ethnicity and race, nationality, linguistic group, religion, age, level of education, profession, kinship, gender, sexual preference and so on” (Verschueren 1999. 92). The language we use depends upon social world and the relationship between these two is complex.
2.5.Copy Adaptation in Advertising
To translate an advertisement literary from one language to another is an impossible task.
Wierzbicka (2003) defines the uniqueness of every linguistic system: “Every language is a self contained system and, in a sense, no words or constructions of one language can have absolute equivalent in another. The idea that there might be some linguistic elements which are universal in the sense of having absolute equivalents in all the languages of the world in of course all the more fanciful” (Wierzbicka 2003. 10).
In each language there are imbedded the lexical universals. Is it possible for them to be identified cross-linguistically? The negative answer would mean that the advertisement written in English would not be understood if translated into for example Italian. “In fact, if cross-cultural understanding is possible at all, despite the colossal variation in language structures, there must be some common core of „human understanding‟ and this common core must rely not only on some shared or matching lexical items but also on some shared, or matching grammatical patterns in which those shared lexical items can be used” (Wierzbicka
2003. 14).
In spite of everything, we can at least investigate the idea of partial equivalents and partial universals. Each language consists of network of elements. The languages in which an identical networks and relationships could be found do not exist. Nevertheless, if we compare two or more languages certain correspondences can be found (see Wierzbicka 2003. 10). To conclude, the search for the right concepts and words is a complicated task.
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We have assumed that the translation of words only is not sufficient when translating an ad to another language and nor will be effective. The term copy adaptation refers to a process when the text of the advertisement is being translated and adapted to culture of the particular country according to the group of people that is targeted etc. (see Goddard
2002.60).
To fit the advertising text to the needs of a country of a different culture is not an easy task. The translators have to face not only the problems of verbal translation; many times the concept is more important and thus for various cultures various concepts have to be encoded.
When translating an ad from the given language to another, one has to find the same or similar meaning of words and sentences. Wierzbicka (2003) states that: “To compare meanings one has to be able to state them. To state the meaning of a word, an expression or construction, one needs a semantic metalanguage. To compare meanings expressed in different languages and different cultures, one needs a semantic metalanguage independent, in essence, of any particular language or culture – and yet accessible and open to interpretation through any language” (Wierzbicka 2003. 7). She goes on to explain that for that purpose she and her colleagues proposed a „natural semantic metalanguage‟ which is based on a hypothetical system of universals and semantic primitives.
To compare different languages they created a list of universal semantic primes. The list includes for instance the following categories:
Substantives: I, you, someone, people, something/thing, body
Evaluators: good, bad
Mental predicates: think, know, want, feel, see, hear
Logical concepts: not, maybe, can, because, if (see Wierzbicka 2003. 8).
By these primes they are able to compare various languages and meanings. Let us move on now to the problems of translators.
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One of the things that can cause a big problem is the creating of a brand name. One word when used in another country may have a funny or even a vulgar connotation. Therefore the associations like The Brandnaming Company are trying in their sessions to think of as many connotations as possible to avoid this situation on the market.
Linguistic problems which can arise during the translation from one language to another are manyfold; some of them are mentioned by Goddard (2002):
Denotation: a word appearing in a dictionary often has another referential or slang
meaning usually not listed in the dictionary, thus other than the denotation meanings
are not clear from the translation.
Metaphors: a usual applying of the metaphorical meaning which is a non-literal
meaning. I would like to add also a metonymy here. Both metaphoric and metonymic
concepts structure our language, thoughts and are grounded in our experience (see
Lakoff, Johnsen 2003. 40) which “takes place within a vast background of cultural
presuppositions...all experience is cultural through and through, that we experience
our „world‟ in such a way that our culture is already present in the very experience
itself ( Lakoff, Johnsen 2003. 58).
Idioms: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible
from those of individual words (see OED). If the translator is not aware of the
idiomatic meaning a completely different and misleading meaning can be created.
Polysemy: so often used in advertising can also cause many problems in cross-
cultural advertisements.
Sound Symbolism: the sound system also helps us to create and evoke the meaning
and some sounds are associated with concrete ideas. Therefore particular sound
combinations of letters are used in concrete types (type of products) of
advertisements. Moreover there are some sound sequences – syllable sequences that
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may exist as whole words in other language. I am using Goddard‟s example: the
Vauxhall Nova was really surprising name for Spanish audiences because in Spanish
“no va” means “won‟t go”; Vauxhall being a name of one British automotive
company, creating that way: Vauxhall won‟t go.
Euphemism: “the coinage of „polite„ language that enables us not to have to confront
aspects of life we find difficult or embarrasing, such a sex, death and bodily
functions” (Goddard 2002. 64). Euphemisms belong to the unstable part of
vocabulary and one term is often substituted for another.
Taboo: a cultural taboo can outrage the audience in another country. Depicting a
human body – especially woman body differs in various countries as the acceptance
of the tabooing concepts differs (Tampax advertisements).
Another problem which can appear while translating the advertisement is the presence of preferred speech acts – such acts which are very often used in a given language and the less frequent use of dispreffered speech acts – the use of such can be inappropriate and therefore unwelcomed. In each language there are different preferred and dispreffered speech acts and another degree of politeness (see Urbanová, Oakland 2002. 16). Wierzbicka (2003. 26) states that “different cultures find expressions in different systems of speech acts, and that different speech acts become entrenched, and to some extent, codified in different languages”.
Needless is to discuss the concepts of „closeness‟, „informality‟, „harmony‟, „sincerity‟ and so forth which have different values in different cultures. “Different cultures take different attitudes to emotions and these different attitudes to emotions influence, to a considerable degree, the ways people speak” (Wierzbicka 2003.121).
Let us have a look at the three Union insurance company ads (A43, A44 and A45), which are of the same structure but their content is different. All of them belong to the Transport &
Tourism category. The target group is clearly specified; the potential travellers before leaving
19 on their holiday. The previous experience with travelling is presupposed to notice the falsehoods in the texts which say:
A43: Italians are the most courteous drivers in Europe. Traffic regulations are sacred to them. Go ahead and go for a drive in a car or hop on a scooter, you‟re perfectly safe on
Italian roads.
A44: In Turkey they haven‟t known the meaning of the word steal for years. If you forget your wallet or expensive watch somewhere, you can come hours later and still find them right where you left them.
A45: In Croatia, there are no sea-urchins. They were made up by the locals to scare away boisterous holidaymakers. So take off your flip flops and head down to the sea!
All of them are culture-specific advertisements, dealing with the customs and traditions of particular country. The person who carries on reading this ad will immediately notice the hidden trick, namely that the given information is a lie. What is more, not only being a lie, the reality is quite the contrary. However, only that one will come to this thought, who is educated in the culture of that country, not necessarily having visited it already. Everybody who has visited Italy knows that driving on the Italian roads is really dangerous and that the
Adriatic Sea is full of sea urchins. To understand and reveal the trick of the adman one must have the knowledge of the typical behaviour of people in each country. Italians are notorious for being bad and inconsiderate drivers and so forth. If we consider that to purchase the insurance will be of interest exclusively of people who travel, they will for sure get the point immediately. However, a Canadian or a Mexican would probably do not understand the joke as they are not familiarized with the culture of those countries. It is a perfect example how one ad can be accustomed to the cultural accordance. In the text of A44 however an objection can be raised that not only in Turkey they steal things; leaving one‟s wallet unattended is a risk also in many other European countries if not in all of them.
20
The „denouement‟ of the ad is at the disposal immediately: the caption which is situated below the text says: Believe it or insure yourself which can be an explication for those few who did not get the idea.
The same advertisement if published in various countries can outrage audience because
“In different cultures, different emphasis is given to different types of territory: time, property, friendships, body functions, expertise, etc. These differences are a further source of cultural misunderstanding” (Cook 1992. 151). That is the reason why the content of these three advertisements we have just discussed, differs completely. If the Croatian advertisement labels Croats as inconsiderate drivers and narrates about the sea-urchins in Turkey, the ad will not be understood as the content will not match with the culture of the country.
What is more, the cultural specificity of the text is supplemented with the visual part: the
Italian ad depicts paintings of angels and other scenes which are related to Italian art; and the
Turkey one is ornamented with typical drawings of Arabic style.
We will make a comment on the technique used. Cook (1992) distinguishes between the reason and tickle technique in advertising. The tickle advertisements appeal to emotions or humour and Cook gives as such example the cigarette ads. On the other hand, reason ads show us some reason why to purchase the product, what are its qualities, why it is worth buying it and not one of similar brand, etc. It depends, of course, on the type of product which technique will be used. For example, luxury products are prone to the tickle technique, but the products like cars, technology products require a longer consideration therefore tend to be the reason ads. To make the advertisement more interesting the usually used technique may be changed for another type. These three advertisements are the tickle ones. However, purchasing insurance is quite a serious matter.
What is more, in these advertisements one of the maxims of the Cooperative Principles is violated as they all present a lie; the maxim of quality says: “Do not say what you believe
21 to be false” (Yule 2003. 37). We normally assume that the information which is given to us will be true.
The list of things which cause problems during the cross-cultural translation includes also the idiomatic meaning. Let us have a look at A42 ad which presents a body wash for girls called Dirty Girl. The caption says Cleans the skin and the slate.
It employs the word slate which means (see OED):
a fine-grained, green, or bluish-purple metamorphic rock easily split into smooth,
flat plates
a plate of slate used as roofing material
a list of candidates for election to a post or office, typically a group sharing a set
of political views
It is crucial to realize that clean the slate is an idiom which means: an opportunity to start over without prejudice (http://www.thefreedictionary.com) or it can be explained like this: If you start something with a clean slate, then nothing bad from your past is taken into account (http://www.usingenglish.com).
This product which Cleans the skin and the slate is targeted to young girls and the adman claims the product to be of such quality that not only it will clean their skin but also their past.
The meaning of this sentence would be wrong if a bad translator, not aware of the idiomatic meaning, translate this sentence for example into Spanish: Limpia la piel y pizzara
(with the meaning of a rock).
The caption of A38 – Kristina Dragomir advertisement is based on the sound symbolism which is created during the pronunciation. The caption is: Heads not hats. Kristina Dragomir is a fashion designer of handcrafted hats. In the search for further information about this caption I have found a postscript in her web page which runs: I design beautiful heads. Not
22 simple hats and I promise it will make a beautiful head of you. This explains the caption of the advertisement. She designs not only beautiful hats but the whole heads. The pronunciation of heads and hats is very similar: /hɛd/ in plural becomes /hɛdz/ and is almost undistinguishable from /hæts/. Again, this wordplay would not work its job in another language (for example in Spanish): Cabezas no sombreros. In this case, it is impossible to translate the caption literally and obtain the same result.
Advertisement labelled as A9 is of Bulmers. Bulmers Cider is a brand of favourite cider produced in Ireland. A caption says: ICE HASN‟T CAUSED AN IMPACT LIKE THIS
SINCE THE TITANIC. Since the Titanic is a kind of metonymy (to read Shakespeare, the
White House said..., etc.). “Metonymic concepts allow us to conceptualize one thing by means of its relation to some-thing else” (Lakoff, Johnsen 2003. 40). The name of the ship stands literally for the whole event: Ice hasn’t caused an impact like this since the sinking of the passenger liner Titanic after colliding with an iceberg in 1912. The reader does not have to even notice that there is an example of metonymy: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff, Johnsen
2003. 4). This example in which the name of the ship stands for an event is similar to example when a place stands for an event: “Pearl Harbour still has an effect on our foreign policy. Watergate changed out politics” (Lakoff, Johnsen 2003. 40).
It is questionable whether it was the „happiest idea‟ to compare the impact of the ice which is drunk with the cider with the unfortunate destiny of the ship. The impact seems to be positive in the first case but negative in the second.
The above analysis has shown the problems which can arise during the cross-cultural translation of advertisements. However, we will return to this topic also in the next chapter since this and the following chapter blend in many respects.
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3. PROSODY IN ADVERTISING
In this chapter we are going to deal with prosody, characterized by Cook (1992. 90) as:
“the paralanguage of the patterning of sound most commonly associated with verse and poetry, but also present in prose and in spoken discourse, especially conversation or polemic”. Prosody in a written text is also important however we usually do not pronounce the advertisement aloud. Still, while we read the text, some sound image is unconsciously created in our minds. We actually perceive words like uttered during normal speech or conversation. Prosody is used in all discourse types to a bigger or lesser degree and in advertising it is used in an extensive way.
We may say that prosody reinforces, contradicts or adds some special meaning to the linguistic meaning. Under the term prosody we understand various phenomena like rhythm, rhyme but also many figures of speech widely used in poetry and other works which can be divided like this:
Figures of speech: periphrasis, metonymy, metaphor, litotes, irony, euphemism,
neologism, emphasis, etc.
Figures of omission: ellipsis, zeugma, asyndeton.
Figures of amplification: enumeration, antithesis, oxymoron, syllogism,
accumulation, comparison, description, distribution, dubitation, etc.
Figures of repetition: anadiplosis, anaphora, paronomasia, gradation, derivation,
pleonasm, alliteration, duplication, etc.
Figures of appellation: rhetoric question, exclamation (see Cuadrado 1984).
Many of these figures at the same time fulfil a function of a cohesive device. “The label cohesion is generally used to designate the overt marking of relations within a discourse or context” (Verschueren 1999. 104). Verschueren mentions among the markers of cohesion the following ones: conjunctions, anaphora, self-reference, juxtaposition, exemplification,
24 explanation, logical relations, ellipsis, highlighting, contrasting, comparison and many forms of repetition – “often incorporating elements of contrast and comparison or various types of semantic relations such as meaning equivalence or synonymy, meaning opposition or antimony, meaning inclusion or hyponymy” (Verschueren 1999. 105).
Let us move on to the next ad. A17 – a Lake Tahoe1 advertisement employs the repetition of semantic relations. The caption runs: THEY CALL ME BLUE. I AM THE FATHER OF
WATER. THE SON OF THE EARTH. THE DAUGHTER OF ALTITUDE. I AM DEEP,
ELECTRIC, ROYAL, MIDNIGHT AND SKY. I AM BLUE. HEAR ME ROAR. THE
BLUE WORLD.
In this caption these parts: FATHER OF WATER = SON OF THE EARTH =
DAUGHTER OF ALTITUDE refer to the same concept – Lake Tahoe. We can see also an example of grammatical parallelism. These sentences are lexically different but their grammatical position is the same (see Cook 1992. 136).
With regard to the visual representation, the background forms a picture of the lake; everything is in blue colour, even the rocks and trees. The world really seems to be blue.
After having discussed an instance of repetition of semantic relations we can proceed to the division of prosodic features as seen by Cook.
Cook (1992. 121-126) approaches prosodic features used in advertising by dividing them into five categories:
Poems: the structure of a poem – gaps, lines, and free lines between two stanzas have
a connection with the sound, while reading we know when to make a pause, when to
stop. Many advertisements are written with the broken lines to create the rhythm.
Borrowed and commissioned poems: in some cases advertisements „borrow‟ or
appropriate poems and adapt the devices of the poetry discourse to its own discourse.
1 It is a large lake in the Sierra Nevada in North America. It is the second-deepest USA‟s lake and the 26th largest lake in the world. 25
Jingle: it is rather to be sung than to be read and it creates the rhythm. “The effect of a
jingle is achieved through a combination of words, images and music, rather than, as
in written poetry, through the interplay of the lineation, implied pronunciation and
linguistic structure” (Cook 1992. 125).
Borrowed songs: borrowing of songs is a very common phenomenon and more often
used than borrowing of poetry. Usually the famous songs are borrowed, depending on
the meaning of the song which is in this way released again and therefore again
played.
Prosodic advertisements: under this label Cook distinguishes the advertisements
published in magazines or poster ads “which superimpose short copy on to an image,
arranging it, like poetry, in lines which suggest some correspondence between these
graphological units and spoken units when the ad is read aloud, or pronounced as
internal „sound-images‟” (Cook 1992. 126).
First, let us occupy ourselves with the example of the borrowed song.
The caption of the Expert Whitening advertisement (A14), a Cosmetics, Health & Beauty advertisement, runs: SHE WORE AN ITSY BITSY TEENY WEENY polka dot bikini. The product which is being promoted is a whitening treatment for teeth. Everybody recognizes that the song Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini released by Brian Hyland in
1960 is used, with a slight change of the lyrics which in the original go:
One, two, three, four, tell the people what she wore
It was an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini
We have noticed that the word yellow is omitted in the advertisement; when you read it aloud something is missing to preserve the rhythm. In the right below corner there is a product depicted and next to it a caption: REMOVES YELLOW. That explains why the part
26 with yellow is omitted in the text. The advertisement gives the impression that the product is so good that it removes not only yellow teeth but even the word in the song.
The centre of the page is occupied by a retro picture of a young girl wearing a dot bikini
– so the relationship with the song is established. The picture and the borrowed song maintain the relationship with the product in two ways:
The word yellow is missing in the text.
If we look at the bikini the girl wears we see that the yellow colour has disappeared,
they are in white colour only. Furthermore, the girl is smiling widely and showing her
white teeth.
Needless is to say here, one who does not know the song will not notice that something is missing in the text and does not notice the absence of the colour either. It is presupposed hence, that the public is familiar with this borrowed song.
I would like to digress for a while. When the composition of the advertisement and the visual part are considered, I adopt the standpoint of Goddard: “readers do not simply read images in isolation from the verbal text that accompanies them; not do they read the verbal text without reference to accompanying images” (Goddard 2002. 13). However, other linguists express a different opinion: “the visual component of a text is an independently organized and structured message, connected with the verbal text, but in no way dependent on it” (Kress, van Leeuwen 2006. 18). It is true that the visual component does not depend on the text but reading the advertising text without looking at the image brings another interpretation as when studying the both components; I would say that the visual component adds an additional meaning.
If we look back at the Expert Whitening advertisement the interpretation of the ad really acquires additional meaning after viewing the image: the song is connected also with the picture. In the same way, the white swimming costume is useless without the textual
27 information – without the yellow missing and the caption REMOVES YELLOW. In this case both components, the visual and the linguistic, definitely complement and depend upon each other. “When text and picture co-occur in the printed media, the most frequent relation between them is what Barthes refers to as anchorage. The meaning of this term should be clear by now; the text (a caption, say) provides the link between the picture and the situation in time and space which cannot be established through purely visual expression....At the same time, the text also selects one of several possible interpretations of the picture” (Vestergaard,
Schrøder 1985. 34).2
To comment on the layout of the advertisement I will depart from the book of Kress and van Leeuwen: Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (1996). These authors speak about the „composition‟ as about the interrelated systems of information value; elements carry corresponding informational value according to the zone in which they are placed (see
Chart 3), salience (elements possess various degrees of salience because they attract the attention of a viewer to a different degree; an important role plays: colour, size, etc.) and framing (which connects or differentiates elements in layout by for example dividing lines or by such elements that imply division) (see Kress, van Leeuwen, 1996. 212-214).
In Expert Whitening the image constitutes the most salient element of the ad and it occupies the central position.
2 “Barthes (1968) refers to the other main function of text in relation to picture as relay. Unlike anchorage, relay denotes a reciprocal relation between text and picture, in that each contributes its own part of the overall message” (Vestergaard, Schrøder 1985. 35).
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Chart 3 Informational value of elements according to Kress and van Leeuwen
Another song is borrowed in the text of A32. The ad is of NPF which stands for National
Pro Fastpitch – the only professional women‟s softball league in the United States. There is a woman softball player depicted ready to catch a ball. Near her there is a caption: Our girls are a diamond‟s best friend. Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend is a song which was most famously performed by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and has been copied many times since then.
A diamond carries various connotations. It has the highest hardness and it is a luxury product. Diamonds connote money, perfectness, clarity, sparkling, wealth or beauty. If the girls of NPF are a diamond‟s best friend it evokes that they are the best in their qualities.
They are unbeatable and special. Who is not aware of the relationship with the original name of the song will find the caption incomprehensible.
29
The next advertisement is a culture-specific one and this time it employs a quote from a book. A16 belongs to Cosmetics, Health & Beauty category. It promotes a sanitary spray for toilet seat called Safe4u. As for the layout of the ad, it features an image of a young woman standing in a toilet corridor. On the wall hangs a board saying: Ladies. The woman has a frightening look. She has the urge to go to the toilet but at the same time she is conscious of the presence of many germs which are in the public toilets.
The caption written at the bottom of the page says: To pee or not to pee
this is the answer
The reader should recognize the adapted version of Shakespeare‟s Hamlet, probably the most frequent quoted sentences in all English literature.
Let us look at what will happen if we translate it into some foreign language, be it for example Spanish.
Advertisement version: To pee or not to pee this is the answer
The original Shakespearian version: To be or not to be, that is the question
Shakespearian version in Spanish: Ser o no ser, esa es la cuestión
Potential Spanish translation of the ad: Hacer pipí/pis o no hacer pipí/pis, esto es la respuesta
In English, the resemblance between the two versions is clear because the pronunciation of be and pee is very similar. They differ only in phonemes /b/ and /p/. The English audience will probably not be offended; however the admen have put in the comparison a serious topic of the human existence and going to the toilet.
The advertisement version keeps two relations with the original version: there is a grammatical parallelism but also the phonological parallelism and thus the original comes immediately to reader‟s mind. What is more, the font that is used is the archaic one and it holds also the relationship with the old times. On the contrary, the possible Spanish translation of the advertisement loses its phonological parallelism as the words ser (to be) and
30 hacer pipí or hacer pis (to pee) are completely different in their structure and neither do rhyme. Thus the Spanish audience may not find the connection with the famous work.
To addition to add, to publish an advertisement about whether to go to pee or not may find people of conservative cultures offensive (Arabic countries). This topic can be considered as a taboo in many countries. Secondly, the public would not recognize the hidden resemblance as they probably would not know the book Hamlet at all.
It is interesting that it is just Shakespeare‟s quote which is used. Language and culture are shaped by history (see Wierzbicka 2006. 300). Shakespeare‟s works for sure also form the
English culture and the English language as well. According to Malouf (the author of Made in England) “the enduring legacy of Shakespeare and other classics of English literature” have had, among other things an impact on English language (Wierzbicka 2006. 300).
To sum up, for English public the advertisement is acceptable, but it is questionable whether it would be understood in another language and received positively. The successful translation is possible if in some language the verbs be and pee also maintain the phonological parallelism.
As far as the visual image is concerned it can be noticed that the woman is looking directly at the reader. Kress and van Leeuwen differentiate two kinds of gaze of a person. It can be either demand or an offer to the viewer. Tagged as „demand‟ pictures are those in which a person is looking directly at the camera.3 Hence it is established the connection between a participant and a viewer: “Contact is established, even if it is only on an imaginary level” (Kress, van Leeuwen 1996. 122).
To comment on her facial expression, we can say that it is obvious that she is really afraid to go on the toilet because of the germs. The direct look even reinforces the fact that this can
3 Called as “offer” pictures are those in which participants have averted gaze. This indirect gaze means that participants address the reader indirectly.
31 happen to whichever woman and establishes the contact with the reader. The viewer of the ad can be in the same situation a share the same needs.
The advertisement A19 is of Santa Casa de São Paulo. It features a picture of a big red blood drop. Inside of the drop there is a caption saying: Please don‟t travel to Transylvania.
Above the drop there are depicted two sharp teeth; one of them is covered in blood. At the bottom of the page there is a logo of the organization and these two sentences: Don‟t waste your blood. Donate.
This advertisement alludes to a well-known gothic novel Dracula which was composed by an Irish novelist Bram Stoker. It is about a bloodthirsty man who was feeding himself with the blood of young girls. He was living in Transylvania, a historical region in the central part of Romania which is usually associated with Dracula. Therefore, if you appear in that area, you are in danger as Dracula can bite you to death. However it is only a book story, the Santa
Casa de São Paulo begs the readers not to travel there as they could waste their blood.
Instead of travelling to Transylvania they can donate their blood and spend it on useful purposes.
As far as the overall composition of the ad is concerned, the most salient element of this ad is the picture of the blood drop and it is intended to provoke reader‟s curiosity about the real meaning of the advertisement. Those who are not aware of the relationship between
Transylvania and Dracula will not get the drift of the ad.
In next advertisement the admen have „borrowed‟ an official formula. The text of
UNICEF (United Nations Children‟s Fund) ad (A30) runs: If you know of any reason why a
12-year-old girl and 46-year-old man should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace. The similar structure is used in matrimonial proceedings.
However, the authorized person pronounces the following or similar version: If you know of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold
32 your peace. The age is never mentioned. In this ad the UNICEF organization points out that the child marriage is inappropriate and that the age matters. They engage in serious social issues and one of them is fighting for the children rights. At the bottom of the page there are two following sentences written: If you object to child marriage, say no. Text „I do‟ to (tel. number) and so on. Near the logo of UNICEF a short caption runs: Denying child rights is wrong. Put it right. These sentences try to encourage the people to fight for the rights of children. I find this advertisement unique because the officially agreed formula is used and modified. It is difficult to set what is advertised – there is no product but neither is it the promotion of the company. It is rather a real plea for help, an appeal to people for an action.
Using of full stops at the end of sentences: Donate. (A19) and Put it right. (A30) instead of exclamation marks has led me to think of how these sentences would be finished in
Spanish. In Spanish, the use of imperative is very frequent and it is not considered to be a sign of impoliteness. However nobody can order us to donate the blood, I am convinced that the Spanish equivalent would be: ¡Dona! This is because English and Spanish culture are different in terms of values like „directness‟, „indirectness‟, „cordiality‟ or „intimacy‟.
Let us now comment on three innovative advertisements which are of the same pattern.
As all of them operate on similar principals it is not necessary to analyse them all.
Only one sentence is in the centre of the attention. The sentence is actually a name of a movie, but in the middle of it other words are inserted.
A21 A22 A23
The Lord of the Casa King
Ring Bla Ding
Ring Bla Dong
Rings Blanca Kong
33
The analysis of these ads has led me to add into Cook‟s category of prosodic features used in advertising: the borrowing of movies.
The majority of the audience recognize the names of the movies in the text. A21 alludes on a world-wide famous trilogy written by Tolkien which was later filmed: The Lord of the
Rings. The form of rings is an example of homonymy: the 3rd person singular of the verb to ring has the same form as the plural of the noun ring. The verb to ring in infinitive has the same form as the noun in singular but the meaning is completely different. However, it is not an example of absolute homonyms which have to fulfil three conditions: they are unrelated in the meaning, all their forms are identical and the identical forms are grammatically equivalent (see Lyons 1995. 55). Our example is that of partial homonymy – the case when not all three conditions are satisfied. Ring (verb) and ring (noun) “are identical in respect both of their phonological form (in the spoken language) and of their orthographic form (in the written language): they are formally identical. But they are not grammatically identical”
(Lyons 1995. 55).
This advertisement can be successful probably only in English language in which the verb has the same form as the noun. In Spanish translation there is nothing eye-catching: El señor de los suena suena anillos; since the equivalent for to ring is sonar and for ring as a noun – anillo. In Italian the situation is similar: Il signore degli suona suona anneli.
As for A22 only one comment will be made. In the text appears the title of a romantic
American drama from 1942 Casablanca. It is curious that this Casablanca advertisement could be used for Spanish audience because the word Casablanca is of Spanish origin, meaning casa blanca the white house.
We can see that in all cases there is caption inserted between the name of the movie and this caption has a relationship with calling on the phone and talking: ring ring, bla bla and
ding dong. It is unpleasant for everybody to be interrupted while he is watching a movie. In that case he has to pay the attention to the person calling and stop watching a movie.
A small caption which is written at the bottom of the page says: Don‟t let the phone interrupt your movie. Pause and restart it from where you let off. Tivibu iptv. Tivibu consists of many multicast channels and allows the possibility to pause a time while watching a movie online on the TV.
In A54 there is another exemplification of a movie borrowed and again The Lord of the
Rings is going to be discussed. The ad is of Virgin Atlantic. In the text one part of the movie is mentioned: Gollum tries to get the ring from Frodo, hissing “my presciousssssss!”. The repetition of the letter s imitates Gollum‟s speech which is lisping. Even more, there are some protagonists from the movie drawn by hand, Gollum included. I consider the visual image to be the most salient element. Nonetheless, it is interesting that from such a small corpus consisting of sixty advertisements, two of them are based on this movie.
The advertisement tagged as A20 is of LG company which sells electronic products. This ad is of horizontal structure resembling thus a TV screen. We can see a completely white background with one sentence written in the centre. It is written in quotation marks and it runs: “I see dead people”. Again, a movie is borrowed.
The product which is promoted is a new type of home theatre with 3D sound. The quotation marks indicate the direct speech, namely, a quotation from a movie. For those who have never seen and remember a movie, will the sentence represent only the ordinary statement. On the other hand, especially young people will immediately recognize probably the most famous quote from the movie: The sixth sense, which is a psychological American thriller film from 1999. It tells the story about a small boy who really sees dead people. He finally confesses to his father (Bruce Willis) and this occurs in an exciting scene: the frightened boy lies in his bed, covered by the duvet, and says with the whispering voice: I see
35 dead people. This scene raises strong emotions in viewers and thus makes them remember the scene and the exact words.
The admen rely on the fact that this home theatre is targeted predominantly to younger generation and to people who enjoy watching movies and this one could not escape their attention. The technique which is used is very simple: they present only one sentence: “On the other hand, the very simplicity of the technique can be its strength: if the advertiser is that confident in his product, it must be something very special” (Vestergaard, Schrøder 1985.
58). Therefore, I assume that only established brand, as LG, can afford to publish such advertisement.
Throughout the search for interesting ads I have found many which were based on the quotations of famous people. Let us demonstrate it in text of FIAT (A36) ad: If you want your last words to be the same as Julius Caesar‟s, simply text: “Even you Brutus?” while you drive. The majority of the people educated not only in history know that Marcus Junius
Brutus was a politician of the Roman republic and was one of the leading figures that carried out the assassination of the dictator Julius Caesar on 15th of March 44 BC. Brutus was one of the Caesar‟s close friends and therefore it was a big surprise for him that his friend betrayed him.
The sentence “Even you Brutus?” (“Et tu Brute” in the original Latin version) is really considered to be the last sentence of Julius Caesar. It has many translations and it has been poetically used. It has appeared also in the play of William Shakespeare Julius Caesar which has contributed to its immortalization. The sentence would be irrelevant if there was not for the caption: DNT TXT AND DRV which stands for Do not text and drive. The omission of the vocals is typical for mobile phone message conversations. I consider such writing: DNT
TXT AND DRV as a symbol of „closeness‟. Probably only good friends or relatives will exchange this kind of message. It would not be appropriate to write an e-mail for a university
36 professor in this way. “Closeness has to do with interpersonal „knowledge‟ as well as interpersonal feelings: two people are said to be „close‟ if they know one another very well, and have „good feelings‟ for one another” (Wierzbicka 2003. 109). This advertisement serves as a warning for those who enjoy writing short messages while driving the car. This advertisement is atypical but those who are not aware of the historical background may be puzzled.
The same pattern appears also in the text of A35: If you want your last words to be the same as Madre Teresa‟s, simply text: “Jesus I love you Jesus I love you” while you drive.
These two advertisements seem to be funny but it is questionable whether it is appropriate to speak about the car accidents in such a way. Likewise some part of the audience would not approve of using the last words of old dying nun Mother Teresa in this context. These accidents are very frequent and are quite a serious matter. Furthermore, to speak about the death is a taboo in many countries where people may find these ads very rude.
The next two advertisements tagged as A33 and A34 are of Volkswagen company. They both feature only one sentence which serves as an attention-seeking device.
A33: “Bonnie, this is Clyde. Clyde, Bonnie”.
A34: “Brutus, it‟s good to have you as a friend”.
These sentences are out of the context and without a further explanation could be used in many advertisements. “In isolation, just about all utterances are highly indeterminate because of the multiplicity of contextual constellations they can fit into. Far from introducing vagueness, allowing context into linguistic analysis is therefore a prerequisite for precision”
(Verschueren 1999. 111). They could be used in an insurance company ad or in the ad promoting televisions or DVD player. However, it is a car advertisement and the slogan comes to help: See things before they get dangerous.
37
This Volkswagen advertisement presents a new service – a Side Assist which is able to recognize a potential danger and helps to prevent it. This system warns the drivers of a danger in their blind spot when changing the lane. Said this way, one really sees things before they get dangerous.
“Bonnie, this is Clyde. Clyde, Bonnie” is an introduction phrase where somebody is introducing them to each other, which led to the creation of a couple of criminals who worried an American public.
As for the second advertisement, after having finished the analysis of FIAT (A36), we now understand the irony of Caesar‟s happiness of having Brutus as a friend.
As opposed to previous samples, in enjoyEngland (A46) neither the song, nor the book or movie is borrowed. Surprisingly, it is a name of an anthem. The text of A46 runs: GOD
SAVE ALEXANDER MAC QUEEN (Shopping et Buckingham, my week-end is rich) enjoyEngland.
In this ad, it is combined: God Save the Queen, an anthem of Commonwealth realms, and the proper name Alexander McQueen, a famous British fashion designer. 4 His name is inserted in the middle of the title of the anthem. As in the previous examples, also this one can be perceived as impertinence because for English Queen is a highly appreciated figure.
To „spoil‟ the name of the anthem is really courageous. The caption enjoyEngland is used as an invitation for tourists to come to London and to do the shopping.
As far as the layout is concerned, the background of the ad is in red colour. Above the word Queen we can see a picture of queen‟s crown.
However the title of the English anthem is well-known, some foreigners may not know its name, and at the same time many people do not know who Alexander McQueen is. To sum up, this advertisement is intended to be entertaining, but it may provoke controversy.
4 It is a shame that in the copy admen misspelled the name of Alexander Mac Queen; the correct version is McQueen. 38
To sum up this chapter, we have seen numerous possibilities how songs, movies, quotations of famous people, etc. can be applied in order to attract the attention of readers.
We have also realized that not all advertisements will be understood by everyone as these features embedded in the culture of each country play a role in the correct interpretation.
4. LINGUISTIC DEVIATIONS
As Cook puts it, there is practically only a small number of advertisements which would not possess some element of deviation. For the purposes of discussion of deviation, Cook
(1992) distinguishes between external (deviation from an external norm) and internal
(deviation from a pattern established within the text) deviation and states “This phenomenon is especially pertinent to advertising, a genre where such external deviations as graphological innovation, misspelling, puns, ungrammaticality, sustained ambiguity and so on have become so expected that in a sense that most truly deviant ad is that which has no external deviation at all” (Cook 1992. 140).
Both types of deviation are very frequent; among those which belong to external deviation can be mentioned:
Functional Conversion – “Conversion is the use of a form which is regarded as
being basically of one form class as though it were a member of a different form
class, without any concomitant change of form”(Bauer 1983. 227).
Compounding – a new word created from two or more words.
Clipping – a shortening of the word which will still belong to the same category.
Blending – a new word is created from the part of two or more words, thus they
change the form and also the meaning. (breakfast + lunch = brunch)
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Affixation – which includes prefixation and suffixation; the cases when prefix is
placed at the beginning of the word or suffix at the end of the word, respectively. A
new word is created, often belonging then to another grammatical category.
Other syntactic constructions
Compounding, clipping, blending and affixation belong to the wordformation processes which are frequently used in advertising and are often variously combined.
Among another popular linguistic phenomenon belongs foregrounding, the device which makes that some element, word or phrase, etc. stands out from its surroundings by e.g. breaking the established pattern.
The example of foregrounding is obvious in the text of A57 – Fortune Deli. A fresh hamburger is depicted on the right side and the caption says: How do you like your coffee?
With sugar? With friends? Or with mayonnaise? The word mayonnaise does not fit into the list of things which usually accompany coffee or which are typically eaten with coffee.
Grammatically speaking, the structure of the interrogative sentence: Or with mayonnaise? fits the established pattern but semantically the mayonnaise do not fit into the list. Even more, conjunction or at the beginning of the interrogative sentence excludes the previous offer. The word mayonnaise is therefore foregrounded as it does not belong to the features which are typical coffee accompaniments and thus breaks the pattern. A short caption is written near the logo of the company and goes: A café with a twist; which also expresses something unexpected. We can here add a comment that the word twist in colloquial British
English means hunger.
Another example of foregrounding can be noticed in the text of two FILA advertisements
(A48, A49), a famous company of sports clothes and accessories. They are similar in form therefore there is no purpose in analysing them both. We will analyse A48 only.
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The left part of the ad is dedicated to the visual: a woman with an athlete body is depicted wearing the FILA clothes having a prototypically woman figure. She is depicted from the inverse side, she is not facing us. This intentionally highlights her perfect body and curves from the back side. The right part of the page occupies a long list of activities ending in –ing what enhances the impression of dynamic activities. These activities are written in a column and can be performed wearing a FILA sportswear.
Some of these activities are the following: (A49 points at a beautiful woman body)
A48 A49
YOUR: REAR
EVERYDAY TAILLIGHTS
RUNNING DERRIERE
CLEANING HIND-END
SPINNING JUNK
SHOPPING KEISTER
COOKING (and so forth) BOTTOM
AMAZING ASS
SHORT AMAZING
We can see that the established pattern – the list of activities is broken twice; with the word amazing, which however has the –ing ending but does not represent an activity, and the word short. These two items are highlighted in the text in order to indicate that they dot fit the list. Foregrounding is even more obvious because of the graphological feature: amazing contrasts with other words as it is written in red colour and we can notice that only two elements are in colour: the shirts of the girl and amazing. Williamson (2002. 24) refers to colours: “use of colour is simply a technique, used primarily in pictorial advertising, to make
41 correlations between a product and other things”. In this case the correlation is established between the product and the text; otherwise the ad would be almost colourless.
Below the column of activities there is a short caption saying: How will you use yours?
We know that yours has a referential function and refers to sportswear the customer is expected to buy. FILA clothes seem to be really versatile.
Now let us have a look at examples of functional conversion; which is the case when “a word of one class behaves as though it were in another” (Cook 1992. 140) but which does not change its form. The advertisement labelled as A50 – Thomas Cook, is of a travel agency that provides services of booking luxury holidays, package holidays, flights, etc. In our sample they promote the vacation in Turkey, in a luxurious beachfront MyStyle hotel. In the body copy we can see the description of the hotel and all practical information which used to be written in catalogues of travel agencies. The slogan of the company is of our interest and it says: Don‟t just book it. Thomas Cook it. Except the example of grammatical parallelism we have found a functional conversion: in the second sentence a noun – a proper name Thomas
Cook is used as a verb. It is followed by a direct object and imitates the verb book which also requires a direct object. If you are going to book a vacation you can choose between various agencies, but Don‟t just book it. Thomas Cook it implicates that one should book their vacation via this travel agency. What is more, the saying is interesting as book and Cook are words of the same length and differ only in one phoneme, /b/ and /c/ respectively. These sentences also rhyme. It has a referential function and refers to holiday.
A10 – a Red Brick advertisement promotes a local beer: Beer from around here. The caption says: The problem with beer from Milwaukee is that the label is in Milwaukeean.
The message which is delivered is that the admen are confident about the high-quality of their beer and they are not aware of any reason why not to by this particular product.
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Milwaukeean is a noun – a citizen of Milwaukee; or an adjective – referring to Milwaukee city, its inhabitants, etc. In this ad they also claim the Milwaukeean to be their language.
Also other syntactic constructions may be listed among the deviations to be founded in advertising. Under this heading we mean such constructions which are intentionally grammatically incorrect and therefore their interpretation is not standard. Sometimes the text of the advertisement is structured intentionally to provoke a misunderstanding. It is the case of two advertisements of the same pattern and company: (A24 and A25) of Swiss Life
(prominent European insurance company). They are special for they say:
A24: You are the only woman I love a man now.
S1 link. verb1 S complement S2 V2 ------
------S V O direct
A25: She ‟s my everything went wrong.
S link. verb S complement ------
------S link. verb S complement
Two sentences which should be written separately are put together into one. In the case of A25 the subject complement of the first part changes to subject in the second part; therefore the text results incomprehensible. Moreover, the meaning of the sentences is contrary. The correct version should be:
A24: You are the only woman I love. I love a man now.
A25: She is my everything. Everything went wrong.
The content of the first part of the sentence is negated in the second part. The first part describes the previous situation and the latter the actual. The oddity of the text is explained by the caption: For all life‟s twists and turns: Flexible financial plans. If something goes wrong or in a different way than you expected, you do not have to worry because you have a
43 good insurance. Needless is to add, that the main sentence is written in such big font that it covers the whole page and that if written correctly would not attract our attention. It is used as an attention-seeking device and represents the most salient section of this ad. No visual image is present in these advertisements.
A8 – Heinz advertisement features one sentence which seems to be peculiar: We‟ve made seriously fungi. The ad promotes a new pasta sauce made from fungi. By the word seriously the admen mean that the sauce is really made from fungi and is of a good quality. There are two possibilities how to interpret this sentence:
1. We‟ve made (it) seriously fungi – where it stands for the sauce (the direct object).
2. We‟ve made seriously fungi (sauce) – where again, the word sauce represents the
direct object.
As for the visual image, it is interesting that the sentence is shaped to create an image of a big mushroom. The picture highlights ingredients of the sauce.
Another advertisement which is non-standard from a syntactic point of view is the ad of
American Airlines (A56). The caption says:
i‟m unavailable. out of pocket. not at my desk. not in the office. can‟t be reached. no texts. no voice mail. no buzzing. period. yesss. this is my time. my eight hours. my space. my way. finally. i can get some work done. or i could nap. and then work. definitely nap first. oh yeah, i can handle this new international business class on American.
We can see twenty orthographic sentences; the majority of them are only one- and two- word phrases missing a predicate, all starting with a small letter and separated by full stops:
DET DET N DET N DET N ADV my eight hours. my space. my way. finally.
In many sentences there is a subject missing also. Instead of I am not in the office or
I can‟t be reached appears only not in the office and can‟t be reached. The fusion of the
44 expressions definitely evokes the last moments before going to sleep, when the working day has ended or when one is going to relax and wants to forget about all his duties.
Still, it is necessary to comment on the technique used. This text is linguistically unique and reminds us of what is in literature known as a stream of consciousness technique used by the master of it – James Joyce.5 The sequences are arranged in the way they come to the mind of the speaker, the sentiments are expressed also: yesss – we can perfectly imagine somebody saying yesss in the moments of happiness or pleasure. The effect is reinforced by the s written three times. The text has a form of interior monologue; another resemblance with the stream of consciousness technique. In addition to that, the way the text is written also connotes the process of getting sleepy. The first letters of each line are written with bigger letters and then the size is getting smaller and smaller. We can imagine the person is gradually becoming asleep. Below the text there is a picture of the plane seat, where one is about to comfortably sit or lie down.
The analysed caption above employs the personal pronoun my three times, as the passenger is going to dedicate his time exclusively to his affairs and needs; he does not have to divide his time to other people and duties. It serves also as a cohesive device.
The advertisement is really unobtrusive; simple if you want to be stopped being bothered by all daily chores you can travel with American Airlines in a new international business class. The company targets the people of higher society who often fly and know the daily routine of a businessman. The text, as we have noticed, is written without capital letters to give the impression of not caring about anything, just having a rest.
As for the layout of the ad, the text occupies the central position and it is the most salient element. The visual is only featured by small picture of a plane seat; as for framing we can
5 Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes, of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing. (Joyce‟s Ulysses, Episode IV - Calypso) 45 see no dividing lines. The background is in black colour. We may assume that it represents the darkness during the night or the moment when closing one‟s eyes.
A similar advertisement can be found in the magazine Professional Photographer; the
EPSON printer is being advertised at the ad labelled A51. This ad is tagged as Electronics &
Technology advertisement. As this printer is supposed to be used by photographers who are about to print the token pictures, the beautiful scenery covers the whole page as a potential object of the photographer. Fourteen short sentences, sometimes consisting of the verb only, instruct the reader how to capture a quality image. Later on there are mentioned the steps how can be the picture adjusted. The steps are ordered in the succession each photographer usually follows when taking the picture.
The slogan: GET OUT WHAT YOU PUT IN signifies that the printed picture will preserve the look and quality as when seen with the photographer‟s eyes. The steps are those of the person who knows how to take a good picture.
UP BEFORE DAWN. DRIVE MILES TO THAT PERFECT LOCATION. CHECK
THE LIGHT METRE. SET THE F/STOP. WAIT FOR THE MOMENT. HOLD YOUR
BREATH. SHOOT. UPLOAD. CROP. METICULOUSLY EDIT OUT THE SPECKS.
FINE-TUNE THE SATURATION. REFINE THE CONTRAST AND BRIGHTNESS.
WHY LET JUST ANYONE PRINT IT?
To sum up the text, when a good picture is taken, various modifications are to be done.
But the EPSON printer makes your work easier because you can print the picture and the quality will be preserved. We can imagine that this could be the inner monologue of a photographer who waits for the right moment to take his picture, we can diagnose the element of suspense in the excerpt: WAIT FOR THE MOMENT. HOLD YOUR BREATH.
First and foremost, in sentences the subject and object are missing. These sentences do not comply with the S-V-O model; they consist only of the predicate:
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SHOOT. UPLOAD. CROP.
V V V
It is clear that the verbs are transitive and require an object: (I) SHOOT/ UPLOAD/ CROP (a picture/pictures).
Let us now move on to the examples of parallelism. Parallelism can appear both in speech and writing and when used in a written text it gives the impression of speech.
“Parallelism may not be only graphological, phonological (i.e. prosodic) and grammatical, but also semantic and discoursal. These different levels of parallelism may coexist in a single text” (Cook 1992. 134). In one piece of ad we can find many examples of parallelism on different levels.
If we have a look at Dr. Scholl’s ad (A28) labelled as Other we will see many examples of parallelism.
The most salient section is the image of three young women. Two of them are wearing high-heeled shoes and are standing on the staircase. The third woman is foregrounded and carries the new flats in her hand. The first two seem a bit uncomfortable wearing such shoes but the girl in front is happy and content.
As for the framing, the page is divided into three parts: the upper part which contains a quote of some fashion expert; the image, and the lower part which is formed by the main text which develops the quote and gives more information about the product.
The headline contains the following sentence:
High heels tip: When your tootsies are toast, slip into Dr. Scholl‟s For Her Fast Flats.
Stacy London, fashion expert
Later we read in the body copy:
Dr. Scholl‟s For Her Fast Flats are chic, foldable flats you can pop in your purse and pop out when you are in a pinch. Find them in the foot care aisle. They‟re flats in a flash!
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These sentences remind us of some tongue-twister. We have immediately noticed:
Alliteration – phonological parallelism
. the proper name of the product: For Her Fast Flats contains the letter
f four times at the beginning of the word
. in the tootsies are toast except that of t repetition the syllable to is
repeated at the beginning and the words are very similar.
. the sequence pop in your purse and pop out when you are in a pinch
is another example of alliteration, now of the letter p
. another phonological parallelism is created by the repeated fl in the
sequence flats in a flash.
Grammatical parallelism
. Pop in your purse and pop out when you are in a pinch indicate on
one hand an easy way of keeping them, because they are small, light,
etc. and on the other hand an easy putting them on because they are
easily packed. Thus they are practical and you can use them in
whatever moment, as you wish. Furthermore pop in and pop out are
examples of grammatical parallelism.
Repetition
. of the name of the product and of the name of the company Dr.
Scholl’s: one time in the headline, for the second time in the body
copy, in the logo of the company and then in the name of the web page
where you can ask for the further information. The repetition of sounds
and lexical items help to create the cohesion of the text as the
repetition is one of the cohesive devices.
. of the word pop
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The whole text is a combination of puns, repetition, parallelism and alliteration. What is more, a big part of the vocabulary possesses a letter f which again reminds the reader the proper name of the product: Suffering from Fabulitis?, Find out at Facebook, foldable flats or fashion, etc. A name of the product is peculiar – For Her Fast Flats what is a part of the sentence but it is used as a noun.
Various cases of parallelism can be found in the text of A27; the Volkswagen advertisement which belongs into Car Industry category. As for the framing of this ad, the ad is a horizontal one and it is vertically divided into two parts of the same size which at the first sight seem to have nothing in common. In the left part there is a smiling man wearing a strange t-shirt with all his shopping put in it. The caption says: Hello Shopping Shirt goodbye plastic bags. Grammatical parallelism is present since the sequence of two same structures appears: greeting, adjective and noun, so the whole grammatical structure repeats.
We can recognize also lexical parallelism in hello and goodbye, which are both greetings. At the bottom of the page there is a web page indication www.shoppingshirt.com.au but the links directs us to pages of Volkswagen company.
The caption at the right side of the advertisement says: Why be environ-mental when you can be environ-normal? Again, lexical parallelism appears in the construction: be environ-mental and be environ-normal.
Pron. Interrogative P/VP Compl.
Why be environ-mental
When you can be environ-normal?
Another comment can be made – the word environmental is written with hyphen and in the second caption in the similar way it is written the word environ-normal which does not exist. Mental has many negative connotations (of or relating to disorders or illness of the mind, see OED). Instead of being environ-mental one should be environ-normal. The
49 caption written below the picture of the new The Golf BlueMotion says: So fuel-efficient you can travel over 1400 km on one tank. Visit environ-normal.com.au. Owing to quality of the car, with it you are „normal‟ with respect to the environment.
To digress for a moment, the use of the greetings hello and goodbye has led me to think if it would be easy to create an equivalent translation in another language. “Hello and Good- bye can both be said at any time of the day or the night, but the former only when meeting, the latter only when parting...That there is nothing trivial about these facts – though the consequences are rarely grave – becomes especially clear when we observe to what extent they change from language to language” (Verschueren 1999. 95). The Spanish leave-taking formula for goodbye is Hasta luego which literary means „til later‟. The Dutch leave-taking equivalent for goodbye is Tot straks! ('til later‟) but this formula is about to be said necessarily within the same day. On the contrary the Spanish version: Hasta luego, meaning the same as Tot straks, can be said even if the people are going to meet next week or later. On the other hand, some countries do not differentiate between the formulae which are used at the morning or during the night. The Hawaiian greeting Aloha is used at any time of the day
(see Verschueren 1999. 95-96). Thus the possible Dutch translation could be similar to:
Hello shopping shirt see you later plastic bags which does not make much sense.
Text A4 Listerine may be considered as s similar instance. The caption runs: Ta-Ta to
Tartar Stains, Hello to a Natural White Smile. Once again meeting and parting formulae appear: ta-ta and hello. What is more, the phrase Ta-Ta to Tartar Stains forms a nice pun based on the repetition of the syllable ta.
Grammatical parallelism is present also in the text of A11. Nike advertisement promotes a new type of football shoes. The page is divided into two parts. The upper part consists of the verbal caption and the lower part of the picture of one shoe placed on a pitch. The caption says: When the shoes get lighter the moves gets tighter.
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S/NP Link.V Compl.
When the shoes get lighter
the moves get tighter
We see the example of grammatical parallelism. Furthermore, these caption rhyme. Let us move on to the next ad.
Let us consider the following example: A12 advertisement promotes CITIZEN ECO-
DRIVE luxurious watch. The celebrity is doing the promotion of the watch in this case.
Chemmy Alcott, Britain‟s No.1 female skier (text A12) is supposed to be wearing them.
UNSTOPPABLE. CHEMMY ALCOTT IS. So is her Citizen Eco-Drive. Fuelled by light, it never needs a battery. IT‟S UNSTOPPPABLE. Just like the people who wear it.
This text indicates that if you wear this watch you will be unstoppable. The meaning of the word UNSTOPPABLE is ambiguous. If you think of the watch first you imagine that it is unstoppable because of its high quality, as a good watch should always go and never stops.
However, classical watches need to change the battery from time to time. In reality they are not unstoppable. From the following lines we have found out that this watch is a special one because it is fuelled by light, thus it should never stop.
On the other hand, if you look first at the picture of the skier and read the word unstoppable then, you will probably think about the insuperability of the skier. Nobody can gain her, she is the best.. In other words, she is unstoppable with this watch just as everybody who wears it. It is a luxurious product of a good quality, and if such a celebrity has it, one should possess it also. To sum up, the meaning of unstoppable – not capable of being stopped, is:
The quality of the product in the first case, the impossibility that it will stop
functioning, so the lifetime of the given product is being referred.
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The impossibility to stop the sportswoman in her activity. For anybody it is
impossible to stop her and to defeat her, thus it describes her quality – she is the best.
Our sentence corresponds to example from British National Corpus: example
AJA 423: Having reached 50 off 71 balls, Simmons was unstoppable as he sprinted to
his third hundred in one-day internationals from a mere 102 balls.
(http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/) He was unstoppable – nobody could run as well as
Simmons.
In fact, they are both unstoppable but in a different way; her characteristic feature is assigned to the watch also.
An example of blending can be found in the caption of A15 – the Shick advertisement.
The caption says: Take a shave-cation. A shave-cation is formed by a full world to shave + the part of the word vacation. A shave-cation substitutes the word vacation in a phrase Take a vacation which would go together with the visual image of the ad. A young girl is playing on a beach during the summer. The ad resembles a travel agency leaflet. Her placement in the central position predisposes her to attract the reader‟s attention.
The new meaning was created. During the shave-cation you take a vacation from shaving. On the wooden board which is stuck in the sand runs this caption: A whole weekend away from your razor. At the right bottom of the page there is a small razor for women depicted. The razor has created an imprint as somebody was pulling it and it creates a background for the text: Go ahead! Take a vacation from shaving. Then follows the further information about the product: Schick Quattro For Woman. 4 ultra-thin blades.
Conditioning strips now with Acal and Jojoba complex. A shave so smooth, you can skip a day or two. Free your skin. The final meaning of the blend consists of the meaning of its two constituents: shave and vacation.
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A13 – the AXE advertisement features an image of a beautiful girl waiting for somebody to kiss her. She holds a piece of mistletoe above her head and she has closed eyes. It is a tradition to kiss a partner below a mistletoe.
A caption says: How many cuties can you steal a kiss from Xmas? XMASKISSER send an AXE mistletoe and find out. We have noticed the word Xmas which is a popular abbreviated version for Christmas. This use has various explanations. One of them is that the letter X origins in the Greek letter chi. It appears in the Greek word for Christ. Writing
Christmas as Xmas is predominantly used in informal communication but it is getting popular nowadays in all types of communication.
A new compound can be recognized in XMASKISSER which is composed of: Christmas
+ kiss + the suffix –er. It is a neologism serving as an attention-seeking device. This word is also highlighted in comparison with the rest of the text. It is written in the biggest font. What is more, we have noticed that in the text the double ss are shaped to create a heart; the first s is written the other way round.
This ad is actually a competition – guys should take a photo with the mistletoe and send this virtual kiss to their favourite girls who then may return them the kiss.
Also a beer advertisement can be found in my corpus. A26 on Carlton Draught beer depicts a glass of beer. As far as the composition of the ad, we can see no dividing lines. The upper part is formed by five short sentences: Best served fresh. In a glass. In a pub. By a cheerleader. We should stop now. We see that these sentences are not full sentences as they miss the subject and the predicate.
In a glass. In a pub.
PREP DET N PREP DET N
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We should stop now is the only full sentence in the text and indicates that it was enough of speaking as the beer is „waiting‟. Each beer drinker who sees such a full glass of beer wishes to drink it as soon as possible.
The bottom of the page occupies a full glass of beer, recently filled, which just „waits‟ for somebody to drink it. Furthermore, the beer has been drawn well; we can see foam over the level of the glass. This would appreciate all beer drinkers. The most salient element of the advertisement is this picture. The colour of the beer contrasts with the black background. The text and the image create one continuous flow (see Kress, van Leeuwen 2006. 203) as there is no dividing line between them. The colour of the text corresponds with the colour of the beer.
Let us move on to the advertisement tagged as A37. The Aussie advertisement presents a new hair product for frizz hair. The main text starts with two questions which serve as an attention seeking device. In the text four questions totally appear. They are rhetorical questions; there is the answer available after the question: Control freaks? Us? Never or But frizz?! We‟re allergic to it.
We can see many incomplete sentences and demonstrations of grammatical parallelism:
Don‟t want it. Don‟t need it. Won‟t stand for it instead of We don’t want it, we don’t need it and so forth.
We will not analyse the whole advertisement in detail because from the syntactic point of view is similar to many other advertisement which have been discussed up to know, but I would like to point out that it is the only ad of my corpus which apply to such a degree the use of questions.
A41 – the Los Alamitos advertisement aims to attract the public to participate or to come to have a look at a race which is going to take place – 16th ANNUAL WIENERSCHNITZEL
WIENER NATIONALS. The ad features a picture of a dachshund wearing a competition
54 costume. The caption says: THE BIGGEST LITTLEST RACE in HISTORY. YOU‟RE
EITHER a WIENER or a LOSER.
In the text appear various contrasts: biggest – littlest and winner – loser, this figure is also called antithesis.
The organization Los Alamitos usually organizes famous horse races but this time there are not horses but dogs that are going to compete. Therefore the phrase the littlest race is used since dachshund is one of the littlest dog races. As they are small you can: See their
ITTY-BITTY legs go. Itty-bitty (or itsy-bitsy) refers to something what is really tiny and cute.
We have to agree that to watch racing such small dogs wearing sports dress is really lovely.
We have noticed that the word WIENER has been modified according to the name of the competition: WIENERSCHNITZEL WIENER NATIONALS.
In Tigo advertisement (A29) appears the caption: Having a Smartphone makes you smarter. The most salient element is the picture of a young boy. However, he wears a white wig and thus he resembles Einstein. He has his eyebrow and moustache coloured in grey. He carries a new mobile phone in his hand and he is sticking his tongue at the reader. This was a typical Einstein‟s gesture. Nonetheless, the reality is distorted since everybody will notice that it is not Einstein who is depicted and the young boy could not have such grey hair at his age. The pun: Having a Smartphone makes you smarter is based on the repetition of the word smart which forms the name of the phone Smartphone. Smartphone is a type of mobile phone with advanced computing ability but possessing it does not implicate that the owner becomes really smarter. Furthermore, „Einstein‟ is gazing directly at the reader, thus it is another example of a „demand‟ picture which as if says: Buy it and you will be smart as I am.
To conclude, if not good, the combination of the scientist and the new (technical) product makes this ad least funny.
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A pun can be found in the caption of A31 (another ad of NPF) which runs: We have girls who make boys wish they throw like girls. The words girls and boys are highlighted. The sentence takes a little bit of time to understand it. It is based on the antimony between girls and boys and there are various predicates. Boys are usually better in sport disciplines but this caption emphasises that the girls of NPF are so skilful that even boys want to throw like them. The sentence reminds me a pun which goes: I know that you know that I know and so forth. Thus I consider it to be a non-standard sentence.
An interesting sentence serves as an attention-seeking device in American Airlines (A55) advertisement. It says: THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING. I think that everybody will pause and have a look at this ad in the similar way as the passengers travelling by plane sit up when they hear this sentence. A captain is the only authority on board and passengers put their faith in him. He is responsible for informing of both the good and bad news and each person wants to know who is piloting the plane. After this introductory phrase always further information follows thus admen probably think that reader will start to read the rest of the text. I consider it to be a very interesting way for gaining the reader‟s attention.
Let us discuss the last advertisement of this chapter.
A60 is of Manchester United Soccer Schools. In the upper part there is a caption saying: yes you will study the great masters. no won‟t need to bring a paintbrush. The word masters is misleading in this ad and is polysemous: “Polysemy is a fact of life, and basic, everyday words are particularly likely to be polysemous” (Wierzbicka 2003. 11).
Master among other things means (see OED): a skilled practitioner of a particular art or activity (follows in the footsteps of the masters and paint in locations made famous by their work). That by the phrase study masters they mean the study of masters of painting art comes to mind first, as there is a frame depicted and we see also a scribble as someone was scribbling on the paper. What is more, we can see a football player who is kicking out the
56 ball in the air and his head seems to be framed. On the contrary, by masters they mean football masters who are going to teach children to play football. This organization offers professional football courses and football camps for children.
In this chapter I was trying to analyse the selected elements. I am fully aware that not all of them have been discussed but the preference has to be given only to some of them.
5. STORYTELLING ADVERTISEMENTS
In this chapter we will cover such advertisements in which the textual part is the dominant one and in which the story serves as an attention-seeking device. These ads are written with the storytelling technique, so to say the technique of telling a creative, entertaining and interesting story.
The storytelling technique is used widely not only in TV advertisements but also in printed ads. Usually also the graphology plays an important role, as something has to attract us at the first sight to spend our time and to read all the text which many times covers whole page. We may ask ourselves why is the storytelling so popular technique? Telling a story is an effective way how to promote the product as it presents some characters and a plot.
At web pages of Gianfagna Strategic Marketing the strategists mention the reasons for its popularity in marketing in general: “Storytelling is fundamental to every culture. Stories work in marketing because everyone understands what a story is about. When the story is highly relevant to the needs and interests of the audience, it is a powerful and persuasive way to convey information” (see www.gianfagnamarketing.com). Furthermore, telling the story is embedded in our culture since the childhood.
The marketing strategist of the company mentions seven characteristics of successful storytelling advertisement; the story should be:
Engaging – an immediate drawing into the scenario.
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Emotional – evokes some felling; of empathy, humour etc.
Memorable
Easy to retell
Should have a plot – includes a beginning, middle and end.
Should possess an element of suspense – you carry on reading until you know
how the story finishes.
The product plays a key role in it – the product is somehow inserted into the
story.
If we have a look at the Ford advertisement (A3) we immediately notice the completely atypical car advertisement. The storytelling technique is used and we can notice an important role of paralanguage, i.e. playing with the various types of lettering. Apart from the storytelling it is essential also to comment on the visual part which strikes the reader immediately. The text of the advertisement covers the whole page and it is not written by computer but it imitates handwriting. At first glance it seems to be written by a child and the lettering changes various times. It imitates also the computer writing as bold letters and capital letters are used. It is striking that the text is written by the mother of a household. The mother describes what usually happens during the ordinary family morning, from the waking up until getting into the car. The text, moreover, is combined with childlike pictures.
Since in the storytelling advertisement the textual part is the salient one, it is obvious that it relies on paralanguage. The capital letters are used when the sentence is repeated and when the emphasis is put on these words, thus the reader can imagine the mother shouting at her children and the situation full of stress as everybody is in a hurry: Tell twins to STOP fighting. Dishwasher on. TELL TWINS TO STOP FIGHTING make sandwiches TELL
TWINS TO STOP FIGHTING
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What strikes the reader most is that as long as he comes to read the last sentence he has no idea what can the advertised product be: GET IN CAR. No new model of a car is depicted, no technical information is provided, as we presume is typical for car ads. We know that there are men who are interested in car advertisements and in its technical innovations.
At the left bottom of the page there is a caption which runs: WE COULD ALL DO WITH
AN EXTRA 10 MINS IN THE MORNING. THAT‟S WHY FORD INTRODUCED
QUICKCLEAR WINDSCREENS WHICH DE-ICE faster SO YOU CAN SQUEEZE IN
AN EXTRA CUPPA.
.The structure of the sequences and the description of her morning routine create an impression that she does not have a sufficient time to devote herself to her children and her husband. In the text short simple sentences appear separated only by dots: Wipe twin faces...Sit husband in front of TV. Tell twins to keen eye on Daddy...Kiss husband. Kiss baby. The morning chaos and the loss of the control are demonstrated also by the blots and the impression of the glass over the text of the ad. The paper seems to be dirty.
This ad is a tickle ad instead of reason technique and naming the qualities of the car what we would expect. This car ad is related to busy family women who should be interested in spending the more time the better with her family. It is clear that mother has at her heart the importance of the time spent with her family and appreciates extra ten minutes
Furthermore, the woman position in household is established: “Traditionally, advertisements have shown woman as mothers and wives, thereby upholding a feminine ideal of domesticity.
Some adverts remind housewives of their duties in quite plain words” (Vestergaard, Schrøder
1985. 79).
To sum up, this ad is in correspondence with the slogan of Ford company: Feel the difference.
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Another example of storytelling ad is represented by A1 and A2, ads of the same company – of Oyster Bar Restaurant. The central position is occupied by a short story.
Visually the text gives an impression of being a page of a fairy tale book. The text is framed by an ornamental trim and it starts and ends with:
A1: This is a story about a young crab named Joey. The End.
A2: Once upon a time, there was a little salmon named Benny. The End.
We have noticed that the first letter is big and ornamental as it is usually in the fairytale books. In both cases the initial words are phrases exclusively used for fairytales beginnings.
This ad narrates a life story of one crab Joey who wishes to become famous; his dream comes true after he is captured by boat of Legal Sea Foods. The story ends: Where Joey finally did become famous – as a crab cake at Legal Sea Foods! Although he was eaten five minutes later (text A1). The slogan of the restaurant available at their web page is: If it isn‟t fresh, it isn‟t Legal! For him the fame and honour lies in the opportunity to be served as food in a quality restaurant.
The second ad narrates a similar story and ends ...and sent Benny to Legal Sea Food, where he became lunch for a hungry accountant (text A2). Animals are eaten finally by customers but for them this represents a happy ending.
If we return to seven characteristics of a good storytelling ad, we notice that our stories have a plot, have a protagonist, and should evoke empathy in the protagonist because the friends of the crab laugh at him. The story also evokes happiness as it ends happily. Equally possesses the element of suspense – the reader wants to know how the story will finish, for a second we may think that it will end sadly; and finally, the whole story is connected with the crab which represents the menu of the restaurant and around whom the wholly story is situated. The content is similar to fairy tales and has a happy ending. The story is simple, and as such it is memorable and easy to retell.
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The two interesting Canon ads (A6 and A7) also belong into this chapter. They are similar in the structure, but their content differs. In the right bottom corner there is a small
Canon camera depicted with a slogan: REMEMBER YOUR STORY.
Each story is narrated retrospectively by one person. It seems that the story occurred a long time ago and however the person always tries to describe an event as authentically as possible, he does not remember too much since his memories has faded in the meantime.
Both ads start the narration in medias res; we are immediately drawn into scenario.
The former ad (A6) is about a hiking trip to mountains and the narrator gives us a poor description of what he has seen: A beautiful bald eagle, it may have been a hawk, actually, but definitely some sort of bird, wait, I think it was a butterfly soared above us. He does not remember the details: It felt great to be 25, or 24, no 22. It felt great to be young, above 21.
In the latter sample (A7) a boy is remembering his vacation in Ibiza where he has met a beautiful girl. Again, he is not capable to provide her description: Her long legs, or average length legs...... but she had legs. Her angelic expression illuminated those baby blue eyes. I mean brown eyes, no, blue. We drank wine, or beer or something like that. Our farewell brought us to the crowded train station, no the duty free store in the airport. I was definitely in the duty free store, unless I left by boat –right, I left on a ferry.
As there are moments in our lives which one would love to remember, the solution is simple. We can just take a picture with the Canon camera and we will not have to grope in our memory for the details.
Graphetics plays an important role in both ads. The font is constantly changing, as the statements are changing, from computer writing to capital lettering, bold lettering or handwriting. These ads are similar in technique as the Ford (A3) advertisement. Neither we can see the information about the product and its qualities, nor are the parameters at our disposal. The name of the company is the only factual information.
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The A4 ad is of Meat & Livestock Australia. It features a text resembling a page from a book. The first letter is again big and ornamented. The story starts with the description of the setting: You‟re out for dinner on a crisp winter‟s night.
This story is about a temptation of a boy who wishes to eat friend‟s Beef Pie while she is answering her phone. To leave the cake unattended was not a good idea. He wants to resist but he fails: Big misteak. Your Beeflex kicks in and suddenly your stomach isn‟t just talking, it‟s singing Sinead O‟Connor‟s “No-thing compares to you”. As the temptation is bigger and bigger, he decides to eat it: Go on. She‟ll never notice. Trust you Beeflex Eat it.
Because Nothing Beats Beef in winter.
There are many allusions on the beef meat in the text: misteak and beeflex instead of mistake and reflex. A famous love song makes him think not of the girl but of the meat. He is captivated by the food in such a way that instead of trusting his reflex he trusts his beeflex.
In this ad we can notice a play between the visual images and the text. Different elements are interestingly combined: double oo in look have two dots inside so they look like eyes, the lyrics of the song are as if written on the music paper. A note was created from the letter p in compares. Thus we can imagine the real melody of that song: “sound and vision are the vehicles of face-to-face interaction, while in writing we neither see nor hear our interlocutor”
(Cook 1992. 53).
Let us have a look at the penultimate storytelling ad. The A5 ad is of Sharpie, a company offering pens, highlighters and so on. It promotes a new type of Sharpie pen in a funny way.
Contrary to the rest of the storytelling ads this ad features also a big visual image. A face of the celebrity is used: a well-known football player David Beckham is smiling from the page.
As far as the visual representation is concerned, particularly in this case it can be noticed
Beckham‟s gaze at the camera. The photography is a close shot. We can see only an upper part of his body. We have already mentioned above that Kress and van Leeuwen differentiate
62 two kinds of gaze of a person. Therefore we can tag this picture as a „demand‟ picture.
Beckham „invites‟ or „demands‟ the reader to enjoy the product. In this case it is a picture‟s participant speaking to reader. What is more, Beckham evidently seems to be happy and content as the reader can be if he becomes the owner of the pen. At this point it is important to mention that Beckham is presented in this ad as the authority – celebrity. Since he possesses the pen, as the celebrity, he can create the desire in the reader to possess as well.
The picture of him covers more than half of the page and constitutes for sure a sufficient element for gaining the attention of many people (especially the female part of the audience will be interested in); what would not be true if the ad depicts only a picture of the pen. What is more, David Beckham is a main protagonist of the new Sharpie campaign and appears also in TV ads.
Beckham is wearing a completely clean white T-shirt (nearly not distinguishable from the white background) and is surrounded by the black handwriting which is written on a white piece of paper. The text borders his head and explains why the pen is worthy to possess.
It is clear that the admen have relied on David Beckham‟s picture: It‟s such a cool Pen in fact that you‟re reading this when you could be looking at David Beckham. If you did stop reading you‟d see that David Beckham is looking directly at you. The text continues But strangely, you can‟t look away from this ink and so on. They present the ink to be more interesting than his face.
The most of the readers will probably do this:
start to read the text
have a look at David Beckham‟s picture (to find out if David is really looking directly
at us)
return to the reading because the story is interesting and the reader is curious about
what they say in the text.
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The last sentence says: the new Sharpie pen is the most exciting thing to happen to
Sharpie since...David Beckham. They claim the new product to be the best thing that has happened to the company. However, they admit that the collaboration with the famous celebrity is even a bigger success than the pen. This ad is catching and the memorable one.
In this chapter I have also decided to comment on A18 ad which is of Murilo Rangel – an odontolog company. This ad presents a well-known fairy tale story which is summarized in few points and therefore differs from the rest of our storytelling advertisements. We can see a time axis with these three captions: Snowflake is found by seven little dwarfs. Snowflake lives happily at the seven little dwarf‟s house. Snowflake was bewitched and then saved by the prince.
The last point depicted on the time axis says: A single bite changes your entire life. The company promotes a dental implant and prosthesis. Their slogan is: No one is truly happy if one can‟t smile. However the bite of Snowflake almost caused her death, the admen have used a nice comparison. The pictures of three (a symbolic number) apples which are depicted are a good idea, as for biting the apples one needs solely healthy teeth.
After having finished the commentary on these seven storytelling ads let us occupy with the analysis of some of their features. In the chart below we can see that almost in all cases the textual parts constitute the most salient element (see Chart 5). Judging from the examples analysed above, we may conclude that from the seven samples only in one case the visual image plays a crucial role – in the Sharpie (A5) advertisement because of Beckham‟s face.
On the contrary Ford (A3) features no visual image.
The analysis has shown several results: to attract the attention of readers admen play with the lettering and with the size of the font, the handwriting is frequently used as well. These ads manifest a shift from the real to an imaginary world. Three of eight storytelling advertisements feature a fairy tale story.
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After having finished the analysis of the linguistic-part of this thesis we can continue with the non-linguistic section.
Chart 5 Selected features of storytelling advertisements
Setting Salience Typeface
A1,A2Legal Sea Foods Imaginary Text Ornamental PC writing
A3 Ford Real Text Handwriting
A4 Meat & Livestock Real Text PC writing Australia A5 Sharpie Imaginary The visual image Handwriting
A6,A7 Canon Real Text Handwriting, PC writ.
A18 Murilo Rangel Imaginary The visual image PC writing
II. THE NON-LINGUISTIC PART
In this section I would like to discuss the non-linguistic features present in advertisements. They also play an important role in today‟s advertising and they cannot be marginalized. I will comment on graphetics and phonetics in this part to show that also extra linguistic aspects are worthy of our attention as well.
6. PARALANGUAGE IN ADVERTISING
Mass media communication is a unilateral one, without the possibility of reaching the addressee, talking to him and obtaining a valuable answer. But this type of „conversation‟ is not pleasant for the reader as there is nobody to respond to. To create the sense of dialogue, admen of the press ads use some features proper to speech. At many levels there is an effort to customise the elements of language as we can see in:
Typography and orthography
Under this label we understand everything what can break the uniformity of the text.
Different typefaces are employed to imply various stresses and paces. The misspelling or
65 simplifications of the spelling are used to gain the attention of the reader; when the word is written in the same way as it is pronounced it evokes the orality (what spelled as “wot”).
Words in italics or underlined words are used to indicate the contrastive stress, since it is impossible to apply it in writing. Various printing tricks are used to connote the movement of voice, vocal gestures or to create a sense of hesitation, etc. While the gestures and intonation are clearly meaningful while speaking, the printed text has to be explicit and precise to describe the situation. Unfinished and short sentences are used, similar to oral utterances. In other words, the structure of the text is often fragmented.
Register
To create the illusion of the oral act colloquial and informal words are used. Apart from the use of idioms, slang, proverbs and clichés, it is popular to use nicknames and diminutives when addressing a person.
Syntax and morphology
We can see very often the contractions of auxiliaries and negatives which are typical for speech. Elision and unfinished sentences also fail into this category.
Deixis
Deixis are used to indicate the immediacy of the context and are used widely while speaking. Press uses the indicators of person (I, you, we, us, etc.); of time (now, then, today) and of place (here, there, this, etc.)
Modality
Modal verbs connote the subjectivity of a text. Somebody is giving us advices, reproaching us for something and so forth (You should have it!).
Speech acts
Acts of questioning and commanding are very frequent. We can imagine these sentences to be uttered by some person during the face-to-face conversation (see Fowler 1991. 61-65).
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We will put a special interest on typography and orthography used in advertisements. Let us explain why.
We know that while we are looking at some image we also interpret many other elements which we cover under the term paralanguage. In face-to-face communication the following elements participate in conveying the meaning: gestures, eye contact, body language, body movement and body position, clothing, physical proximity, voice quality, pitch range or laughter. Furthermore, these factors reveal us various aspects about the person and his feelings. However all these factors are absent in the text. Nonetheless “in writing, the same is true of page and letter sizes, the typefaces and handwriting styles. These and many other factors also carry meaning which may reinforce or contradict the linguistic meaning of the signs which they accompany. They are examples of paralanguage” (Cook 1992. 66).
To sum up, we try to get the similar information from the text as we obtain from the conversation and we perceive the text depending on how it appears.
Needless is to say that human paralinguistic communication also differs from culture to culture: “Contrastive cultural analysis reveals many cases of the same paralinguistic action having widely different meaning in different cultures. A particular kind of touch, proximity, eye contact, laughter or voice volume may mean nothing, or something quite different when transferred from one culture to another” (Cook 1992. 68).
Lyons (1995. 14) maintains that: “But paralinguistic features too are meaningful, and like prosodic features, they serve to modulate and to punctuate the utterances which they accompany”. He adds that: “Written language does not have anything which directly corresponds to the prosodic or paralinguistic features of spoken language. However, punctuation marks (the full stop, or period, the comma, the question-mark, etc.) and capitals, italics, underlining, etc. are roughly equivalent in function” (Lyons 1995. 14).
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It is important to mention that not all paralinguistic features are arbitrary. One might expect that “John Doe” can interpret some text as funny and “Jane Doe” as offensive.
Everybody can perceive and interpret various aspects in a different way. On the other hand, this fact does not mean that the paralanguage is completely cultural-free. It is quite the contrary and everything lies somewhere in our unconsciousness (see Cook 1992. 68). To summarize, paralanguage always accompanies the language and therefore it is important to study it, however various linguists have argued about its position within the field of linguistics.
6.1.Graphetics in Advertising
We know that each sound is formed by a combination of phonemes or graphemes; respectively the system of sounds or letters of some language is called phonology or graphology. The graphetic variety is being widely used in nowadays advertising: “In a hierarchical, bottom-up model of language and discourse, advertising is distinguished by its extraordinary innovative profusion in the lower levels. The number of ways in which advertising exploits the paralanguage of writing is staggeringly large. No catalogue could be complete, for original uses of lettering are constantly appearing” (Cook 1992. 77). With these innovative techniques it is possible to shape letters and create an image from them, shape it like a poem or try to imitate the graphetic system of another country. The possibilities are really numerous.
Various ideas can be suggested from the typographical features. Our perception of the text will differ if it is written in:
small letters or big bold letters and CAPITAL LETTERS.
On the basis of the examples, the bigger the letters the more important and urgent the information seems to be. The bold letters can even indicate for instance the shouting and so
68 forth. The stress can be also recognized according to the typeface used. The use of the different punctuation marks is not haphazard. The question marks, exclamation marks, dots, quotation marks and other marks help to create various meanings. After the combination of these elements, the same sentence can provoke a different response in a customer. It goes without saying that the sentence: Buy it now can acquire a completely different perception when written like this:
a) Buy it now.
b) Buy it NOW! c) BUY IT NOW!!!
The version which attracts the attention of a customer the most is probably the last version. This one also expresses the most urgent appeal, thus it creates the feeling not to miss the opportunity. What is more, big letters are used as an attention seeking device and as such highlighted words will not escape our attention.
The type of the lettering has also a huge influence upon a reader. It will be inappropriate to write a charity campaign or electoral campaign, where the formal and classical font is expected, with the Underlined bold Comic Sans font or Algerian font.
Likewise the ads which are published in fashion magazines and are targeted to young people will be perceived as boring if using the Times New Roman font (see Goddard 2002).
Furthermore, the typeface is important to such a degree that there are companies which are connected with the typeface they tend to use (see Chart 4). For instance „NIKE’ always writes its name with all letters being in capital and in italics and „adidas‟ is always written with all letters being small wherever its name appears. Cook mentions that there are companies which in many ads do not even write exactly the name of the product but they allude to it by the typeface applied (see Cook 1992. 84-85).
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Chart 4 The typefaces of NIKE and adidas
a) b)
The fact that the association with the font can be really strong is obvious from this funny illustration:
When looking at the image on the right side most of the people will most likely think of the
Puma company because of the type of the letter used. Furthermore, some part of the audience can read in the second case Puma instead of Pumba (A slow, stiff protagonist from the movie
The Lion King).
6.2. Graphetic and Phonetic Deviations
Let us move on to the advertisement which promotes knives of one German company named WÜSTHOF (A52). In this ad the word love repeatedly appears written with the
German grapheme – with two dots which are typed over the letter ü or ö in the German alphabet. Here they appear written also over the letter o in an English word: You won‟t just love WÜSTHOF knives. You‟ll löve them.
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Thus, the customers will not love them in a similar way they may like other products, these knives are special and of high German quality thus the customers will löve them. The two dots strengthen the sense of the verb to love. Besides this, the dots also promote the
German origin and this grapheme recognizes by all means everybody who even does not speak German. What is more, the repetition is widely used and serves as a cohesive device.
The name WÜSTHOF appears ten times; except of being written in the web indication of the company, near the logo, etc., it is also depicted on all four knives which constitute the visual image of the ad. These knives which are tied together with a ribbon and placed one near the other create an impression of a bunch of flowers. Therefore the reader may come to think that the knives could be a nice gift for somebody.
The most salient element is the word löve written in the centre of the page with the biggest font. The dots are highlighted since they are in red colour.
Another element deserves the comment. In the text appears the sentence: After all, preparing food with our Classic knives makes even the most common knife tasks uniquely
WÜSTHOF – in which the name of the brand, the proper name WÜSTHOF is used as an adverb. It is another example of functional conversion discussed before.
Repetition is also used for fixing the name of the product and the company; it is mentioned numerous times. “One obvious function of repetition is to fix the name of the product in mind, so that it will come to the lips of the purchaser lost for a name” (Cook 1992.
154).
As for the American Airlines ad (A53), the text is formed by the column of abbreviations representing destinations of American Airlines. They constitute the most salient element of the ad. Besides, these abbreviations are special because they are official abbreviations of the airport‟s names. It is the language of pilots which is used: standing JFK for John Fitzgerald
Kennedy Airport in New York, LAX for Los Angeles Airport, ORD for O‟Hare International
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Airport of Chicago, etc. What is more, also some not well-known abbreviations appear there.
They may therefore arouse the interest in the reader who will search to what the abbreviations refer. Such example can be RDU for Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Caroline or DFW which stands for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in the city of Dallas. One will soon come to think that all abbreviations are names of the travel destinations but after coming to the last: the PDQ abbreviation, he finds out that this one stands for a famous company which provides consumables for Boeing and Airbus aeroplanes.
The structure of the text, the items ordered one below the other, even resembles the notice board which displays the travel destinations in an airport hall. This special kind of abbreviations makes this advertisement at least memorable and as it is targeted to people who travel they will recognize that they are the airport‟s abbreviations.
The advertisement labelled as A39, of PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)6, consists only from a picture of a blackboard with the inscription: USA with a higher IQ. The peculiarity lies in how it is written – by the use of mathematical symbols and having a structure of some arithmetic exercise. You can see a square root, a fraction or a brace parenthesis. These mathematical symbols are combined with letters of different size and therefore it takes a time to read the sentence.
Another advertisement (A59) of Berlitz (famous language school of foreign languages) is formed by one image extending over the whole page and constituting the background for the text. The image represents the British flag. In the middle of the flag there is a caption saying:
Tihs wsa yuor frist lseson, congratulations. At the right bottom of the advertisement there is a logo of Berlitz and below there is a caption: english for beginners.
We see that the letters are intentionally mixed up and they create an impression of being written by some beginner. However, the last word is correct, as it has been written or said by
6 It is an American public broadcasting television network with nearly four hundred member television stations with the collective ownership; PBS is the most important provider of television programs to American public TV stations. 72 the teacher. This sentence may be also pronounced by the teacher at the end of the first lesson with the beginners. To sum up, the advertiser has placed himself in the position of the teacher and has placed the reader in the position of a learner.
If we have a look again at the Union ad (A44 – the Turkey one) we see that the lettering of the text, however written with the Roman alphabet, is „decorated‟ with the symbols of
Arabic, spoken in Turkey. Furthermore, the font is so ornamental that it resembles some
Arabic inscriptions. The text really seems to be written in Arabic at first glance. This will be recognized by everybody, although not mastering that language. What is more, the text is accompanied by an oriental background. In this case it is an attempt to imitate the writing system of another country.
In this non-linguistic part I have decided to include also one advertisement applying another foreign language than English and is targeted to English speaking audiences. It uses the Spanish language. Berlitz language school ad (A58) is this time offering Spanish courses.
The centre of the page is occupied by one sentence written in big font which runs: In Bertlitz learn Spanish as quickly as you can leer esta frase. At the bottom of the page we can read:
Call now and ask for our Spanish courses that are excellent for foreigners who need quick results.
The employment of Spanish language will certainly attract the attention of those who want to start to learn Spanish. Potential students also probably recognize that the words are written in Spanish, thus they have the first contact with the language.
What is more, Berlitz appeals on the quick result. There is for sure no student who would not appreciate learning some foreign language quickly, but we know that it is a slow process.
However, they promise that you will learn Spanish as quickly as you can leer esta frase – what means read this phrase. The section leer esta frase is very simple and easy to read and
73 to pronounce even for those who have never heard Spanish; the result may really seem to be within an easy reach.
The combination of two languages will surely attract the attention of possible clients.
Finally, the last advertisement is of Chevrolet (A40). The most salient element is again only one sentence which runs: A little difference makes a big difference. Except being the example of grammatical parallelism based on the contrast of little and big the uniqueness of this ad lies in the way how the words are written. We can see (see Appendix) that three letters: f, a and e are intentionally incurved and this small detail spoils the overall impression of the ad even though the text remains legible.
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7. CONCLUSIONS
As the title of my thesis suggests, the major part of my analysis is devoted to defamiliarization in contemporary advertising. I have tried to elaborate on the innovative techniques in printed advertisements and at the same time discuss the cultural specificity in advertising.
In my diploma paper, I have analysed sixty advertisements which were available either on web pages or in magazines. The criterion for their selection was that all of them fell into category: printed advertisements. I have tried to include in my corpus only such advertisements which were non-standard from various perspectives.
Before stating the conclusions which have been reached I have to admit that my conclusions are grounded on the material which I was selecting on purpose and which would be appropriate for my analysis.
Therefore I am fully aware that the conclusions would not be the same if the corpus was selected by another person, as he would, in all probability, picked for his analysis a completely different sample of advertisements. Furthermore, I have to concede that the corpus consisting of sixty advertisements is extremely small compared with the overall number of advertisements which are at our disposal. It exposes only a limited variety of advertisements. I am also fully aware that if my corpus consisted from the bigger number of advertisements the findings would be different.
All advertisements which are included in my corpus are unique. Advertisement is a mosaic which is composed of interesting and apparent configuration of elements. As there are many elements which interact and which are worthy to discuss I have had to circumscribe the choice of elements which were about to be analysed. Otherwise I would exceed the scope of my diploma thesis.
Let us proceed to the conclusions. My conclusions related to cultural specificity are:
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The knowledge of cultural context and historical background is indispensable for the
correct comprehension of the ad and for establishing the relationship between the
textual part and the advertised product.
Various aspects do not allow for all advertisements to be literally translated to another
language as they would not be interpreted properly.
The culturally specific advertisements will be understood only by people are familiar
with the culture of the country in which they were produced and in which they live.
Therefore the advertisements have to be carefully translated and appropriately
adjusted to the culture of the particular country.
Cross-cultural advertisements have to appeal to different values in various countries
as the hierarchy of values differs from culture to culture. Admen have to be aware of
the taboo words and of the concepts which could outrage audience of different
cultures.
The use of quotes of famous people and historical figures is more frequent than
expected.
The borrowing of movies is popular.
As for the storytelling advertisement I have come to the conclusions that:
They are predominantly of fictional character. They happen in the imaginary world:
they try to imitate fairy tales and a dream world. Stories seem to be out of the reality,
even animals can be their protagonists.
They combine various typefaces.
They background a visual image which is a standard attention-seeking device.
They seem to appeal to emotions of the public.
To conclude, the analysis of my corpus has proved that the defamiliarization in advertising is on the increase. Non-standard advertisements are easily found and they
76 demonstrate a big variety of innovative techniques. The use of the visual image as an attention-seeking device has been shifted to the use of the textual part. What is more, verbal captions hold no direct relationship with the product very often and they require a further clarification. As for the deviation, the most frequent is the syntactic one.
I find electronics, car and mobile phone advertisements to be the most innovative ones.
Needless is to add that only established brands can avail themselves of the defamiliarization techniques. Their well-known name is sufficient for gaining the attention of readers. I consider young people to be a target group of the majority of non-standard advertisements.
The contemporary press, and not only press, advertising is open to new possibilities and produces such ads which meaning is not first planned. For the understanding of the ad it is necessary to think of it as the captions carry incomplete meanings. The shift from the stereotype is evident, advertisement acquires a new non-standard meaning which is reached by the use of figurative language and elements of another discourse.
Undoubtedly, experimentation in graphetics is extensive. Words can form an arithmetic exercise, they are written as they are spelled, the misspelling appears and there are attempts to imitate the graphic system of another country. It has been argued that the paralanguage is expressed via variety in graphetics. The text has become an interesting combination of different letters and colouring.
Each advertisement is composed of the form and the content which form one entity.
Therefore I believe it is useful to study the both – the linguistic and non-linguistic part of each advertisement.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Secondary Materials:
Books:
Bauer, Laurie (1983) English Word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cook, Guy (1992) The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge
Hernando Cuadrado, Luis Alberto (1984) El lenguaje de la publicidad. Madrid: Editorial Coloquio, S.A.
Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold
Firth, John Rupert (1964) Papers in Linguistics, in Urbanová, Ludmila (2003) On Expressing Meaning in English Conversation: Semantic Indeterminacy. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita
Fowler, Roger (1991) Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge
Goddard, Angela (2002) The Language of Advertising. London: Routledge.
Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnsen (2003) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lyons, John (1995) Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press
Oakland, Andrew and Ludmila Urbanová (2002) Úvod do anglické stylistiky. Brno: Barrister & Principal
Urbanová, Ludmila (2003) On Expressing Meaning in English Conversation: Semantic Indeterminacy. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita
Verschueren, Jef (1999) Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold
Vestergaard, Torben and Kim Schrøder (1985) The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Wierzbicka, Anna (2003) Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics of Human Interaction, 2nd edn. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Wierzbicka, Anna (2006) English: Meaning and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc
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Williamson, Judith (1978) Decoding Advertisements. London: Maryon Boyars Publishers Ltd
Yule, George (2003) Pragmatics. Oxford University Press Internet Sources
British National Corpus. 2010. University of Oxford. 11 March 2012
English Language (ESL) Learning. 2012. Using English. 10 February 2012
Gianfagna Strategic Marketing. 2012. 20 February 2012
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 2010. Pearson Longman Education. 17 January 2012
Oxford English Dictionary. 2012. Oxford University Press. 12 January 2012
The Literature Network. 2012. Jalic Inc. 20 February 2012
Primary Materials:
A1: “Legal Sea Foods.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 2 February 2012
A2: “Legal Sea Foods.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 2 February 2012
A3: “Ford.” She. No.1, January 2010, p. 35.
A4: “Meat & Livestock Australia.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 10 January 2012
A5: “Sharpie.” Saddyblue. 2012. 21 January
A6: “Canon.” Petapixel. 12 January 2012
A7: “Canon.” Petapixel. 12 January 2012
A8: “Heinz.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 8 January 2012
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A9: “Bulmers.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 8 March 2012
A10: “Red Brick.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 22 January 2012
A11: “NIKE.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 15 January 2012
A12: “Citizen Eco-Drive.” She. No.12, December 2009, p. 13.
A13: “Axe.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 15 January 2012
A14: “Expert Whitening.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 15 March 2012
A15: “Shick.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 10 March 2012
A16: “Save4u.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 14 March 2012
A17: “Lake Tahoe.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 10 February 2012
A18: “Murilo Rangel.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 1 February 2012
A19: “Santa casa de São Paolo.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 22 January 2012
A20: “LG.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 21 January 2012
A21: “Tivibu.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 4 January 2012
A22: “Tivibu.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 1 February 2012
A23: “Tivibu.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 10 February 2012
A24: “Swiss Life.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 7 January 2012
A25: “Swiss Life.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 12 January 2012
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A26: “Carlton Draught.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 13 January 2012
A27: “Volkswagen.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 20 January 2012
A28: “Dr. School‟s.” Us. Issue 852, June 2011, p. 76.
A29: “Tigo.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 5 January 2012
A30: “Unicef.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 January 2012
A31: “NPF.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 8 January 2012
A32: “NPF.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 8 January 2012
A33: “Volkswagen.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 12 February 2012
A34: “Volkswagen. Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 10 March 2012”
A35: “Fiat.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 March 2012
A36: “Fiat.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 March 2012
A37: “Aussie.” Glamour. No.11, November 2008, p. 253.
A38: “Kristina Dragomir.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 4 March 2012
A39: “PBS.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 1 March 2012
A40: “Chevrolet.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 13 January 2012
A41: “Los Alamitos.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 March 2012
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A42: “Dirty Girl.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 17 February 2012
A43: “Union.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 January 2012
A44: “Union.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 January 2012
A45: “Union.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 11 January 2012
A46: “enjoyEngland.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 15 March 2012
A47: “Listerine.” Glamour. No.11, November 2008, p. 172.
A48: “FILA.”OK!. Issue 17, April 2011, p. 23.
A49: “FILA.” OK!. Issue 19, June 2011, p. 27.
A50: “Thomas Cook.” She. No.10, October 2010, p. 60.
A51: “Epson.” Professional Photographer. February 2011, p. 13.
A52: “Wüsthof.” She. No.10, October 2010, p. 60.
A53: “American Airlines.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 4 February 2012
A54: “Virgin Atlantic.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 3 February 2012
A55: “American Airlines.” Furman Foto. 2009. Matthew Furman. 13 January 2012
A56: “American Airlines.” New York Times Style Magazine. March 2009, p. 21.
A57: “Fortune Deli.” homeADge. 2012. 8 January 2012
A58: “Berlitz.” Coloribus. 2012. AdMe Group, LLC. 4 January 2012
A59: “Berlitz.” Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 8 March 2012
A60: “Manchester United Soccer Schools.”Ads of the World. 2012. WebMediaBrands Inc. 6 March 2012
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SUMMARY
This diploma thesis investigates the defamiliarization in the contemporary printed advertisements and analyses the cultural specificity in advertising.
My thesis is divided into two sections: the linguistic and non-linguistic part.
First part comprises five chapters:
Chapter 1 is devoted to introduction and covers a description of the corpus, a short comment on theoretical preliminaries and the hypotheses proposed.
Chapter 2 deals with advertising as a discourse type, using the theory postulated by various linguists. In is concerned with the role of advertising in society and how it is related with the culture of some country. After the theoretical base a practical part will follow.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to prosody in advertising.
Chapter 4 deals with linguistic deviations which were found in the texts.
Chapter 5 provides an analysis of the storytelling advertisements.
The non-linguistic part consists of two chapters.
Chapter 6 deals with paralanguage in advertising, i.e. with the graphetics and phonetics.
Chapter 7 summarizes the outcome of the analysis.
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RESUMÉ
Tato diplomová práce zkoumá defamiliarizaci v současných tištěných reklamách a analyzuje kulturní specifičnost v reklamě.
Moje diplomová práce je rozdělená do dvou částí: jazykové a mimojazykové.
První část zahrnuje pět kapitol. První kapitola obsahuje úvod, krátký popis primárních a sekundárních zdrojů a jsou v ní představeny hypotézy. Druhá kapitola se zabývá reklamou jako typem diskurzu podloženou teorií různých lingvistů. Pojednává o úloze reklamy ve společnosti a její spojitosti s kulturou dané krajiny. Teoretickou část následuje část praktická.
Prozodie v reklamě je rozebírána v kapitole třetí. Kapitola čtvrtá se zabývá lingvistickými odchylkami, které byly nalezeny v textech. Kapitola pátá poskytuje analýzu reklam, které jsou psané formou příběhu.
Mimojazyková část se skládá ze dvou kapitol. Kapitola šestá je věnována paralingvistice v reklamě, mimo jiné se zabývá grafikou a fonetikou. Výsledky analýzy jsou shrnuty v kapitole sedmé.
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APPENDIX
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