Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Bc. Natália Belicová Advertising Brexit: Elements of Persuasion in the Facebook Campaign Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph. D. 2020 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Natália Belicová I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Jana Pelclová, Ph. D., for her invaluable advice, guidance, and willingness to meet regularly online whenever I felt the need to discuss a problem. I genuinely appreciate it. I also thank everybody who helped me and supported me when writing this thesis, especially Jakub G.. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 5 2. Aim and data ............................................................................................................. 7 3. Methodology of research ........................................................................................... 9 4. Historical background of Brexit ................................................................................ 10 5. Advertising and persuasion: A literature review ....................................................... 13 6. Analysis of the persuasive elements ......................................................................... 19 6.1. Linguistic modes of persuasion ............................................................................. 19 6.1.1. Blends and other instances of wordplay ................................................................ 19 6.1.2. Word choice ............................................................................................................ 22 6.1.3. Modality and tense ................................................................................................. 25 6.1.4. The role of Actor/Agent and Goal ........................................................................... 26 6.1.5. Metaphor ................................................................................................................ 27 6.1.6. Form of address ...................................................................................................... 30 6.1.7. Passive sentence construction and nominal phrases ............................................. 33 6.2. Supralinguistic modes of persuasion ..................................................................... 35 6.2.1. Pathos ..................................................................................................................... 35 6.2.2. Logos and the hoaxes.............................................................................................. 41 6.2.3. Logical fallacies ....................................................................................................... 43 6.3. Visual modes of persuasion................................................................................... 47 6.3.1. The theory of Visual Grammar ........................................................................ 47 6.3.1.1. Action processes ......................................................................................... 47 6.3.1.2. Reactional processes .................................................................................. 49 6.3.2. Composition ................................................................................................... 50 6.3.2.1. Information value ....................................................................................... 50 6.3.2.2. Salience ....................................................................................................... 54 6.3.2.3. Framing ....................................................................................................... 54 6.3.2.4. Colors .......................................................................................................... 55 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 57 References ...................................................................................................................... 64 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 71 Resumé .......................................................................................................................... 73 Appendix ........................................................................................................................ 74 1. Introduction “Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes”. – Seth Godin Advertising has been an inescapable part of the everyday life of people for a long time. It is even more so nowadays – with social media sites and the possibility of targeted advertisements tailored to our wants, needs, and opinions. People unknowingly share so much information on social media that it is relatively easy to create an appealing advert that will catch people’s attention and persuade them. A similar situation arose, for example, in the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016. As it is now well-known, the referendum's result was that most voters wanted the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. During that time, there was a massive campaign launched by both parties, but the advertisements that supported leaving the European Union were often significantly malicious and deceptive. Since then, Brexit has polarized not only the United Kingdom but all the countries of the EU, if not most of the world. Even though Brexit was discussed in newspapers and academic articles countless times, there has not been an analysis of the specific advertisements used in this campaign. However, Lesley Jeffries and Dan McIntyre (2019) carried out an interesting analysis of the word “Brexit” and its derivatives (Brexiteers, Bremainers) and argued that this word put the party advocating leaving the EU in a significant advantage. In addition to that, the newspapers repeatedly reported on the violation of privacy laws by targeting the ads aired on Facebook by the Vote Leave campaign (Lomas, 2019). Therefore, this thesis will focus on the modes of persuasion – both linguistic, supralinguistic, and visual – used in the advertisements advocating leaving the EU and arguing that the campaigners employed them with one strategy in mind – to elicit strong (predominantly negative) emotions in the viewers. To focus on all three aspects of the ads (linguistic, supralinguistic, and visual) might seem like too broad a topic. However, I believe 5 that an adequate analysis of the ads’ effects can be achieved only by examining them in their entirety. Focusing only on one aspect would mean leaving out potentially important information. I gathered twenty-four banner advertisements in favor of leaving the EU, which are present in the Appendix. In the text, I will use the labels AD01-AD24, which refer to the individual ads present in the Appendix. I chose this type of labeling for easier orientation in the text since referring to the ads by their titles would not be possible. This paper hypothesizes that the negative campaigning employed by Brexiteers could have a significant impact on the voters' decision to vote leave. This research is limited by the availability of the advertisements (my primary source is the Internet) and the fact that there is no precise way to determine to what extent voters were influenced by these adverts. The question of how persuasive an advertisement can be is a matter of long discussions in academic literature. Some scholars believe advertising is not that effective, arguing by cases when even heavy ad campaign did not help sell the product. On the other hand, some academics think that good advertising can significantly influence the buyer, even swaying his opinion in the opposite direction. I would say that the most telling argument in favor of the influence of advertising is the very high prices that the manufacturers, sellers, or politicians are willing to pay to both advertising agencies and for a space to display or air these advertisements. The fact that the Leave spent more money on digital advertising and won the referendum did not escape the journalists' attention (Straw, 2019; Tiilikainen, 2020). This thesis's organization is as follows: firstly, there is a brief explanation of the political and cultural background of the Brexit referendum, which defines the key parties and the desired outcomes of these participants. After that follows the literature review, including the essential studies performed in advertising, persuasion, and manipulation, to establish a firm foundation for the hypothesis. This thesis does not feature an individual chapter describing the 6 theoretical framework. Instead, I introduce the individual concepts used for the analysis and developed by Fahnestock, Kress, and van Leeuwen in the sixth chapter, together with examples from the corpus. Therefore, the next section represents a fusion of this thesis's practical and theoretical part. In that chapter, I will examine and analyze the specific advertisements aired in the UK, focusing on the most effective persuasive modes I mentioned above. The sixth chapter is divided into three subchapters, the first dealing with the linguistic modes of persuasion, the second discussing supralinguistic elements, and in the third, last subchapter,