Significant role of advertising in America

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

IZHEVSK STATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Significant role of advertising in America

Course paper 

                            
 
 

Student:

V.V. Gaponova.

Group 4-58-1                                                                          

                                                              

     Scientific Supervisor:

Filatova R.M.                                                         
 
 
 
 
 

Izhevsk, 2009 

Contents 

Introduction……………………………………………………………………..3

1. Is advertising language normal language…………………………………….4

2. Components of advertising…………………………………………………...5

2.1 Text………………………………………………………………………….5

2.2 Image………………………………………………………………………..7

2.3 Sign………………………………………………………………………….7

2.4 Slogan……………………………………………………………………....10

3. Some levels of advertising…………………………………………………...10

3.1 Phonological level of ad…………………………………………………….10

3.2 Lexical level of ad…………………………………………………………..11

3.3 Syntactic level of ad………………………………………………………...14

3.4 Semantic level of advertising…………………………………………….....16

4. Words and phrases used in advertising………………………………………19

5. Presupposition………………………………………………………………..21

6. Colors………………………………………………………………………...23

7. Fear advertisements…………………………………………………………..25

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………27 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Introduction:

Product advertisement - a form of communication is an inevitable outcome of a capitalistic society. Advertisement can be defined as an organization of text that provides information about a product or service along with an anchorage of image that suggest some cohesion or logical linkage leading to some relevance or meaningful interpretation to the target consumers. The natural order of the language is modified, shaped and stylized by the copywriter according to the product of advertisement and the target group of consumer. The success of an advertisement depends not only on the degree of effective conscious communication that has been made possible, but also on the degree of unconscious effect or an ‘unavoidable’ effect of communication that is made possible by a particular advertisement. So the stylistic distinction between the general spoken form and the advertising language is considered integral by a copywriter to make direct-convincing communication as well as ‘unavoidable’ or indirect-convincing communication. Thus the present paper aims at developing a framework for classification and analysis of the observed patterns of various advertising texts. Such a characterization has been felt to be a prerequisite to construct an experimental design to evaluate the extent of effectiveness of an advertisement by linking the patterns and types of advertisement to consumer responses, objectively. This paper also about consideration of levels of advertising, fears of advertising, meaning of colors and not only.

 Advertising language as already defined is an organization of text that suggest some cohesion or meaningful interpretation to the target consumers, demands description of its functional and formal aspects with reference to the semantic and pragmatic interpretations. The language of advertisement has been viewed in various ways by different scholars with some variations as well as with some commonness in them.

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1. Is advertising language normal language?

These questions relate to the place of advertising language in the context of the readers' general knowledge of language. In order to answer them, we must have some conception of what is meant by "normal language". The English language has evolved to have many different kinds of functionality, each of which corresponds to different situations and styles of use. From an analytic point of view, it seems to make most sense to understand "normal language" to include the variety of styles of English that mature speakers and readers control. This will form the backdrop of everyday language in its many functions, against which we can view advertising language. If one looks around in literature on advertising, or searches on the WWW, it is not uncommon to find claims to the effect that advertising breaks the rules of normal language and language use. However, from the perspective of a professional linguist, few of these claims really seem to be supportable. Now, with the exception of linguists, few people have any reason to pay close attention to the way that language is actually used in its speech community, for a wide range of communicative functions. Like many aspects of human being and human behavior, our unconscious knowledge of language is much greater than our conscious knowledge of it, so the facts about language that are immediately accessible to the average person only cover part of what the language is and how it is used. Collect some text from advertisements that you have found. Can you find any examples of words, phrases or constructions that are truly different from the various varieties that you encounter on a regular basis? These varieties may include informal spoken language between close friends to technical and scientific descriptions, and everything in between. Doubtless, not all of the text you find will be standard English.

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2. Components of advertising 
2.1 Text

The advertisement has some Text, which provides information about the product, and more importantly, provides anchorage for the Image. Under the general category of Text, there may be descriptive information about the product, other text that serves the purpose of catching the readers’ attention, as well as (typically) short phrases that act as a kind of slogan, and finally the name of the company and/or the name of the product. Depending upon the formal pattern, advertising text has been broadly classified into six types:

1. Message Reduction Ad-text

2. Discursive Ad-text

3. Allusive Ad-text

4. Prosodic Ad-text

5. Declarative/Assertive Ad-text

6. Didactic Ad-text

1. Message Reduction Ad-Text

As the ultimate purpose of advertisement is to capture the reader’s attention, messages regarding a product are often found to be shortened or reduced. Short phrases are also found to be used for the purpose which seems to be like a kind of slogan establishing relevance 1 with the product or the brand. The physical property of the organization of the text thus plays the role of ‘catch’, thus capturing the reader’s or listener’s attention at once.

2. Discursive Ad-Text

Advertisements are often made in the form of a discourse where the desired response needs to be interpreted by the receiver. In such advertisements different socio-cultural / socio-political / socio-economic clues are found to be involved in the discursive text as a whole.  
 

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Various stylistic devices like – ambiguity, personification, interrogation, parallelism, disjunction, etc. are found to be employed in such discursive advertisements. Some instances of discursive advertisements are presented in the following with description of the anchored images in order to establish the relevance of the implicative.

3. Prosodic Ad-Text

Advertisements are often organized by employing rhyming patterns, popular poem/song, repetition /reduplication, expressive, etc. This prosodic pattern helps the copywriter to penetrate the hearer’s or reader’s attention either by facilitating the path of ‘known to unknown’ (in case when popular song/tune/poem are employed) or by capturing the attention of the target consumer by repetitive structure and expressive. The social-psyche is found to be considered integral in such advertising texts. Some instances of advertising text belonging to the prosodic pattern are cited below.

4. Allusive Ad-Text

Allusive advertisement refers to the type of advertisement which involves an event, story, description or reference, involving a commonness of understanding with the audience by choosing a setting which may be considered a everyday livelihood of the target consumers.

5. Declarative /Assertive Ad-Text

Statements that are declaring or asserting some idea, notion, truth regarding a product or brand is often found in advertising language. Some rhetorical expressions like metaphor, simile, oxymoron, personification, etc. are often found to be involved in such advertising patterns. This specific pattern is widespread in organizing advertising text.

2.6. Didactic / Directive Ad-Text

Advertisements are often made in instructive manner or teaching like pattern. Such

advertising language comes under didactic pattern of advertising text . 
 
 

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It is worthy to note in this connection that the products marketed through these advertising texts, necessarily links the sense of ‘ever desired’ social power and a sense of social freedom along with the products.

2.2 Image

The advertisement has an Image component, which is typically a scene which provides the background for the entire advertisement. The Image may or may not feature a representation of the product, and the product may or may not be "in use" (for example, imagine an image of a tube of toothpaste as opposed to some toothpaste on a brush, or some beer in a glass as opposed to a bottle of beer). The Image component may be more than just one scene, as is often found in the "before-after" type of advertisement (for example, 69 Allegra), or if there are other symbols or visual features that are superimposed on the original scene (such as 05 Europcar or 15 Dunhill, or, taking an odder example, 23 Max Factor). The original scene in the Image may lend itself to a variety of interpretations. Look at sunset a (right), and think about what kind of advertisement you could create, based on this image. An Image usually has some interpretational component which guides the reader to certain aspects of meaning, possibly in conjunction with the Text.

2.3 Sign

The key concept in advertising analysis is that of the Sign, as defined by Ferdinand de Saussure, which is the combination of a Signifier (below, "sr") and a Signified (below "sd"). Culler (1987) provides an excellent introduction to Saussure's thinking and highly influential ideas. The importance of the sign has been widely recognized in the previous literature on advertising. Taking a simple case from language, Saussure observed that the relation between Signifier and Signified is arbitrary: the concept of "dog" is picked out by "dog" in English, "chien" in French, "Hund" in German, "inu" in Japanese, and "kay" in Korean, for example.  

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Although each of these sound sequences has a history within its own language, from which we may come to understand why the word is currently the way it is, there is no specific sound sequence which is universally associated with any given meaning (with the possible exception of onomatopoeic words, though even these are quite culture-specific). Hence we say that the "dog"-dog Sign in English is arbitrary, just as the "Hund"-dog Sign in German is (equally) arbitrary. The "arbitrariness of the sign", as it is called, may strike you at first as a cause for concern, as arbitrariness perhaps suggests randomness, sloppiness, or inattention. But in fact, the arbitrary relationship is a vital and fundamental part of any creative communication system, because new signs can be created as needed. And far from being subject to randomness, a sign-based system works because all participants in the community agree on what given sr-sd relationships are. Hence, a sign looks like this:

The sr elements stand in opposition to one another, which is to say that they are differentiated by minimal changes in form: "dog" vs. "dock" vs. "dot" and so on. Hence this is known as a relational system --- each element is related to the others by some shared features, and some different features. More formally, we say that each sr stands in paradigmatic opposition to the other srs, and the choice of one element of the paradigm over another may carry some further meaning. Imagine, for example, what factors would be involved if you referred to an animal in front of you by "this dog" or "this doggie". More surprisingly, Saussure observed that the sd elements (meanings) are themselves arbitrary cuts on the conceptual plane, and are therefore relational too. He gave the example of the French words "rivière" and "fleuve", both of which mean "river" in English, but a "fleuve" is a river which flows to the sea, while a "rivière" does not.  

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This is a perfectly sensible semantic distinction, and one that speakers of any language can grasp; yet it is an arbitrary distinction, in the sense that one language can use it to classify words while another may not. To recap, in language, meaning is conventional in the sense that what the meanings are, and what signifiers relate to them, are arbitrary choices that the community conventionally respects. Going beyond language, the arbitrariness of the sign leads to this conclusion: anything can mean anything! And although we have focused in this section on language, in fact all symbolic activity involves such a system of arbitrary relationships (e.g., monetary systems, writing systems, mores code, and the pieces in a chess game). In the world of advertising, we can apply the simple concept of a sign in many ways: the name of the product may well be novel and arbitrary (for example, before 1996 or so, what did the word Amazon have to do with selling books?), as may any symbols, images or people associated with the product. The arbitrary nature of the sign is used deliberately in 57dow, where the word green is presented against a red background, which creates an advertisement that is quite confusing to the reader. Upon investigation, we learn that the "green" is the green which is culturally associated with envy---your friends will envy you your Dow carpet product. What does this signify? Clearly, it is a picture of two people, but you may feel that there are further meanings. Are these people successful? Are they happy? Is the Image primarily about the woman, or about the man? Symbols need little illustration; everyone can easily think of company symbols. In terms of cultural significance, a company is well-served if its symbol becomes an index---a signifier which goes beyond what it directly signifies to some larger association. The symbol, too, may come to be indexical over time. This represents a very strong cultural establishment of the symbol, and may be a very powerful marketing tool. To summarize, within an advertisement, the Image component may have some part that is iconic to the product, and there may be some symbols such as a company logo, and so on. The overall Image may have some cultural associations, which are indexical to some larger cultural context. 

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2.4 Slogan

A slogan is a form of verbal logo. In a print ad, it usually appears just beneath or beside the brand name or logo. A slogan sums up what one stand for, one’s specialty, the benefit, and one’s marketing position, and one’s commitment. It is especially useful to reinforce one’s identity. A slogan can prove to be more powerful than a logo. People can remember and recite your slogan while they are unlikely to doodle your logo. It is more important for your slogan to clearly state what you are about than to be clever, but if you can accomplish both, all the better. Slogans have two basic purposes: to provide continuity to a series of ads in a campaign and to reduce an advertising message strategy to a brief, repeatable, and memorable positioning. The slogan should be used everywhere. Think of it as being attached to one’s name like a shadow; put it on business cards, printed ads, personal brochures, signs, letters, in the yellow pages -everywhere one can put it. The advertising slogan is always short and epigrammatic in nature. It helps to make the ad more impressive and memorable.

3. Some levels of advertising

3.1 At the phonological level

Use of rhymes.

One of the best techniques for bringing in the brand name is to make the slogan rhyme with it. An ad slogan is better if it reflects the brand’s personality. By this kind of rhyming, the brand name is highlighted. The ad slogan is thus highly purposed. It can differentiate a slogan from others by the brand name and the special rhyming which is the identity of the slogan.

Haig Scotch: Don't be vague. Ask for Haig.

Quavers: The flavor of a Quaver is never known to waver. 

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Rhymes - brand name mention

A fall-back position is to use a rhyme and mention the brand name without it actually rhyming. It is not so effective, perhaps, because the brand name is not highlighted. The slogan is likely to lose its identity, because similar products can use the same ad slogan with a simple change of the product name.

Viakal: It's the Viakal fizz that does the bizz!

Jaguar: Grace, space, pace.

Use of alliteration.

Alliteration can help the slogans achieve the strong beating rhythm needed to make it an repeatable sentence. By so doing, the sentences are more slogan-styled. They can be easily remembered by the audience. Alliteration can also achieve an emphatic effect of the meaning.

Allied Irish Bank: Britain's best business bank.

Greyhound: Greyhound going great.

Fila: Functional... Fashionable... Formidable...

3.2 At the lexical level

Common uses of second person addressee “you”, “we”, “us”.

The use of second person addressee “you” tends to shorten the distance between the product or the producer and consumers, as if the producer or the ad is speaking to you face to face, making sincere promises, honest recommendations.

In so doing, the ad slogans stand a better chance to move the receiver or customers to action, because the receiver feels that he is being thought of and taken care of and he is the center point of the producers.

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For example,

HYUNDAI: Always there for you.

Nestle Milo: Bring out the champion in you.

The use of first person addresser “we” and “us” is the most direct way to tell the receiver what the sponsor of an ad slogan stands for, his idea, his view, and his credit. It’s a little bit like a self-introduction to the potential customers to let them know you, recognize you, believe you and trust you.

For example,

Avis Rent A Car: We try harder.

Fed ex: We live to deliver.

Use of unqualified comparison.

Admen have to abide by the code of commercial practice and stick to the rules of advertising. They should not advertise their product at the expense of others. So they resort to unqualified comparison to avoid defaming other products. They can not say: “Brand X is better than brand Y.” Otherwise, unpleasant lawsuits will inevitably occur. They can say:

For example,

Coleman footgear: Better choice, better joys.

Use of “every”, “always” etc.

These words are often used in ads to indicate the universal application of the product or to include as many potential customers as possible or to achieve the emphasis of the product’s utility or the company’s unswerving commitment. 

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For example,

Always Coca-Cola.

Mitsubishi: Technically, everything is possible.

Use of “no”, “none”, etc.

Negatives tend to be used very sparingly because the purpose of all ad slogans is to strengthen the positive side. But when negatives do occur, they are usually placed in an emphatic position to highlight the special the positive side.

For example,

Mercedes Benz: The pursuit for perfection has no finish line.

M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.

Use of coined words.

Coined words are both new and memorable. Coined words are kind of smart words have a special meaning in the specified context. They can raise the interests of the ad slogan receivers, make them ponder upon the meaning and marvel at the smart idea of the admen. By so doing, they recognized the brand.

Louis Vuitton: Epileather.

Burton Menswear: Everywear.

Gordon's & Tonic: Innervigoration. 
 
 

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3.3 At the syntactic level.

Use of short simple sentences.

The slogan must be short and simple; it can not afford to be complicated and clumsy. Short simple sentences are easy to remember, while one main aim of an ad slogan is to be memorable and recited. So short and simple sentences serve advertising slogans right.

For example,

Sumsung Digitall-Everyone is invited.

GE: We bring good things to life.

Use of everyday sentences.

Every day sentences tend to be overly used in day life, but it can be very forceful when used in an ad slogan. These sentences travel very fast, because anyone can remember it without any effort. It can just hang upon people’s lips. It’s something popularized without much publicity.

For example,

Nike: Just do it

Nestle: It’s the taste!

Use of phrases.

Slogans are a kind of special writing form. They can almost do without subjects. Phrases may be better than if not as good as sentences. All kind of phrases can be put into use: noun phrase, verb phrase, preposition phrase, adjective phrase, etc. They are so concise and to the point that they are beyond our power to do any addition or subtraction.

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For example,

Apple computer: think different

Malaysia Airlines: Beyond expectation.

Maxwell House: Good to the last drop.

Use of questions.

In ad headlines questions are often used to attract attention by mentioning the matter that concerns the customers most. They help to arouse the curiosity of the customers and entice them to read on to find the solution to the problem. Many slogans (also called themeline or tagline) begin as successful headlines. (Arens, William F. & Bovée, Courtland L. 1994: p.289) So it is not surprising that the slogan can use questions too for the same purpose.

For example,

Ford: Have you driven a Ford lately?

Volkswagen Polo: R u Polo?

Use of imperative sentences.

In an ad, the slogan is the last few words said. Although it’s just a few words, the admen don’t let it go at that. They use every opportunity to exhort the potential customers to act, to buy and to consume. The slogan is their last battle field to get people moved. It is not surprising that they would use imperative sentences to make a slogan while this kind of sentence is the most direct way to achieve the ideal effect.

For example,

Express card: Don’t leave home without it.

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United Airlines: Life is a journey, travel it well.

Use of tense.

Almost all the ad slogans use simple present tense to satisfy the customer’s desire to know the present state of the product he wants to buy. But there is another aspect of the simple present: its implication of universality and timelessness.

For example,

DeBeers: A diamond is forever.

Rossini: Time always follows me

Use of idioms or proverbs

Idioms and proverbs are familiar to most potential customers in a society and have no difficulty to be popularized. The creative use of the idioms and proverbs can give them new meaning while making them memorable and campainable.

For example,

Financial Times: No FT, no comment.

IBM: I think, therefore IBM.

3.4 At the semantic level.

Semantic ambiguity

Ad slogans have to conform to the code of commercial practice. Semantic ambiguity is needed to avoid any possible legal liability.

For example,

Philips: let’s make things better.

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Use of puns

A really good pun can work miracles. However note the lack of brand identity in these otherwise excellent examples. Almost any competing brand could use these lines. Although they are good, they have no specific identity of their own.

Moss Security: Alarmed? You should be.

Pioneer: Everything you hear is true.

Range Rover: It's how the smooth take the rough.

In these lines, the brand name appears, but as the solution or promise rather than part of the pun. These slogans with brand name in it can help the name be remembered while offer a two layered meaning to the slogan. The second layer of meaning can interest and impress the people with its smartness and its novelty.

Kenco Really Rich Coffee: Get Rich quick.

Finish Detergent: Brilliant cleaning starts with Finish.

Here the brand goes to work, as inextricably part of the pun.

Citibank: Because the Citi never sleeps.

Quavers Snacks: Do me a Quaver.

All the above-mentioned stylistic features of ad slogans are necessary to make them neat, simple, original, strategic, memorable and campainable. The slogans are also a kind of poetic language, which we should pay attention to. After a study of 103 ad slogans of large to medium sized companies in recent years, I did a little summarizing. The reason why I choose large to medium sized companies is that good ad slogans always come form them and they can represent the trend in ad slogans.

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From this chart we can see that three-worded slogan and four-worded slogan are the most favored in the creation of a slogan with 25 and 33 slogans for each type, and five or six worded slogans are also widely used. Two worded and eight worded slogans still occupy a share. But the number of other length slogans decreased dramatically. The longest ad slogan in study has 13 words which is a rare case,because it is too lengthy to be a slogan. And one worded slogan can not express fully the rich and multi-layered meaning that a slogan wants to convey. The eight worded slogans are preferred than the seven worded ones is because the former generally uses a parallel or contrasted structure, so for each small sentence of the structure the length is just four words which is the most preferred length. The average length of an ad slogan is 4.447 words. It is the trend for the slogan to be short, about 2 to 6 words long. This is just my general analysis of the results. It is useful to conduct a more detailed study of the slogans; because more and more Chinese companies are going abroad to do their business and they need a good English slogan to establish their image in the world business arena. This study will also help the development of the Chinese ad slogans in China. Good ad slogans are forever.

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4. Words and phrases used in advertising 
Words

The main copy of advertising language probably uses words from a restricted sub-set of English---common words, often with some emotional as well as literal value. In advertisements aimed at teenagers, the pronouns "you" and "he/him" (for advertisements aimed at girls) are highly frequent. In other advertising domains, we can find some interesting contrasts in the use of pronouns (see Unit 7). Leech (1966) provides a thorough overview from the point of view of a practicising linguist of how language is used in advertising. It is probably more useful to look at word usage and statistics in restricted domains of advertising, as we do in Unit 7, rather than to generalize across all cases. However, to give an indication of what we typically find, here is what Leech found out about the frequency of words in a sample of television advertisements (from the 1960s).

The twenty most frequent adjectives:

1. new 
2. good/better/best 
3. free 
4. fresh 
5. delicious 
6. full 
6. sure 
8. clean 
8. wonderful 
10. special 
11. crisp 
12. fine 
13. big 

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14. great 
15. real 
16. easy 
16. bright 
18. extra 
18. safe 
20. rich

The twenty most frequent verbs:

1. make 
2. get 
3. give 
4. have 
5. see 
6. buy 
7. come 
8. go 
9. know 
10. keep 
10. look 
12. need 
13. love 
14. use 
15. feel 
15. like 
17. choose 
18. take 
19. start 
19. taste

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Novel words and phrases

It is quite easy to find examples of novel words, phrases and constructions in advertisements. But these are not really different in character from examples we can find in other uses of English.

Given and new

It is commonplace in the analysis of the meaning contribution of a linguistic unit such as a sentence to split the information into Given information and New information (e.g. "Today for my breakfast I had ... waffles", in which only "waffles" is New information). It is possible for a sentence to be all-New, but all-Given sentences are (by definition) uninformative, and therefore have only specialized or restricted usages. Each sentence has an opportunity to present new information, or at least highlighted information. A common strategy in advertising language is to use very short potential utterances as sentences, to maximize the amount of highlighted information that is being presented.

5. Presupposition

An important aspect of any communication involves the presuppositions that are present. Presuppositions may be even more critical in television advertising (see Geis 1982) than in print advertising. However, even in print advertising, presuppositions are an important component of the overall message. As the name implies, a presupposition is a necessary precondition for the processing of any communication. Presuppositions typically involve the existence of some object or idea about “Herbal Essences”, that “We can’t keep something this juicy a secret”. This presupposes that there is something that is "this juicy", and then makes an assertion about that thing. One important function of the presupposition here is to promote a kind of ideology within advertising, in this case, the idea that "juiciness" is somehow related to shampoo and hair.  

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Most product ranges have some cultural values imposed on them in this way, and advertising is the main mechanism for achieving this. Presuppositions hold constant under what linguists call the Negation Test: negating the part of the sentence above P still leads to the necessity of assuming P to be true. Consider the examples in (1) and (2):

(1) a. It is your fault that I am lazy. 
(1) b. It is not your fault that I am lazy.

(2) a. It is your belief that I am lazy. 
(2) b. It is not your belief that I am lazy.

In the examples in (1), whether the positive or negative version, it is presupposed that I am lazy. On the other hand, in (2), my laziness is the object of someone's belief, but there is no hidden factual claim. Due to this difference, (1)c is non-sensual, while (2)c is perfectly natural.

(1) c. It is your fault that I am lazy, but in fact I am not lazy (non-sensual). 
(2) c. It is your belief that I am lazy, but in fact I am not lazy.

Returning to the Apple text above, the words do not directly assert that Windows does not work properly, but they presuppose this. And, given the Negation Test, we can see if that if text had been "It wasn't my fault that Windows didn't work properly", the presupposition would still be there. To summarize, presuppositions are a crucial part of advertising as they can cause the reader to consider the existence of objects, propositions, and culturally defined behavioral properties: for example, "Have you had your daily vitamins?" presupposes that you take or need "daily vitamins", thereby creating and perpetuating the idea that the behavior of taking vitamins daily is part of our culture. Similarly, "What's great about Chuck Wagon dog food?" (Geis 1982, 45) presupposes that there is something great about the dog food---though exactly what is left open. The concept of a sign is fundamental to understanding the meaningful elements in an advertisement.