ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENTS ON TOURISM IN VIETNAM

LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Lexical choices in tourism advertisement...41 Table 4.2: Lexical choices in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements...47 Table 4.3: Verbs used in English

HUE COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

- GRADUATION THESIS

“ANALYZING THE LANGUAGE OF

ADVERTISEMENTS ON TOURISM IN VIETNAM”

Student: Nguyễn Mỹ Ngân Student’s Code: 10K4051057

Year: 2012-2016

Supervisor: Ms Trương Thị Như Thủy (MA)

Hue, 5/2016

In the process of completing this graduation paper, I have received a great deal

of help, advice, guidance and encouragement from many teachers, friends and myfamily It is my great pleasure I have got

First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Ms TruongThi Nhu Thuy (MA), for her constant support, various materials, precious advice andvaluable comments on draft chapters to complete this study This would not have beenpossible conducted without her supports

Besides, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Hue University College ofForeign Languages for providing us professional learning environment and facilities aswell as all the teachers in English Department for their useful lessons, teaching,guidance, experience sharing with the whole hearted instruction and giving enthusiasm

to lift us to be better ones as we are today

Especially, I am proud of my family and friends They are always beside,support and encourage me throughout this study I wishfully send the deepest gratitude

to all of efforts, support for me to complete this graduation paper

Finally, it is an honor for me to extend my regards to all those who kindly gavetheir advice and supported me If there are not these helps, I could not complete mygraduation paper successfully All your help and support is motive power for me tofinish this study

Hue, May 2016Nguyen My Ngan

I certify that this assignment is my own work and I used only the sources listed

in the bibliography Moreover, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it hasn’tcontained any materials previously published or written by other people, except wherereference is used in the text of the study

Hue, May 2016 Nguyen My Ngan

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1: Lexical choices in tourism advertisement 41

Table 4.2: Lexical choices in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements 47

Table 4.3: Verbs used in English tourism advertisements 47

Table 4.4: Sentence structures in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements 48

Table 4.5: Sentence types in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements 48

Table 4.6: Figure of speech in English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements 49

LIST OF CHARTS Picture 1.1: The process of communication 10

Chart 1.1: Top 20 the most popular triggering words 15

Chart 4.1: Lexical choices in tourism advertisement 41

Chart 4.2: Percentage of type of adjective in Tourism advertisements in Vietnam 43

Chart 4.3: Sentence types in tourism advertisements in Vietnam 44

Chart 4.4: Sentences realized by structure in tourism advertisements in Vietnam 45

Chart 4.5: Figure of speech in tourism advertisements in Vietnam 46

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the research 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Objectives of the study 2

4 Scope of the study: 2

5 Research question 2

6 Structure of study 2

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Text and Context 4

2.1.1 Concepts of Text 4

2.1.2 Concepts of Context 4

2.2 Advertising 4

2.2.1 Notions and Aims of Advertising 4

2.2.2 Genre of Advertising 6

2.2.3 Language of Advertising 8

2.2.4 Advertising as a means of communication 9

2.2.4.1 The process of communication 9

2.2.4.2 Functions of language 11

2.2.4.3 Language creativity 12

2.3 Tourism and Tourism Advertisements 12

2.3.1 Definitions of Tourism 12

2.3.2 Products of Tourism 13

2.3.3 Tourism Advertisements 13

2.3.4 Distinctive Function of Tourism Advertising 13

2.3.5 Definitions of Tour 13

2.3.6 Generic Structures of Tourism Advertisements 13

2.4 Linguistic characteristics 13

2.4.1 Lexical choices aspect 13

2.4.1.1 Triggering Words 13

2.4.1.2 Adjectives 15

2.4.1.3 Verbs 17

2.4.1.5 Pronouns 19

2.4.2 Syntactic aspect 20

2.4.2.1 Sentence types 20

2.4.2.2 Sentence structure 21

2.4.3 Semantic aspect 23

2.4.3.1 Personification 24

2.4.3.2 Simile 24

2.4.3.3 Metaphor 24

2.4.3.4 Hyperbole 24

2.4.3.5 Metonymy 25

2.4.3.6 Polysemy and Homonymy 25

Chapter 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES 26

3.1 Research design 26

3.2 Research methods 26

3.3 Description of samples 26

3.4 Data collection and sources of data 26

3.5 Data analysis 27

3.6 Research procedures 27

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28

4.1 The analyzed data 28

4.1.1 Tourism advertisements in Vietnamese 29

4.1.2 Tourism advertisements in English 35

4.2 Analysis of lexical aspect 41

4.3 Analysis of syntactic aspect 43

4.4 Analysis of semantic aspect 45

4.5 Comparison between English and Vietnamese tourism advertisements in Vietnam 47

4.6 Factors affecting the language of tourism advertisements in Vietnam 50

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 52

5.1 Some suggestions for teaching and learning about tourism advertisements 52

5.2 Conclusion 53

BIBLIOGRAPHY 57

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the research

Tourism promotion is an essential source of information for potential tourists Itengages people in decision-making of the destination they would like to travel to Inthis digital age, greater attention has been given to the development on tourismthrough such approaches and this has been utilized by most countries in the world,which in turn has encouraged the necessary development of the tourism sector Topromote tourism, travel agencies use languages feature to advertise their products tocustomer As a result, the language of tourism becomes one of the exited researchareas to focus on, in particular tourism advertisements

Language of tourism advertisement is very important because it gives detailedportrayal of the potential tourism destination in which attempts to persuade, attract,encourage and seduce the potential tourists to be actual tourists It is true to say thattourism advertisement is a form of communication between the creator ofadvertisement and the consumer Since it is a form of communication, the concernabout the language will be essential Besides, tourism advertisements have their owncharacteristics by combination of the different components The language used intourism advertisements must be condensed, believable, distinctive and images used arehighly selective and should look “real” in the eyes of readers In other words, it mustsound convincing to readers in such a way that it quickly makes readers realize thebenefits of a certain product or service

In Viet Nam, with the rapid economic growth and travel needs’ increase, wecan easily catch out any tourism advertisements everywhere and every time It hasbecome a vital means for tourists to make a tour In order to capture the public’sattention as well as promote well tourism products, it is necessary to take language of

advertisements on tourism into consideration Therefore, “Analyzing the Language

of Advertisements on Tourism in Vietnam” is expected to be beneficial

2 Aims of the study

This study aims to analyze the typical language features of Advertisements on

3 Objectives of the study

- To describe the language features of Language of Advertisements on Tourism

in Vietnam in terms of the lexical choice aspect, syntactic aspect and semantic aspect;

- To compare and contrast features of language between Vietnamese andEnglish languages to find out similarities and differences;

- To find culture factors affecting the language of tourism advertisements;

- To give some useful solutions for students of English in general and studentsmajored in English tourism to prepare for their future jobs

4 Scope of the study:

The study is limited to analyze the language features of written Vietnamese andEnglish tourism advertisements, focus on slogans and headlines

The data for the study was collected from online websites of travel companies

in Viet Nam from 2010 to now

5 Research question

To achieve these objectives, the following question will be answered:

1 What are the language features used in tourism advertisements in Vietnam ?

2 What are the differences between language features in English andVietnamese tourism advertisements ?

3 What factors affect the language of tourism advertisements ?

4 What suggestions should be noted for teaching and learning about tourismadvertisements ?

6 Structure of study

The study is structured in five chapters as follows:

Chapter one begins with introduction including the research scope, objectives,significance, as well as the research questions

Chapter two represents some theoretical concepts of languages features.Although such analysis was made, it would be very difficult to elaborate it in suchlimited space For that reason, in this work the language of advertising from thelinguistic, especially lexical, syntactic and semantic points of view will be analysed

The study will provide examples and describe the most commonly used linguisticdevices and figures of speech in tourism advertising Also in the chapter, the generalviews of advertising and tourism language are taken into consideration.

Chapter three describes methods and procedures to carry out the study It isconsists of research design, steps for carrying out the study, methods of collecting dataand data analyses and a stock of advertisements collected to analyse

Chapter four deals with findings and discussion It is concerned about the use ofwords, sentence structures, figurative language in tourism advertisements in Vietnam;the similar and different features of those in Vietnamese and English, factors affectingcreating tourism advertisement in Vietnam, from which the findings are drawn out

Chapter five concludes the study by summarizing what have been dealed withand completes the study with some limitations and suggestions for further research

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Text and Context

2.2 Advertising

Advertising is an inevitable part of our modern capitalist consumer societywhose outstanding feature is its competitive fight “…advertising is not some externalcuriosity which we examine, from which we are separate and superior, but something

of which we are part, and which is part of us…” (Cook 1996: 182) “We are living inthe contemporary “consumer society”, in which advertising dominates the majority ofcommunication channels We may encounter advertisements everywhere and at anytime without recognizing them as a form of discourse, and as a “system of languageuse whereby” (Goddard, 2002) Advertisements are everywhere around us: innewspapers, in magazines, on billboards along the streets, on television, in radio, inmeans of public transport and any place the sponsor pays to distribute their message.The effects of the advertising influence us whether we like it or not

2.2.1 Notions and Aims of Advertising

Advertising is one of the main elements of the market communication mix Itinvolves using paid media to communicate persuasive information about a destination,

product or service.

“Advertising, generally speaking, is the promotion of goods, services,companies and ideas, usually performed by an identified sponsor Marketers seeadvertising as part of an overall promotional strategy.” (http://www.wikipedia.org/)

This definition is given according to the free encyclopedia Wikipedia, but thereare also other definitions of advertising, for example, the American HeritageDictionary says that the advertising is:

1 “The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as bypaid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media

2 The business of designing and writing advertisements

3 Advertisements considered as a group: This paper takes no advertising.”Advertisement is a concrete manifestation of advertising; “a paid publicannouncement appearing in the media.”

All these definitions have in common the fact that advertising is a means ofpromotion of the product, idea, or organization on the market with the aim to giveinformation and to persuade people of the advantage of the product and induce them totake and action

To consolidate the terminology, the concepts of slogan and headlines aredefined as follows:

Advertising slogan has many definitions According to Oxford AdvancedLearner’s Dictionary (2001), slogan is “a word or phrase that is easy to remember,used for example by a political party or in advertising to attract people’s attention or tosuggest an idea quickly.”

The purpose of a slogan is to communicate some information about the product

or a program and fix it in the readers mind in a memorable way So that, there are 5functions of a slogan to show these purpose:

- Drawing customer’s attention and arousing his interest

- Encouraging a reader into further reading of the text

- Conveying an advertising message in the shortest possible form

- Evoking in consumer’s mind a desire of possessing a given product

- Summarizing and summing up the whole text as well as making the receiverremember the advertisement or the program.

It is “short, memorable advertising phrase: Examples include "Coke Is It," "Just

Do It" and "Don’t Leave Home Without It." When a product or company uses a slogan

consistently, the slogan can become an important element of identification in thepublic’s perception of the product.”

The concept of slogan is used among authors of books about advertising invarious ways Advertising layout is divided into several parts: headline, body copy (themain part of the advertising message, often divided into subheads), signature line (amention of a brand-name, often accompanied by a price-tag, slogan or trade-mark) andstanding details (e.g the address of the firm) (See Leech 1972: 59) In thisunderstanding, slogan is not identified with headline and vice versa and the term isused in narrow sense However, Greg Myers (Myers 1997) uses the term ‘slogan’ inlarger sense - for any catchy phrase, what a headline definitely is In many cases, theboundaries between slogan and headline disappear For that reason, we will accept thesecond idea and will use the term ‘slogan’ in broader sense

As far as we know, in every discourse, headline is the first signal to drawreaders’ attention so they can decide whether it is worth reading or not The mainfunction of headline is to introduce the discourse’s content to readers In addition toother visual aids like pictures, captions, headlines must be eye-catching and attractive

at readers’ first scanning to evoke their interest and desire to read on A headline isalso an element to judge which discourse is more important and more interesting toreaders themselves

In brief, a headline must be clear and easy to read and understand; exact andinformative; short and dynamic; suitable and true to the text’s content

In this thesis, the language of tourism advertisements focusing on slogans andheadlines on tourism will be analysed

2.2.2 Genre of Advertising

Basing on the aims, Vestergaard and Schorder [59] divided advertising into twomain types: commercial and non-commercial advertising

According to Geoffrey Leech (Leech 1972), most frequent and important type

of the advertising is “‘commercial consumer advertising’: advertising directed towards

a mass audience with the aim of promoting sales of a commercial product or service It

is the kind which uses most money, professional skills, and advertising space in this

country.” (‘this country’, here: Great Britain) Example: “Plump it up New volume

boost liquid lip colour Paints lip with a high shine lacquer finish Feel the tingling sensation as formula begins to work.”

Another type of commercial advertising is ‘prestige advertising’ Here the nameand the positive image of the company are advertised rather than a product or aservice Example:

“The America’s Cup: the oldest and most coveted trophy in the world of sailing Its organizers have entrusted once again the vital timing of the races to Omega, a company whose experience in watch making and sports timekeeping dates back over 150 years…to the very origins of the America’s Cup itself.”

We may mention ‘industrial or trade advertising’, where a company advertisesits products or services to other firms, so the communication is between equals Theyboth (copywriter and the reader) have as an interest as a particular knowledge aboutthe product advertised Therefore, “industrial advertising typically lays greateremphasis on factual information than prestige and consumer advertising and lessemphasis on the persuasive elements.” (Vestergaard and Schroder 1985: 2)

A demonstration is below:

“You can trust Trenkwalder We can search for and find the right professional challenge for your career We offer you:

• Advice about the employment market

• An analysis of your personal career opportunities, taking into account your knowledge, your experience and your preferences”

As an example of non-commercial advertising, we may mention appeals fromassociations and societies whether their purposes are charity or political propaganda:

“Thanks to the World Food Programme, this little girl in Mozambique knows she won’t go hungry today.”

In addition, we can classify the types of advertising also according to the type

of medium: TV, radio, brochures, leaflets, magazines, newspapers and other printedmaterial advertising, the Internet and Direct Mail advertising, outdoor advertising, etc

2.2.3 Language of Advertising

Advertising language is a marketing tool used in a communicative process to send

a message to receivers (consumers), who will react or respond in a certain way Bothsenders and receivers must be active participants in the same communicative relationship

in order for thought to be shared (Dunn, Barban, Krugman & Reid 1990: 51)

Leech in his book (Leech 1972: 25) writes that the language of advertisingbelongs to so called ‘loaded language’ Wikipedia defines it as “the writing or speech,which implies an accusation of demagoguery or of pandering to the audience.” Leechsays that loaded language has the aim to change the will, opinions, or attitudes of itsaudience He claims that advertising differs from other types of loaded language (such

as political journalism and religious oratory) in having a very precise material goal –changing the mental disposition to reach the desired kind of behaviour – buying aparticular kind of product

To persuade people to buy the product is the main purpose of the advertising.Among such great competition, the producers want to demonstrate the uniqueness oftheir product They want to differentiate it from the rest They are trying to find newtechniques of advertisement Also, the advertisement texts must be more attractive andmore unexpected It must catch the attention of the audience and then identify theproduct Copywriters create uncommon, surprising, interesting texts with catchyslogans or phrases The readers or listeners must give it some thoughts and the result ismanipulation with them in order to buy the product Leech sets following principles ofadvertising texts: Attention value, Readability (by means of simple, personal, andcolloquial style), Memorability (most important in the process of advertising is toremember the name of the product) and Selling power (Leech 1972: 27) The lastprinciple is crucial David Ogilvy (Ogilvy 1985: 7) in his book says: “I do not regardadvertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information When Iwrite an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it ‘creative’ I wantyou to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”

We may identify the advertising as a type of discourse, because “it can tell us agood deal about our own society and our own psychology (…) Discourse is text andcontext together.” (Cook 1996: 2-5) We could analyze the whole discourse ofadvertising, it means “the interaction of all elements that participate in advertisingdiscourse: participants, function, substance, pictures, music, a society, paralanguage,language, a situation, other advertising and other discourse.”

2.2.4 Advertising as a means of communication

Advertising is a communication means that carries information about a product

or service to consumers in a visually or verbally attractive way in order to promote itand later sell it Advertising is using persuasive techniques to explain perspectivecustomers what is the best for them It helps consumers to make an informed decisionfrom various options that are available for them Vestergaard and Schroder stated intheir book: “Advertising is verbal/non-verbal, public, one way communication” (14).Verbal and non-verbal means apart from using spoken or written words, sentences, theconversation is always accompanied by our gestures, facial expression and other non-verbal features, in written advertisements this is expressed by pictures, quotationsmarks, size/bold letters and other visual stimulations It is public communication asadvertising message is always addressed to anonymous public therefore it is one waycommunication, same way as in case of literature or film industry (14)

2.2.4.1 The process of communication

The communication process in general by Vestergaard and Schroder needs atleast two people One that will send the information (addresser or transmitter) and theother one for whom the information is intended to (addressee or receiver) Betweenthese two people is transmitted a code message or code meaning throughcommunication channel All of this is part of the context or some kind of situation(15) In the advertising environment are other aspects that need to be taken intoaccount The communication process in the advertising is described based on theschema below:

Picture 1.1: The process of communication

Transmitter is a company that wants to advertise a product or service, on theother side is the customer (receiver) who wants to satisfy the need and make theinformed choice among variety of options The message before it is sent to receiver isencoded into symbols, pictures, text, sound, and so on Transmitter needs to be aware

of the characteristics of the receiver (context) so the message can be receivedappropriately Then comes the process of the message transmission, in this part comesother surrounding influences, these are called interferences or channel noises andshould be predicted into certain level at the stage of message encoding

Message decoding means that message is received with a certain meaning thismeaning can be different from the emitted meaning as a consequence of the channelnoise The understood meaning is a result of message decoding and interpretation in away that was intended by the transmitter Receiver in advertising is the targetedconsumer to whom the message was addressed at the beginning Feedback is the action

or no action at the end of the communication process, the effect on the customer can

be positive, negative or none However, the purpose of the process is to get a response

to purchase product or service

In the communication process the most important part is the intended meaningand understood meaning The transmitter or someone who encodes the message(copywriter) needs to make sure that the understood meaning is the same as theintended meaning Otherwise, it would not make sense to send such message.Furthermore, the communication is very restricted, as in the advertising language and

in slogans particularly, is the space limited for message It consists usually only fromthe information that transmitter wants to say and thinks it will have larger effect on thedecision of consumers

2.2.4.2 Functions of language

Language is used to express our emotions, to inform addresser, to influenceothers behavior, to get the attention from the addressee, to talk with others, to checktheir understanding, to make speeches in front of wider audience, to write or speak toentertain others

Jakobson set six functions of language (referential, emotive, conative, phatic,metalingual and poetic) which corresponds with six acts of communication.Referential relates to the context and describes things or facts They are usuallyexpressed by descriptive statements, these statements may use either definitedescriptions or deictic words to anchor the text in time, place, in general in concretesituation Emotive focuses on the transmitter (addresser) It speaks for his emotions,feelings, attitudes, wills Emotive or sometimes also called expressive has the addedvalue of internal states of addresser It is typically expressed by interjection Conative

is primarily focused on the addressee It is used to get other people to make something

It usually includes direct orders expressed by imperatives Phatic function is used inorder to set, maintain or end the communication with the addressee Metalingualprimarily focuses on the code It is the use of language to describe, discuss, check orcorrect the code (language) itself Poetic function is oriented to the form of themessage itself, how it is used It has the most prominent but not restricted use either inpoetry or in advertising language (Dontcheva-Navratilova 15)

Advertising language uses primarily the poetic function The conative function

is used to address the message more directly and referential function to convey the

information Phatic function is seen on TV advertising, at the beginning or end ofcommercial in order to get the attention of the audience.

As the poetic function that prevails in advertising requires creativity furthershould be explored the creative writing, the meaning and rules if any applied

2.2.4.3 Language creativity

Creative may sound like a mantra for advertising writing and creating slogans.Leech mentioned that there is no other word that would be so popular in advertisingthan creativity They have creative job, create a creative campaign, they must thinkcreatively and come up with creative ideas What it means being creative in terms oflanguage? It means breaking rules of grammar in order to find original way oflinguistic usage or create new expressions Copywriters are not the only one whosomehow plays with words and language itself It is done actually in everydayconversation as well for the entertainment purpose or for the flow of the conversation

So in fact we all take part in the language creativity

The last sentence is in parallel what David Ogilvy said about advertising andcreativity: “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium ofinformation When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it

‘creative’ I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product” (7) In factcreativity of language in advertising is just using persuasive techniques in order to achieveaction from the consumer – to buy advertised product or service Leech mentioned thatpersuasive techniques might be called either linguistic anomaly or linguistic violations(176) He also stated: “The number of linguistic violation is unlimited, since any rule oflanguage can be violated in any number of different ways” (176)

In the practical part of the thesis shall be explored the linguistic violation thatoccur in the fast food industry slogans They shall be divided at the grammatical,lexical, syntactic and semantic level

2.3 Tourism and Tourism Advertisements

2.3.1 Definitions of Tourism

World Tourism Organization defined that “Tourism comprises the activities ofpersons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not

more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related tothe exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited”.

“attracting Attention, creating Interest, fostering Desire and inspiring Action”

2.3.4 Distinctive Function of Tourism Advertising

Due to the intangible and heterogeneous nature of tourism products, tourismadvertisements have a distinctive function is to inform consumers about the travelagency’s products and to attract bookings for them

2.3.5 Definitions of Tour

Tour is considered as the journey’s fixed schedule of which includes duration,visiting places, accommodation, transportation, an expert guide, assurance, the priceand other services It can be called package tours

2.3.6 Generic Structures of Tourism Advertisements

Basing on tourism advertisements collected, it can be seen that the generalstructure of a tourism advertisement in general consists of three main parts as follows:Overview, Tour Details, Additional Mentions

start a series of actions or events In marketing, trigger words are the words/phraseswhich trigger an impulse in a user to click on a link, stay on a website and readthe content or – best case – decide to act as intended and purchase the product… etc.Sometimes these words are also called “Magic Words” They often begin a series ofactivities and appear in the itineraries of the tour in tourism advertisements to motivatethe customers’ decisions and promote the trade of the travel agencies.

In tourism advertisements, using trigger words can make customers tend torespond better to than others Words like you, free, because, new or instantly persuadethem in their own, unique way “You” for instance creates a personal connection Andaccording to a research by the Institute for the Study of Child Development certainregions of our brains activate when we see our names in print or on screen For example,

Do you want to have a journey ?, Bạn đã đến Mandiver của Việt Nam chưa ?

In addition, trigger word like “Free” on the other hand suggests an incentive that willkeep customers interested whereas “New” suggests something exclusive To illustrate this,

we can take an tourism advertisement “New year journey at Dinh Cape Ninh Thuan”.

Another example of trigger word in tourism advertisements is using words to

motivate customers to take action A strong call-to-action is what often makes content

so successful BJ Fogg from the Persuasive Technology Lab defines a call to action as

a trigger that tells people to perform a behavior now He adds that “for behaviorswhere people are already above the activation threshold – meaning they have sufficientmotivation and ability – a trigger is all that’s required.” For instance, if we use

“Discover the beauty of Quan Lan island” instead of “See the beauty…” it will make customers experience an increased conversion rate “Discover” is a Trigger Word while “See” is not In the example: “Half day cycling tour to explore the typical values

of Ha Noi”, the word “explore” has same explanation It makes customers want to visit

and experience the tour “Khám phá vẻ đẹp Tây Bắc” in Vietnamese tourism

advertisement is also an example here

In the chart below, we have top 20 the most popular words the marketers takewhen they create any advertisements These words also are used effectively inlanguage of tourism advertisements

Chart 1.1: Top 20 the most popular triggering words

(Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237156)

In short tourism advertisements, there isn’t space for many words there In fact,

we can use only about 25 characters in a headline Yet, each of those has to grabattention of potential customers, inform them, add a strong emotional appeal andpersuade them to change their view (or encourage them to take action) And it has toachieve it all within seconds That is the reason why trigger words play an importantrole in language of tourism advertisement

and descriptions tend to impress and attract more potential tourists to visit Moreover,large amounts of adjectives could give special emphasis to the positive and enthusiasmemotion, especially the general superlative adjectives which convey strong positiveemotions, such as the words largest and other adjectives with the aid of the adverb ofmost Therefore, it is very important to choose adjective effectively in any tourismadvertisements.

Exploring the meaning of the adjectives in tourism advertisements, we find twomain adjectives including descriptive adjectives and experiential adjectives.Adjectives used most in tourism advertisements are often descriptive such as:breathtaking, mysterious, adventurous, mênh mang, lãng mạn, đặc sắc, quyến rũ…

In many cases, the adjectives combine with various colorful pictures of theproducts to indicate characteristics of advertised products and help readers imaginetourist attractions and then they make up their mind to choose the product For

example: “Cat Ba cliffs and rock-climbing enthusiasts, a heavenly match”, “Điện Biên

rực rỡ mùa hoa ban” Adjectives expressing perceptions or emotions that we can call

‘experiential’, such as warm, happy, vibrant, amazing, incrediable… that partlydenotes an objective property (‘full of life and energy’), partly conveys the subjective

perception of the encoder In the slogan: Let us design your unforgettable trip,

Amazing tour from Nha Trang to Sai Gon, New adventurous tour explores unique

In another research, a semantic grouping of adjectives by the LongmanGrammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999) was used as the basis ofthis study Biber et al.’s (1999) To clarify this semantic categorization, Biber et al.(1999: 508-509) have further divided descriptors into five groups:

(1) Color (C) – denoting color, brightness: black, white, dark, bright

(2) Size/quantity/extent (SQE) – denoting size, weight, extent: big, deep, heavy, huge(3) Time (T) – denoting chronology, age, frequency: annual, daily, early, late(4) Evaluative/emotive (EE) – denoting judgments, affect, emphasis or isclearly an opinion instead of a fact: bad, beautiful, best, fine

(5) Miscellaneous descriptive (MD): appropriate, cold, complex, dead

The first three groups compose only a minority of descriptors and, while theyare included in this study, they are not in the focal point because they do notparticipate in affecting the reader as much as the other descriptors However, the mostimportant adjectives are in group number four, the evaluative and emotive adjectives.They include such words as great, magnificent, excellent etc that may give the reader

an especially positive image of the destination or attraction Therefore, theevaluative/emotive group (i.e EE) is what will be the most examined group ofadjectives in the discussion chapter The last group, miscellaneous descriptive (MD)descriptors, emerged clearly as the largest group of descriptors and, while not being asexplicitly influential as the EE group, will also have a major role The study focusesmostly on the EE and MD groups of adjectives because they account for the majority

of descriptors and a special emphasis is on the evaluative and emotive adjectives asthey play a vital role in painting a glowing picture of the attractions

Every adjective has its own meaning and has several specific nouns it canmodify When you want to use an adjective, the first thing you should do is to makesure its meaning is proper for the noun In the advertising slogans, this point isparticularly critical because advertisement is performed in pubic, it must use rightadjectives to make good advertising effect come true

Thus adjectives are of utmost importance in tourism slogans, being “the mostnotable feature of the language in advertising” (Townson 1995:85) It is therefore aninescapable fact that the language of advertising relies on the heavily use of adjectivesand on exaggerations

2.4.1.3 Verbs

The structure of the verb phrases are divided into two types: finite and finite verb phrases Sidney Greenbaum and Randolph Quirk explained: “A finite verbphrase is a verb phrase in which the first and only word is a finite verb, the rest of theverb phrase (if any) consisting of nonfinite verbs” (41) The finite verb phrases can beverb phrase of independent clauses, have tense contrast, person and number concordwith the subject and have mood Non-finite verb phrases are formed if the first or onlyword has the non-finite form of the verb, such as the infinitive, the –ing participle and

non-phrase is simple when it consists of only one word and complex is when it consists oftwo or more words (Greenbaum and Quirk 42).

Leech in his book further studied simplicity in the verbal group, as from theaforementioned findings, this occurred as prominent feature in advertising English Hementioned that by checking the advertising materials, provided in his book, werediscovered that majority of finite verb phrases can be either simple present forms orsimple imperatives Simple present form is used to satisfy the customer and provokethe customer’s desire for the product in that particular moment Claims are written for

as absolute purpose as possible It works with the universality and timelessness Incase of using other tenses such past or future it is rather for the purpose of comparisonand contrast between present and future (121 - 125)

As far as the imperatives’ usage is concerned, this appeals to the customers’emotions and personal desires and aspirations, especially in case of destination bring

experience for tourists thus suggesting a way to take action: Let’s, enjoy, discover…

Moreover they also show the advertiser’s confidence about the claim to have theperfect ingredients for a perfect day

Most of the verbs in the advertising have general meaning and have just littleeffect on the overall advertising message Leech said: “Simplicity of verbal meaningcan be associated with the morphological simplicity of verbs” (154) Most of the verbsare monosyllabic, such as make, give, us, buy It is not rare that in advertising verbs donot need to be used at all

In tourism advertisement, verbs set relationship between the product andconsumer (e.g have, buy, get) Verbs as enjoy, experience, try, choose, offer gobeyond their common usage and invite the reader into a magical world where

everything receives connotations Example: Khám phá (discover), về (come), thăm

opportunity “can” have a different meaning when it is preceded by an animate orinanimate subject For instance, in most cases it is used with animate subject you,which are a reference to customer, you can buy, you can do It has the meaning of theability of the customer to do something When preceded by inanimate subject, such asbrand name itself or the name of the product In this case it is really about opportunity

or possibility what the product offers to the customer to satisfy his needs (125)

2.4.1.4 Nouns

Nouns are one of main parts of speech and considered as naming words; theyname people, things and places Nouns have occurrence most in tourismadvertisements In many cases, the whole slogan does not contain any verb especiallyVietnamese advertisements; therefore nouns are of utmost importance when it comes toadvertising, being much more suggestive, meaningful and manipulative than verbs are

What is more, proper nouns are used in most of slogan tourism advertisements.The proper nouns are basically names of specific places, persons and things Theygenerally have unique denotation and are usually written with initial capital letters To

illustrate this, we can see many examples: Viet Nam - the hidden charm; Sapa, thành

phố trong sương, Da lat- city of the flowers…in tourism advertisements in Viet Nam.

2.4.1.5 Pronouns

“The use of personal pronouns is meant to break down any boundary that mayexist between the addresser and the addressee By the constant use of the secondperson you, the advertisers establishes a dialogue with the readers, trying directly topersuade them that what is being advertised is actually worth trying These are markers

of familiarity between the product and the possible consumer, as the former is aimed atmeeting the latter’s needs and desire “Interaction is one of the primary techniques ofinvolvement, through which the enunciator tries to persuade the enunciatee of thetourist brochure There are two main enunciative strategies The objective strategyconsists in the occultation of both the enunciator and the enunciatee […] The result is

an impression of objectivity.” (Mocini 2005: 158) therefore under the mask of a falseobjectivity, the advertiser claims to know the tourist’s needs and promises to fulfill

addressee “you” tends to shorten the distance between the product or the producer andconsumers, as if the producer or the ad is speaking to you face to face, making sincerepromises, honest recommendations In so doing, the ad slogans stand a better chance tomove the receiver or customers to action, because the receiver feels that he is beingthought of and taken care of and he is the center point of the producers.

The use of first person addresser “we” and “us” is the most direct way to tell thereceiver 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

Interrogatives are usually associated with questions Questions seek forinformation on a specific point Interrogatives are formed either by subject-verbinversion or in the initial position is wh-element, in the latter form there is a subject-operator inversion Imperatives correspond to the directive function in other wordswith commands They are primarily used to make somebody to do something to makethe act of hearer Imperatives do not have transparent grammatical subject and verbhas just based form

Exclamatives primarily correspond to exclamations Exclamations express thespeaker’s surprise or impression by something Exclamatives are formed by initialphrase what or how but there is no subject-verb inversion (230)

Myers wondered in his book what form prevails in the advertising language Hecompared advertising to everyday conversation where full ranges of forms are used ratherthan the textbook where the most prominent is statement In the everyday conversation weuse more commands, questions, exclamations as these are more used in the spoken

interaction with other people Also forms of questions (commands or exclamations) arenot always so straightforward In the conversation for example a question can function as

an indirect command, so can an exclamation or a statement (47)

Imperative clauses: Most of the advertising slogans use imperatives orcommands; they are used for the personal effect on the reader or hearer For the readerthey create the impression that one person is talking to another The level of politeness

is omitted despite the cultural and interpersonal habit of using words such as please Itmight be also that the polite devices are not used as the advertising slogans are usedfor the benefit of hearer or reader Also ads are not used for begging someone to dosomething as it should be hearer free act to purchase or to consume Leech mentionedseveral verbs that are used in the imperatives such as: get, have, enjoy, try…

Interrogative clauses: Despite the fact that questions usually require answersand in the advertising there is no immediate response from the counterpart,interrogative clauses can be very often seen Questions help to arouse the curiosity ofthe customers, they attract their attention In the advertising they usually work withpresuppositions (Myers 49) Angela Goddard says about presupposition in advertising:

“Presupposition is all about reading between the lines, since this is, as it suggest, ahidden process, it is very interesting to advertisers, as we can taking in all sorts ofassumptions without consciously paying attention to them” (125)

Exclamative clauses: According to Myers the exclamations are representedmore often in advertising than any other sentence type It serves instead of intonationand face expression in the face to face conversation Advertising language is playingwith people’s emotions and feelings Although exclamations may have the sentencestructure as simple statements when there is an exclamation mark it is says to audience

to read it emphatically (51)

2.4.2.2 Sentence structure

Further the most often structural tendencies in the advertising will be discussed.Unlike sentence type, structure of the sentence is an inevitable part of the advertisingmessage Crystal and Davy in their book divided sentences into complete andincomplete Complete sentences have further division into major and minor types (45)

minor type, as mentioned before the advertising language use rather short sentenceswhich are more relevant for this category Leech said that minor sentences usually donot have a main verb (predicator), however, it can be still understood as a clause as itstill have signs of the clause status, for instance punctuation marks (15-16) Crystaland Davy also stated that although minor sentences are usually associated with majorsentences, they should not communicated as ellipses of major sentence types as there

is not always clear relationship between these two (51)

Leech mentioned that minor sentences as well as non-finite clauses are a feature

of disjunctive grammar These clauses cannot be also classified according their typesand discourse In discursive grammar minor and non-finite clauses would bedependent whilst in disjunctive grammar are fully independent (93-94) He said:

“Disjunctive language is primarily associated with headlines, subheads and signaturelines and is therefore particularly prominent on poster advertising (…)” (Leech 95)

Incomplete sentences in the advertising are often formed by punctuation; fullstops are used instead of comas to divide phrases In the advertising is very commonnot to have main verb throughout the whole advertising message Myers mentionedone reason as almost every advertising message is accompanied by picture Thepicture help us with relevance of the message, therefore copywriters can allow omitverbs and create message only with incomplete sentences (56)

Further, the work will be more focused on the forms of schematic pattering(parallelism) One of the forms of schematic pattering is parallelism Parallelism inwriting refers to balance and equality Parallelism defined by Leech is: “repetition offormal patterns“(186) Parallelism by Myers is a pattern of similarity, of somerepetition or parallel structure It can have a structure of relevant ideas (52) Forinstance in the advertising: Buy a bucket of chicken and have a barrel of fun Thewords bucket and barrel is the parallelism of relevant ideas Parallel structure can bealso accompanied by anaphora or epistrophe Anaphora is the repetition of the word orexpression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or sentences (“anaphora”).Counterpart of the anaphora is the epistrophe which is the repetition of word orexpression in the end of successive phrases (“epistrophe”)

2.4.3 Semantic aspect

Semantics is the study of meanings of words and phrases in language and thestudy of the meanings of words in phrases in particular context (“semantics”) Everyword has two aspects of meaning - connotative and denotative Denotative is themeaning that can be found in encyclopedic dictionaries However, more important foradvertising is the connotative meaning, which is the meaning that each individual has

in mind in response to hearing or reading the word It also represents the emotional aswell as cultural differences of the audience The connotations very often have differentmeaning in every culture, therefore copywriters or translators must be aware ofcultural differences when creating slogans For instance, in English culture widelyspread words in advertising are skinny, thin, slender, and slim All these havedenotative meaning of not being fat or overweight However, being skinny or thin hasmore negative connotative meaning than being slender or slim The next example iswhen something is cheap or inexpensive It both means that something does not costmuch, however, cheap has connotation that something might be a poor quality whileinexpensive can have a good quality but be affordable for consumers Besidesconnotation and denotation there is an implication which speaks for the future effect,something that is suggested without being said directly (“implication”) This alsovaries culturally, what is right in one culture can be wrong or have different meaning

in other As an example is academic grading system in Russia and in our cultural, ifany advertising would say you want to score 1 at school it would impale that you want

to be the best, in Russia it may have implication of being the worst

Semantics figure of speech is meaning related figures It is a rhetorical deviceused in order to achieve a special effect; it may convey meanings in fresh unexpectedways Leech said: “Figurative language also has a striking and memorable qualitywhich suits it for slogans and headlines” (183) Further we will deal with the mostimportant figures used in advertising language: personification, simile, hyperbole,metaphor, metonymy

2.4.3.1 Personification

Personification is a rhetorical figure when human features and nature areassigned to inanimate objects or animals (Wales 294) A classic example of

Government There are many other examples in the advertising as readers do notusually recognize them as personification Companies are heavily trying to personalizetheir slogans and advertisements to be better memorized They try to create theirbrands into something real that would help consumers to personalize their brands withthe real life figure (Nordquist, "What Is Personification?").

A metaphor is very difficult issue to define and there are many ways how to define

it We shall introduce here a definition of metaphor from Oxford Advanced Learner’sDictionary: it is “a word or phrase used in an imaginative way to describe somebody ỏsomething else, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make thedescription more powerful.” In another way, Wales stated “When words are used withmetaphoric senses, one field or domain of reference is carried over or mapped onto another

on the basis of some perceived similarity between the two fields (…)” (251) In the

advertising industry the most known metaphor would be of Nokia Company: Connecting

people They used the metaphor to express that consumers can not only talk via their

devices but also emotionally connect with other people

2.4.3.4 Hyperbole

Hyperbole is the use of intentional exaggeration as a figure of speech It is used

in order to create strong impression and strong emotional response as well as forhumorous purposes (Wales 190) In the advertising the hyperbole is referred to asdramatizing the selling point

2.4.3.5 Metonymy

Metonymy is another figure of speech It is not seen so commonly in slogans asaforementioned figures Metonymy substitutes one word of phrase for another which isclosely related to the original one Wales says “In semiotic terms, metonymy is anindexical sign: there is a directly or logically contiguous relationship between thesubstituted word and its referent” (252) In advertising, metonymies are rather used invisual campaigns.

Synecdoche is a class of metonymy Synecdoche is formed when a part ofsomething refers to the whole of something or vice versa For instance, the automobile

industry using wheels when referring to vehicles Another example of synecdoche

when brand is so well known that it represents any product in its class (“Figures ofSpeech in Advertising”)

2.4.3.6 Polysemy and Homonymy

Polysemy is described as many possible meanings for a word or phrase (Wales309) Body parts can be the example of polysemy, for instance head is either a bodypart or it can be head of the family, company In the advertising usually are seen

polysemic puns like bright, naturally, clearly In example “Taste of Vietnam”, “Taste”

means sense that allow you to recognize food or drink in your mouth but it also meansperson’s ability to choose things that others recognize as being of good quality orappropriate

Homonymy on the other hand is a word that has the same spelling (homograph)

and pronunciation but different meaning and origin (Wales 188) For instance, bear is

an animal but also it means to carry; date is a calendar time but also to go out withsomeone on a date Figures of speech are used in the advertising very often It makesthe messages and slogans more memorable, vivid as well as emotional

Figurative language is about playing with words and message and it capturesthe attention of the audience and also differentiates the advertising from other writings

Chapter 3: METHODS AND PROCEDURES