A study on linguistic features of english printed advertisements in tourism with reference to the vietnamese equivalent

ABSTRACT This thesis is focused on analyzing some typical lexicology, morphological and syntactic features in English printed advertisements in tourism, as well as finding out the simila

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Hanoi, 2017

Tran Thi Thu Hien

Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Tran Thi Thu Hien, Ph.D for her deliberate guidance and invaluable feedback and suggestion during the writing of this research Without her supervising I would never have started, and certainly never have finished writing

my thesis

My sincere thanks go to all lecturers and the staff of the Department of Post Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful materials, guidance and enthusiasm during my study at the institution

Last but not least, I am also indebted to my beloved family members whose continuous support and concern have always been the motivation for me to complete my study

ABSTRACT

This thesis is focused on analyzing some typical lexicology, morphological and syntactic features in English printed advertisements in tourism, as well as finding out the similarities and differences in syntactic, lexical and morphological features between English and Vietnamese advertisements in tourism To analyze these features, 40 advertisements of both language have been collected as the data for this thesis under the form of brochures, leaflets and itineraries of the notable and prestigious travel agents domestically and internationally, of which 20 advertisements have been chosen to sudy in the thesis Basing on the findings, the thesis provides some suggestions for advertisers, translators and the learners of English as the second language in advertising and translating This will help Vietnamese writers answer the question if we should translate a Vietnamese tourism advertisement into English to have a perfect equivalent

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Common compounding patterns (adapted from Carstairs-McCarthy (2002:60)) 20 Table 4.1: Frequency of types of sentences in chosen English advertisements 32 Table 4.2: Frequency of sentences including “can”, “will” English printed tourism advertisements 35 Table 4.3: Occurrence of the favorable adjectives in English printed tourism ads 37 Table 4.4: Occurrence of word types in English printed ads in tourism 39 Table 4.5: Formation of compound words in English printed ads in tourism 41 Table 4.6: Suffixes –s/-es/-ed of verbs in English printed tourism advertisements 42 Table 4.7: Summary of the derivational suffixes in English printed tourism advertisements 44 Table 4.8: Summary of the derivational suffixes of adjectives in English printed tourism advertisements 46 Table 4.9: Occurrence of sentence types in Vietnamese printed advertisements in tourism 49 Table 4.10: Occurrence of used verbs in Vietnamese printed tourism ads 53 Table 4.11: Occurrence of word types in Vietnamese printed tourism ads 55

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATION iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Objectives of the study 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Significance of the study 3

1.6 Structural organization of the study 3

Chapter 2 Literature review 5

2.1 Review of previous studies 5

2.2 Overview of syntax 8

2.2.1 Types of sentence 9

2.2.2 Voice, Tense, and Mood 10

2.3 Overview of Lexicology 12

2.3.1 Verbs 12

2.3.2 Adjectives, comparative and superlative degrees 13

2.3.3 The use of nouns and advebs 15

2.3.4 Compounding 16

2.4 Overview of Morphology 17

2.4.1 Inflection 19

2.4.2 Derivation 19

2.4.3 Compounding 20

2.5 Advertising and advertisements 21

2.5.1 Advertising 21

2.5.2 Advertisements 24

2.3 Chapter summary 25

Chapter 3 Methodology 26

3.1 Study- governing orientations 26

3.1.1 Research questions 26

3.1.2 Research setting 26

3.1.3 Research approach 27

3.1.4 Principles/criteria for data collection and data analysis 27

3.2 Study method 28

3.2.1 Major methods vs supporting methods 28

3.2.2 Data collection techniques 28

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques 29

3.3 Chapter summary 30

Chapter 4 Linguistic features of English printed advertisements in tourism with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents 31

4.1 Syntactic features 31

4.1.1 Types of sentence 31

4.1.2 Voice, Tense, Mood 33

4.2 Lexical features 35

4.2.1 Verbs 35

4.2.2 Adjectives, comparative and superlative degrees 37

4.2.3 Nouns and adverbs 39

4.2.4 Compounding 40

4.3 Morphological features 42

4.3.1 Inflection 42

4.3.2 Derivation 44

4.3.3 Compounding 47

4.4 Comparison between English and Vietnamese printed tourism advertisements in terms of lexical, morphological and syntactic features 48

4.4.1 In terms of syntax 48

4.4.1.1 Types of sentence 48

4.4.1.2 Voice, Tense and Mood 50

4.4.2 In terms of Lexicology 53

4.4.2.1 Verbs 53

4.4.2.3 Nouns and adverbs 54

4.4.2.4 Compounding 56

4.2.3 In terms of Morphology 56

4.5 Implications 58

4.5.1 Implications for creating effective advertisements 58

4.5.2 Implications for translating 58

4.5.3 Implications for teaching 59

4.6 Chapter summary 60

Chapter 5 Conclusions 61

5.1 Recapitulation 61

5.2 Concluding remarks 62

5.3 Limitations of the study 63

5.5 Suggestions for further studies 63

REFERENCES 64

APPENDIX 67

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

Along with the rapid development of social economy, advertising is becoming increasingly popular In order to secure a number of readers and to compete with many other similar advertising messages, advertisers try to make their advertisements as effective as possible They use various linguistic devices to catch attention, arouse desire, induce action, and contribute towards satisfaction Furthermore, advertising has been considered as a real art – the art of informing, persuading customer and deeply embedded into their minds According to Berger (2004:71), advertising is described as “a genre of communication that use words and images to convince people exposed to the advertisements to purchase product

or service being promoted” The explanation is also appropriate for the case of tourism advertisements, as tourism advertisements try to charm the reader and determine him to purchase the service

Nowadays, tourism is presently one of the fastest growing economic sectors

in the world According to United Nation World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals grew by 5% in 2013 to 1.087 billion and a grow by 6%

in 2017 is forecast As tourism has established as one of the most prolific business worldwide, tourism advertisements find itself as being one of the most widespread public means of communication The language of tourism is meant to create a special world, appealing and marvelous It provides the potential customers with a preconceived impressive image of respective place Thus, the tourist sees and experiences what he was told to expect in the tourist description Hence, the importance of tourism language: it builds up fairy tale realms, magical places, oasis

of peace and tranquility, auras of mystery and fantasy

Various form are used in advertisements, and advertisers pay much attention

to expressive devices as plates, colors or layout of printed pages, however, language

is the main carrier of message all long Language has become a very efficient

element in connection with other aids to appeal the consumption of the readers In the practice of the advertising, advertisers normally pay more attention to the use of words or types of sentences to make the advertisements more vivid, persuasive and reliable, and then to stimulate the desire to buy and advertised products

In this thesis, the study generalizes the major linguistic features of advertisements in tourism in the hope of helping language learners to understand English advertisements and to appreciate at the beauty of advertising language To

do so, the writer restricts discussion to the language of the commercial advertisements in printed documents (also called printed advertisements) and then find out some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese languages used tourism advertisements However, this study does not desire to describe all the language characteristics of tourism advertisements in English and Vietnamese, focusing only on syntactic, lexical and morphological features which are considered as the most typical features in advertising language

1.2 Aims of the study

This thesis aims at investigating the syntactic, lexical and morphological features in the English and Vietnamese printed advertisements in tourism as well as discover the similarities and differences of these features between the two languages

1.3 Objectives of the study

There are three primary objectives of this study:

(i) To find out the typical features of syntax, lexical and morphology in

English printed advertisements in tourism

(ii) To identify the similarities and differences of syntactic, lexical and

morphological features between English and Vietnamese printed advertisements in tourism

(iii) To draw out some possible implications for advertiser, translators,

teachers of English as the second language from syntactic, lexical and morphological features of tourism advertisements

1.4 Scope of the study

This thesis does not cover all aspects of the advertising language as well as all language features of printed tourism advertisements due to the time limitation and with the limited scope of MA thesis This thesis refers to some features of English printed tourism advertisements based on syntax, lexicology and morphology

For analyzing syntactic, lexical and morphological features of advertising language in this thesis, pieces of tourism advertisements are not selected from all kinds of media but from some brochures, leaflets and itineraries of the notable travel companies and enterprises in Vietnam and of some prestigious promotion agencies from other countries such as England, Australia, America, etc having representative offices in Vietnam The thesis concentrates on the description, analysis and comparison of 20 advertisements in both languages, English and Vietnamese

1.5 Significance of the study

The significance of the thesis can be discussed from two major perspectives:

- The information in the thesis may help advertisers, translators and teachers of English as the second language gain an insight into printed tourism advertisements in English from the perspective of the syntax, lexicology and morphology

- The study, to some extent, can give some guidelines for advertisers, translators and Vietnamese teachers of English as a foreign language about printed tourism advertisements from the perspective of the syntax, lexicology and morphology

1.6 Structural organization of the study

The study consists of five main chapters as follows:

Chapter 1 – Introduction: Gives brief information about the study such as rationale, aims and objectives, scope, significance and structure of the study

Chapter 2 – Literature: Deals with theoretical background on syntax, lexicology, morphology, advertising and advertisements

Chapter 3 - Methodology: Defines and presents the methodology of the study Determination of the samples will also be explained Methods examined will

be those for collection and analysis of the data utilized throughout the study

Chapter 4 – Linguistic features of English printed advertisements in tourism with reference of the Vietnamese equivalents: Presents some syntactic, lexical, and morphological features of printed tourism advertisements in English and draws out some similarities and differences in syntactic, lexical, and morphological features between English and Vietnamese printed ads in tourism advertisements, then indicates some implications for advertisers, translators, teachers of English as the second language

Chapter 5: Conclusions - Summaries the major findings resulted from the investigation Furthermore, presents some limitations of the study, and suggestions for further studies

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of previous studies

The study of language of advertising from a linguistic perspective has been attempted by several scholars (Leech 1966; Geis 1982; Vestergaard and Schrodder 1985; Mencher 1990, etc.) Leech (1966), in his pioneering and comprehensive study on English in advertising, has analyzed in detail different aspects pertaining to grammar, vocabulary, discourse and rhyme and rhetoric of advertising with special reference to television He has effectively related these aspects with the functional factors such as attention value, listenability/readability, memorability and selling power Illustration, display typography, vocal emphasis, prompt spelling, grammatical solecism, metaphor and paradox are some of the aspects linked with attention value Simple and colloquial style and familiar vocabulary are connected with readability Phonological regularities such as alliteration, rhythm, rhyme and jingle are related to memorability Frequent use of imperatives and superlatives are connected with selling power The distinctive property of advertising language has been closely identified with the use of clauses, phrases and words as minor sentences, which constitute a different kind of grammar called as disjunctive grammar

Geis (1982) has made an attempt to describe how language is used in American advertising, especially television advertising He has focused on certain linguistic devices that figure most prominently in advertising According to him, the

advertising claims employing the word ‘help’ as in phrases like ‘helps to achieve’ and comparative phrases like ‘more or less’ are impressive because they are

indistinguishable from the law like generic claims of scientists He has concluded that advertisers in general tend to prefer vague language rather than language with explicit empirical consequences and to prefer subjective claims to objective claims

Vestergaard and Schroder (1985) have studied the language use in commercial press advertising in relationship with communicative functions of

language such as expressive, directive, informational, contextual and poetic etc They have also identified the importance of imperatives and directive speech acts in encouraging the audience to buy the products

Mencher (1990) has looked into the aspect of vocabulary in advertising and

identified ten words as the most personal and persuasive They are: “new”, “save”,

“safety”, “proven”, “love”, “discover”, “guarantee”, “results”, “you” and

“health” The psychological impact of these words on the consumers has also been

discussed

Advertising language has also been studied by other scholars Toolan (1988) provides a list of standard features of English advertisements Similar to Leech (1966), Toolan is interested in recurrent syntactic, grammatical and lexical patterns and only briefly comments on the ideological and ethical sides of advertising, such

as its ability to “direct us towards acquisition and pleasure of unessential material goods” (Toolan, 1988:63) Dyer (1982) examines advertising as a kind of

communication in modern societies, which involves both cultural and economic context for discussion Cook (1992) investigates advertisements as a discourse type

In other words, advertising is viewed as a major discourse type in many societies This author offers a comprehensive introduction to advertising discourse by examining the language of complementary advertisements In his research, fourteen prototypical significant features of advertisements are also supplied (Cook,

1992:214) Similarly, Goddard (1998) in her book called “The language of advertising” also studies the discourse of advertising, focusing on the interaction

between textual (e.g., connotation) and contextual elements (e.g the music or the pictures or the narrative voice of the speaker)

Besides, Fries (1993) does a research on advertising language in terms of information prominence In his study, advertisements are examined in terms of Theme-Rheme structure A new term is created “N- Rheme” (for New Rheme) which refer to the last element of clause complexes In this study, N- Rhematic information and Thematic information are presented and compared to see where

information which is directly related to the persuasive goals of the advertisements (e.g., product name, product features, product functions and product estimations) is placed in clause structure The study shows that those persuasive objectives of advertising are placed at the N- Rheme position All of those studies explore advertising language as it is embedded in the context of situation

The approach chosen by Myers (1994) is rather close to that adopted by Cook (1992) In addition to identifying the significant features of advertisements, his aim is to investigate language in the society in which it is produced and to analyze how context influences the interpretation of advertisements In general, one cannot investigate advertisements without considering the relation between the language and the situation (Leech, 1966:4)

In addition, Schaffner (2001: 2013) and Goddard (1998:30-31) distinguish a number of linguistic features typical of the English advertising language: imitation

of spoken language, short, elliptical sentences, positive evaluative expressions and abundance of stylistic means affecting the audience (proverb, puns, alliteration, rhyme, etc.) The listed features of language are culture-specific in their use and intensify within the same register (Steiner,, 2004:21)

In Vietnam, there are not many comprehensive woks on the same field except for some books concerning advertising techniques as well as some BA papers and MA theses of students specializing in Marketing Studies of Linguistics Tran (2007) focuses on the contrast between English and Vietnamese advertisements with respect to different types of presupposition and implicature in the light of pragmatics in his M.A thesis Maksimainen (2011) carries out a M.A thesis on slogans in refractive surgery advertising using a descriptive analytic approach In the thesis, the author only pays attention to the investigation of syntactic, structural and grammatical features as well as some minor lexical characteristics of those slogan

Concerning studies of advertisements in tourism, there has been a noticeable PhD dissertation carried out on advertising language - “A discourse analysis of

Travel advertisements in English and Vietnamese”- which was done by Ton Nu My Nhat in 2005 This is a contrastive analysis of travel advertisements based on the theory of Functional Grammar Similarly, Ho (2011) carries out a M.A thesis on contrasting analysis of travel advertisements in terms of the layout, lexical features, cohesive and stylistic devices

All the above-mentionted researchs have partly satisfied the desires of the people who are interested in the advertising fields However, some of them have not mention all the typical linguistic features in the field of tourism advertising Besides, others have not have profound insights in terms of syntactic, lexicological and morphological features in printed tourism advertisements as it has been done in

my study as well As a result, the author do hope that this thesis will provive a full and significant approach in terms of syntax, lexicology and morphology in printed tourism advertisements

2.2 Overview of syntax

Traditionally, grammar is divided into morphology and syntax Morphology

is the grammar of words and the form of word, whereas syntax is the grammar of sentences and is connected with the way that sentences are built Miller (2000)

defines: “syntax has to do with how words are put together to build phrases, with how phrases are put together to build clauses or bigger phrases, and with how clauses are put together to build sentences” In other words, syntax is the study of

the relationship between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed

Words in English fall into a number of word classes- nouns, verbs, adjectives

and so on Word classes were traditionally defined by what they denoted – people, places, and things (nouns), actions (verbs) and properties (adjectives) Words are

grouped into phrases, which consist of a word called a head and other words

(modifiers) which are said to modify the head In the big ball, the word ball is the head and the and big are its modifiers

According to Miller (2005:5), another unit of syntax is the clause which

enables us to talk coherently about the relationship between verbs and different types of phrase An ideal clause includes a phrase referring to an action or state, a phrase or phrases referring to the people and things involved in the action or state,

and possibly phrases referring time and place For example, in clause My brother sold a car, the phrase my brother refers to the seller, sold refers to the action and a car refers to what was sold

2.2.1 Types of sentence

Words are the smallest units of syntax; however, sentences are the largest

ones A sentence is the basic unit of language that expresses a complete thought by following the grammatical rules of syntax A real sentence has at least (a minimum of) a subject and a main verb to state (declare) a compete thought In English, a

simple sentence (containing a single, independent clause) with a verb (an action),

subject (who or what is doing the action), and an object (who or what the action is done to) is written is a Subject-Verb-Object word order For example, in the

sentence “Sarah has a pen”, Sarah is the subject, has is the verb and a pen is the

object

Miller, J (2000:62) states that simple sentences in English consist of a single main clause, but many consist of several clauses Depending on what types of clause are combined, two types of multi-clause sentence are distinguishes

Compound sentences contain two or more independent clauses joined by a

coordinating conjunction The most common coordinating conjunction are: and, or, but, so For example:

I love John but John loves Sarah

The next type of multi-clause sentence is complex sentence which contains one

main clause (independent clause) and one or more other subordinate it (dependent clauses) That is, one clause, the main clause is preeminent in a complex sentence and the other clauses, the subordinate clauses, are subject to certain limitation There are some types of subordinate clauses: noun clause (modifying verbs),

adjective clause (modifying nouns) and adverbial clause (modifying whole main clauses) For example:

I did not know what had happened to her (noun clause)

The villa that we had visited was destroyed last year (adjective clause) When I went home, I realized that there was no one at home (adverbial

clause)

Talbut Onions, Charles et al (1971:2) also gives another types of sentences,

that is elliptical sentence or ellipsis Elliptical sentences lack one or some parts that

are ideally necessary to full form of a sentence as defined above Elliptical sentences play an important role in English as well as in other languages They are common in all styles of speaking and writing ,they give precision and brevity, save

time and troubles For example, in the sentence, The garden to be sold, the verb

“be” is omitted Ellipsis is most commonly used to avoid repetition Another

important reason for ellipsis is that by omitting share items attention is focused on new material For example:

A: Have you seen Charles?

B: Not yet (I have not seen him yet)

2.2.2 Voice, Tense, and Mood

Voice relates to situation, not to time but to which participants in a situation are presented to the hearer/reader and which participants are presented as central There

are two kinds of voice: active and passive Miller, J (2000:151) offers us two

example of voice:

(a) Emma and Harriet were attacked yesterday (by those ruffians)

(b) Those ruffians attacked Emma and Harriet yesterday

Example (a) is an one of the passive voice clause which mentions mainly the patient

and possibly omits the agent of action The active voice order agent-action-theme

seems to be the most common order for English speakers Passive voice verbs begin

with the copular verb be, which is followed by the main verb in its past participle form (e.g., eaten, attacked, sung) In passive voice, it is not necessary to specify the

agent The by prepositional phrase containing the agent can be omitted, as the parentheses around it indicate After copular verb be and main verb, passive voice clauses can be followed by by prepositional phrase or an embedded sentence as the

following examples:

She was surprised that her husband was killing the dog fiercely

While voice relates to situation, mainly to the participants in situation, tense

is the grammatical marking on verb that usually indicates time reference relative to either the time of speaking or the time at which some other situation was in force

Similarly, according to Miller, Jim (2000:148) there are two types of tense: present

and past tense In fact, future tense is controversial because it is achieved by verbs

will or go combined with other verbs while speakers refer to present and past time

by means of a single verbs Present and past tense both formed from verbs stems

plus suffixes –s and –ed

Mood of a verb or verb phrase indicates your attitude toward a statement as

you make it As Quirk, R et al (1973:40) stated, mood “relates the verbal action to such condition as certainty, obligation, necessity, possibility” In classification of

Miller, Jim (2000), there are there types of mood in English: indicative, imperative

and subjunctive The indicative mood is for statement of actuality or strong

probability, for example, a mouse lies on the floor Most sentences in English are the indicative mood It states a fact of some sort, or describes what happens, or

gives details about reality The imperative mood is for commands and requests

made directly: “give me a hand” One marker of the imperative is that frequently the subject does not appear in the sentence, but is only implied “(someone) give me a

hand.” Another, rare mood is the subjunctive mood which indicate a hypothetical

state, a state contrary to reality, such as a wish, a desire, or an imaginary situation It

is most often found in a clause beginning with the if It is also found in clause following a verb that express a doubt, a wish, regret, request, demand, or proposal The subjunctive mood can be expressed by using one of the modal auxiliaries which

contain could, can, may, might, will, etc For example, he could/may/might be in the house

In fact, voice, tense, and mood are not only parts of English syntax, but also belong to the morphological features of verbs Therefore, voice, tense and mood, in

this thesis, are taken into consideration in the light of morpho-syntax

Morpho-syntax is the study of grammatical categories or linguistic units that have both

morphological and syntactic properties Voice, tense and mood of verbs have

features of inflection morphology, that is with or without inflectional suffix

–s/-es/-ed, and they also show how verbs and other word classes are put together to build

clauses

2.3 Overview of Lexicology

As a mean to convey information and make people see and remember it easily Advertising should be compact, vivid, visual, emotional and attractive To realize this aim, the choice of words play a vital role The lexical features of advertising language vary great deal, sometimes serious but typically all of them aim to help products or services stand out, disarm or distract the consumer and memory Therefore, in term of lexical features, words or phrases of positive meaning are widely employed to stress the best sides of product or service This part of work will be concerned with typical characteristics of the vocabulary in advertising language including the usage of verbs, adjectives with comparative and superlative degrees, nouns, adverds, pronouns and possessive determiners, the compounding

Making life a little sweeter

All the verbs above-listed are monosyllabic and most of them have

Anglo-Saxon origin that is the common core of English vocabulary Linguistic study

shows English native speakers tend to use words of Anglo-Saxon origin, because native words have comparably stable meaning In advertising, these simple words can help win consumers by their exact, effective expression and a kind of closeness

In a research on advertising language, Leech (1966:20) presents a list of the most common lexical verbs, among which the twenty most popular are listed as followed

make, get, give, see, come, go and know are on both list, for instance

a, We will also go to the Ferrari World for a photo shoot only

b, You can see straw work and handloom weaving in the main building,

coarse oilpaper umbrella making and tub making in the mud-walled warehouse, and paper millimg, bamboo work and forgiving in other working hut

2.3.2 Adjectives, comparative and superlative degrees

Advertising language has to be vivid and appealing, so a large number of adjectives are employed in it, for they are of a word class which is more productive and abundant in

number In advertisements, adjectives render the language more colorful and enhance the attractiveness of the advertised product Therefore, adjectives are called the “blood” in building up an advertisement text

Adjectives in the advertisements often act as “the wrapping ideal goal of what is intended to be sold or provided” (Goddard, 1998:205) Jefkins (1994:202) also states that “if advertising experts were asked to use only on words, they will probably use an adjective” In general, adjectives are essential in ads because they are used to “add prestige and desirability and approval for the consumer” (Dyer, 1982:149) Leech (1966), who declares that in ad the adjective vocabulary is much richer and more common than the verb vocabulary, provides a list of the twenty most common adjectives presented below:

Among those words, “new” is the most common one, which shows people’s

desire for original ideas and fresh concepts For example:

Our newest classic

A new era in the world of cruising

While reading ads, the hyperbolic character of the language may be noticed This exaggeration leads to the increased number of comparative and superlative adjectives In general, adjectives can appear in basic, comparative and superlative forms in advertising language

In addition to favorable adjectives, advertisers tend to use comparative and superlative degrees to indicate the excellent quality of product or service However,

it is illegal for advertisers to unfairly attacked other product or ads, the advertiser do not make specific comparison between their products and others by referring to their rivals In advertising texts, such comparatives are frequently used to show the product distinctive qualities For instance:

With extra room for you in your new Swiss Business Class designed to relax

you even more

Furthermore, advertisers also use the superlative degree to describe the uniqueness of the product For example:

And when wed to over 50 EF autofocus lenses, the newest entry into the EOS

system pops the ultimate question

By using the superlative degree, the ad convey the message that the product advertised is equipped with the lasts technology, hence the best of its kind without speaking ill of others

2.3.3 The use of nouns and advebs

In English advertisement, nouns include the proper name, names of product and service and the descriptive words of products Supposing adjectives in advertisement texts tell you “How is this?” nouns then give the answers to “What is this?” and “Why is this?” In advertising, noun is called the “muscle” of the body text But there are too many nouns in English vocabulary, so it is an art how to make the selected ones function to the largest extent in a limited space of an advertisement The way of simply overlapping nouns will encounter long faces of consumers They will become indifferent towards the advertisement which contains excessive nouns As a result, the advertisement itself fails On the other hand, if copywriters are able to reasonably limit the number of nouns used in their works while at the same time make the used nouns play their best roles, the advertisement may become more attractive and persuasive, and, eventually, consumers may act as

the designers have expected Next there is an example that help further explain why refined nouns shall be used in advertisement:

To appreciate excellence One need only compare it with the average At UBS it is the fruit of exceptional professionalism, imagination and creativity

We think you will notice the difference.’

—Union Bank of Switzerland

Advertisers always say their articles and companies are different from the others’ “Different” means better or excellent It is so in this advertisement Six comparatively long and formal nouns in the text show that the bank always does business with seriousness Professionalism, imagination and creativity are usually used to praise talented persons A bank with such qualities is surely trustworthy These nouns help set up the reputation of the bank and remind people of the excellent services it offers

In a word, the more refined nouns are used in an advertisement, the more likely the advertisement may convince the consumers

Adverbs are words that add more information about the place, time, circumstances, manner, etc to a verb, an adjective, a phrase or another adverbs Adverbs of time and adverbs of place are often appeared in English ads in tourism Let us have a look at the following example:

Centrally located the hotel is accessible tomajor cultural sites such as

Kathmandu’s old Durbar Square and Swayambhunath stupa

Vivaldi park has finally geared up for first winter ski festival

2.3.4 Compounding

Compounding words are lexical units “where each unit is consisting of two

or more bases (roots)” (Kvetko, 2001:40) Some examples of compound words are world-wide, hard-working, check-in, etc In advertisement, the result is usually an adjective, as advertisers need to give a description of the product, its features, in a way which is as original and memorable as possible Leech (1966:135) states his opinion about these new ways of creating new words by saying: “Perhaps the most

conspicuous characteristic of advertising language to a casual reader or listener is an abundance and variety of adjectival compounds”

Compound words are not restricted by word order and can be flexibly put together to form new words Therefore, they are increasingly used by the copywriters Compound words can be divided into two major groups:

present + participle + adjective

noun + present participle

noun + past participle

adjective + present participle

adjective / adverb +past participle

Advertisement copy writers prefer compound words very much, with which they can create a lot of new vivid and striking words For example:

The hotel has a cozy in-house restaurant, as well as a relaxing garden and

rooftop terrace overlooking Kathmandu city and hills beyond

2.4 Overview of Morphology

As defined by Fromkin (2000), “morphology is the study of words and their structure” Words are meaningful linguistic unit that can be combined to form

phrases or sentences Words are not the smallest units of meaning They may be

simple or complex Fromkin (2000) also gives an example of a word carefully This

word form can be segmented into the smallest constituent element: care-ful-ly Or the word headmaster includes two smaller words, head and master Each of the

words in this compound and the other smaller word parts which cannot be divided

into even smaller parts is called morpheme Bauer (1983) defines “a morpheme may

be defined as the minimal unit of grammatical unit” It cannot be divided without

altering or destroying its meaning Some words consist of more than one

morpheme For example, the word unfriend consists of two morpheme: the stem friend and the negative prefix un-

Similarly to the other authors, Carstairs-McCathy (2002:21) divides

morphological units into two categories: free and bound morpheme When a

morpheme stands on its own in an appropriate context and constitutes an utterance

by itself, it is termed as “free” And when a morpheme cannot stand in isolation, it

is “bound” For example, care in carefully can stand alone, but –ful and –ly cannot

stand alone in appropriate context

Both Bauer (1983) and Carstairs-McCarthy (2002) agreed that English words

contain morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational

morphemes In the words reasonable, unreasonable or reasonless, the root reason

remains and cannot be analyzed any further after removing all such other affixes as

–able, un- and –less The root morpheme is the primary element of the word,

convey its essential lexical meaning and contains tangible meaning Affixational

morphemes or affixes are inflectional or derivational morphs added to the roots

Carstairs-McCarthy (2002:20) also defines that “those affixes that precede the root (like en- in enlarge) are called prefixes, while those that follow it are called suffixes (like –ance in performance, -ness in whiteness)”

In terms of word formation, morphology has three main subdivisions,

namely inflection, derivation and compounding Inflection deals with patterns of

word structure that are determined by the role of words in sentences Derivation created new word structure that are determined by the role of words in sentences Derivation created new words with different meanings Compounding is the combination of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs or prepositions to form complex words The definitions, classification and examples in the following sections are

adapted from the description of these main processes of word formation by Carstairs-McCarthy (2002) This description is supplemented with other consideration from the literature

2.4.1 Inflection

According to Carstairs-McCarthy (2002:30), inflection deals with the inflected

forms of words, it is the kind of variation that words exhibit on the basis of their

grammatical context Inflection is viewed as the process of adding very general

meaning to existing words, not as the creation of new words There are eight productive inflectional affixes (suffixes) in English

Verb: 3rd person singular present -s/es like/likes, watch/watches

Progressive aspect -ing learn/learning, watch/watching Adjectives: comparative -er small/smaller, thin/thinner

2.4.2 Derivation

Derivation is the process by which affixes combine with roots to create new

words (e.g in industrialize, worker, ‘-ize’ and ‘-er’ are derivational suffixes)

Derivation is viewed as using existing words to make new words Derivation is concerned with one kind of relationship between lexemes (Carstairs-McCathy,

2002:44) Affixed can change the word meaning (for example, prefix –im in impossible) or the word class (for example, suffix –ity, in nationality, change

adjective into noun)

As Carstairs-McCarthy (2002) concerns, there are a number of prefixes and suffixes to build up new words For example, a noun can be built from other nouns

by adding suffixes: -let (outlet), -ess (stewardess), -ine (heroine), -er (viewer), -ian (historian), -ship (relationship), -hood (brotherhood), etc A noun can also be derived from members of other word classes, such as from adjectives (-ity in purity,

-ness in rudeness, -ism in racialism ) or from verbs (-ance in performance, -ment in employment, -ing in painting…) An adjective is derived from other adjectives (-un

in unpredictable, -il in illegal…), or from members of other word classes (-able in eatable, -ent in dependent…) A verb is also built up from other verbs (re- in redo, un- in unlike, en- in enlarge…) or from members of other word classes (de- in defrost, -ise in modernize)

2.4.3 Compounding

Carstairs-McCarthy (2002-59) states that while inflection and derivation are the ways to form words from other words, mainly by means of affixes, compounding is the way to form words by combining roots A compound word is a word that is formed from two or more simple or complex words (e.g bookcase, signboard) There are some common compounding patterns:

Word classes Formation Example

Compound verbs Verb-Verb Stir-fry

Compound nouns Verb-Noun Swear-word

Adjective-Noun Dry-measure Preposition-Noun In-patient

Table 2.1: Common compounding patterns (adapted from Carstairs-McCarthy

(2002:60))

2.5 Advertising and advertisements

2.5.1 Advertising

a) Definition

Advertising is an inevitable part of our modern market economy society

whose outstanding feature is its competitive fight Cook (192:182) states that

advertising is not some “external curiosity” into which we investigate but it is

“something of which we are part, and which is part of us”

From a linguistic perspective, Adler (1985:25) defines advertising as “a communicative situation” in which language can function in reference to the

purposes and real possibilities of this type of communication With a different view

on advertising, Goddard (1998:10) focuses on the aim of advertising with these words below:

Advertising is not just about the commercial promotion of branched products but can also encompass the ideas of text whose intention is to enhance the image of

an individual, group or organization

An advertisement is identified as a public notice so as to spread information with the intention of promoting the sales of goods and services in the (Vestergaard and Schroder, 1985:2)

b) The functions of advertising and its language

Many people may think that advertising has only one function, which is to sell the products or services being advertised; however, in fact, advertising has several functions, which, according to Bovee and Arens (1986), can be divided into five:

1 Marketing function Marketing mix, which consists of the four Ps—

product, price, place, and promotion—is a well-known marketing strategy which companies use to increase their sales or profits Advertising is part of promotion, and its function is to sell and make the target audience accept the companies’ products, services, or ideas

2 Communication function Every advertisement communicates some

information about a product, its features, and its location of sale to a group of people

3 Education function People learn about products from advertising They

learn how those products can improve their lives However, the purpose of advertisers in educating people is to move them to buy their products or services

4 Economic function Advertising can give a great deal of information about

available products or services to many people at once This can save costs of distribution and reduce the task of personal selling Instead, companies can make greater profits to be invested into more capital equipment and jobs

5 Social function Advertising helps improve the standards of living of

people around the world In addition, advertising has the power to convince people

to give continuous financial support and volunteer assistance to many noncommercial organizations

In short, advertising has the main function to communicate information oriented towards selling products or services However, this is not its only function

It also disseminates information in a manner of education that promotes social development to a lot of people and at low cost

According to Leech (1978:47-50), as a tool for communication, language has five functions First, language has the informative function to convey information to people through words, expressions or gestures It also has the expressive function to express human feelings, attitudes, etc The directive function of language enables us

to influence the behavior or attitudes of others, such as commands and requests The aesthetic function is used for the sake of linguistic artifact itself Last but not least, language has the phatic function to keep social relationships in good repair All the different kinds of functions of language are highly effective in advertising For example, the informative and expressive functions are used in advertising to convey the messages about the products or services, while the directive function influences the attitudes and behaviors of consumers and persuade them to purchase the products or enjoy the services

c) Types of advertising

Different criteria can be used to classify advertisements Geographically,

there are local, national and international advertisements In terms of advertising

medium, there are print and electronic ones Besides, as for their purposes,

advertisements can be classified into commercial and non-commercial categories

The basic difference is that “commercial consumer advertising is directed towards a mass audience with the aim of promoting sales of a commercial product or service” (Leech, 1966:25) while the non-commercial is produced by governmental agencies

or associations In other words, the most important aim of commercial advertising is

to sell product or service whereas the objectives of the non-commercial one is to

influence the public through political propaganda or through the contribution to charity Even though there exist other types of advertising, it is the commercial one which uses the largest amount of money, professional skills as well as space in the media This is also the type the analysis will focus on Vetergaard and Schroder (1986, p1-2) consider three styles commercial advertising:

- Prestige or good-will advertising – where firms advertise a name or an image

- Industrial or trade advertising – where a firm advertises its products to other firms

- Consumer advertising – where a firm advertises its products to other consumers

Most television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisements belong to consumer advertising The consumer advertising includes alcoholic ads, cigarette ads, and other products which are used and purchased by ordinary people To this kind of advertisements, most people have developed a kind of ambivalent psychology On the one hand, they are bored with the endless advertisements hiding

on the newspapers and magazines, clamoring on the radio, or dazzling on the TV

On the other hand, they still need the information to guide their purchasing Therefore, to attract the consumers’ attention is the most important task for an

advertising copywriter All advertising slogans which are analyzed in this study belong to consumer advertising category

Non-commercial advertising can be also called Public Interest Advertising

The general objective of public interest advertising is to form, persuade, or remind people of the particular idea, cause, or philosophy being advertised This kind of advertising is often used by non-business institutions, such as schools, hospitals and charitable organizations Due to the fact that public interest advertising is nonprofit, the words it uses are much more different from the 3 other kinds of commercial advertising Its purpose is not to urge readers to spend their money, but to disseminate a kind of concept or advocate a social ethic

Moreover, advertising can be classified based according to the type of medium: TV, radio, brochures, leaflets, magazines, newspapers and other printed material, the Internet and Direct Mail advertising or outdoor advertising, etc

2.5.2 Advertisements

The word “advertisement” is a word from the Latin root “advertere”, which means “to turn towards” The central controlling idea behind advertising “appears to be the factor of conscious intention behind the text, with the aim of benefiting the originator materially or through some other less tangible gain, such as enhancement of status or image” (Angela Goddard 1998:7) This means that the advertiser, i.e the person from whom the advert

is emanating, may not necessarily have some material or financial gains in mind behind an ad, nevertheless there is some other abstract thing he is selling in the form of an idea which turns around to benefit him and/or a corporate body

According to Fletcher (1988), advertisement is a “message specified by its originator, carried by a communications system and intended to influence and/or inform an unknown audience” (in Hart 1991:175) Again, we find an odious and obvious purpose of ad being emphasized all over to influence an unknown audience Ads are meant to have some effect on whosoever comes across it and reads it

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Study- governing orientations

3 What suggestions should be made for advertisers, translators, teachers of English as the second language from syntactic, lexical and morphological features of printed tourism advertisements?

3.1.2 Research setting

To complete these objectives, there were 40 printed tourism advertisements collected from some sources After that, a selection was carried out The ones that did not have lexical, semantic, morphological and syntactic features were left out and the material was shortened to 20 advertisements Among them, there are advertisements from the prestigious travel agents domestically and internationally

Sources from syntactic, lexical and morphological and studies include tourism brochures, leaflets and itineraries) that was collected from the Vietnam International Travel Mart - Hanoi VITM 2016 at Vietnam Exhibition Fair Centre (148 Giang Vo, Hanoi) The study of lexicology focuses on verbs; adjectives, comparative and superlative degrees; nouns and adverbs; pronouns and compounding, the investigation of morphology is explored based on inflection, derivation and compounding; the one of syntax is done on sentence types, voice and

mood in a wide range of tourism products and services and thus the data collection and data analysis deal with cases of lexicology, morphology and syntax

Combining descriptive and quantitative methods, the thesis will treat the most common features of syntax, lexicology and morphology in English printed tourism advertisements and the comparison in syntax, lexicology, and morphology between English printed tourism advertisements

3.1.3 Research approach

The main aims of the study are investigating the syntactic, lexical and morphological features in the English and Vietnamese printed advertisements in tourism as well as discover the similarities and differences of these features between the two languages The author uses the quantitative approach in order to achieve these aims

3.1.4 Principles/criteria for data collection and data analysis

Of 40 English and Vietnamese printed tourism advertisements, 20 tourism advertisements were collected from the reputable domestic enterprises, travel companies namely Ben Thanh tourist, Vietravel, Viet Media travel; and tourism promotion agencies from other countries such as England, Australia, America, etc having representative offices in Vietnam

The reason for choosing the tourism advertisements of these companies and agencies as the main component of the material is that they are the most prestigious enterprises in tourism in Vietnam, creating the prominent products and services have attracted the large number of tourist in the recent years Their advertisements are directed towards the vast majority of the society As a matter of fact, no special knowledge would be required to understand them

The thesis focuses on the lexicology, morphology and syntax of the printed advertisements only, the most prominent linguistic features of advertising Besides, the specifications, prices of the product, promotion of the products should not be taken into consideration

The study of lexicology is carried out on verbs; adjectives, comparative and superlative degrees; nouns and adverbs; pronouns and compounding, the investigation of morphological is explored based on inflection, derivation and compounding, and that of syntactic features is done on sentence types, voice and mood in a wide range of tourism products and services and thus the data collection and data analysis deal with cases of lexicology, morphology and syntax

3.2 Study method

3.2.1 Major methods vs supporting methods

In order to investigating and point out the similarities and differences of printed tourism advertisements in English and Vietnamese, methods employed in the study are descriptive method as the major one, and comparative method as the supporting one

Descriptive method involves in finding out the most distinguished linguistic features used in the English and Vietnamese printed tourism ads by describing the features of lexicology, syntax and morphology in quantitative data Comparative method is also used to assist to the major method in the study to find out the similarities and differences in lexicology, syntax and morphology of English printed advertisements with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents However, it is more concerned with similarities than differencies between these two languages Therefore, the considerations, remarks, consumptions, comments and conclusions in the thesis are mainly based on statistics, description and comparison of the collected data The datas relating to lexicology, syntax and morphology of printed tourism advertisements in both English and Vietnamese publications are collected from brochures, leaflets and initeraries on English and Vietnamese languages They are then analyzed and compared in terms of lexicology, syntax and morphology

3.2.2 Data collection techniques

A collection of 40 advertisements of tourism products and services is collected As for the source, all the advertisements are taken from the reputable enterprises and tourism companies in Vietnam, and the prestigious promotion

agencies from other countries such as England, Australia, America, etc having representative offices in Vietnam in the forms of itineraries, brochures and leaflets

40 samples have been randomly chosen to analyze Among these 40 samples, to get the exact and best data, 20 samples have been chosen (10 of English and 10 of Vietnam) that have the great numbers of samples concerning the aspects of syntax, lexicology and morphology They are to be investigated from the cross-linguistic perspective to study the lexical, syntactic and morphological features in ads of two languages

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques

As mentioned above, this thesis is mainly carried out by the descriptive method with the quantitative approach The samples were mainly analyzed through mechanical techniques relying on counting words, phrases, sentences or coincidences of tokens within the data Data analysis deals with the cases of syntax, lexicology and morphology with the steps carried out here including:

- Collecting 40 printed tourism advertisements in the forms of itineraries, brochures and leaflets both in English and Vietnamese

- Screening the identical ads or the ones that have few distinguished features of lexicology, syntax and morphology, finally selecting 20 ads (10 of English and 10 of Vietnamese)

- Describing syntactic, lexical and morphological features in English tourism advertisements by using the tables to have statistics relating to the distinguished features of syntax, lexicology and morphology in English printed tourism advertisements

- Comparing these features in both English and Vietnamese printed tourism advertisements to find out the similarities and differences in syntax, lexicology and morphology of English printed advertisements with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents

3.3 Chapter summary

This chapter focuses on introducing the methodology of the thesis; in other words, the methods of collecting data for analysis This chapter employs the descriptive and comparative methods with the quantitative approach to collect and analyze the data and then find out the similarities and differences in both English and Vietnamese printed tourism advertisements This chapter also aims at exploring the following issues respectively: research questions; research method; data collection instruments and data analysis techniques