Reiteration in the languege of advertising = phép lặp trong ngôn ngữ quảng cáo

Among the lexical devices, reiteration is considered the most common one appearing in advertising texts.. Aims of the Study The thesis has been carried out with aims to: - Emphasize the

VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT

*************

GRADUATION THESIS

REITERATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF

ADVERTISING

(PhÐp lÆp trong ng«n ng÷ qu¶ng c¸o)

Field: English linguistics

Supervisor: Ng« §×nh Ph¬ng Ph.D.

Student: Hå ThÞ HiÒn Class: K46-A1- English

Vinh, 2009

Firstly, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my supervisor, Mr Ngô Đình Phương, Ph.D for his great supports, precious comments and enormously essential corrections during the time I have done the thesis Without his helps, the thesis could not have been completed

Secondly, I am grateful to my lecturers in the Foreign Languages Department, Vinh University for providing me a variety of valuable documents, for their enthusiastic encouragement and their great helps during the passing time Especially, I would like to show my deep thanks to some old students of our department who used to be students

of K44 B1 – English for their important suggestions and encouragement

Thirdly, my profound thanks come to my lecturer, Ms Sandy Gannon, for her great ideas and for providing me good information and integral sources of documents which has served as an important tool for me to carry out the paper

Finally, I would like to thank my dear family and my good friends who have been always beside me and helped me to overcome difficulties in order that I could complete the thesis

Vinh, May 2009

Hồ Thị Hiền

TABLE OF CONTENT

Table of Content iii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 4

1.1 Theory of discourse 4

1.2 Text and discourse 5

1.3 Concept of cohesion 6

1.4 Types of cohesive devices 6

1.5 Lexical cohesion 7

1.5.1 Concept of lexical cohesion 7

1.5.2 Types of lexical cohesion 8

1.6 Reiteration 8

1.6.1 Concept of reiteration 8

1.6.2 Types of reiteration…… 9

1.6.2.1 Repetition 9

1.6.2.2 Synonyms and near-synonyms 9

1.6.2.3 Superordinates 9

1.6.2.4 General words 10

1.7 Advertising 10

1.7.1 Definition of advertising 10

1.7.2 Classification of advertising 11

1.7.3 The language of advertising 12

1.7.3.1 Roles of language in advertising 12

1.7.3.2 Characteristics of language in advertising 12

Chapter 2: Reiteration in the Language of Advertising 16

2.1 General structure of a print advertising text 16

2.2 Reiteration as seen in types 16

2.2.1 Repetition 16

2.2.1.1 Sounds 17

2.2.1.2 Words 19

2.2.1.3 Phrase structure 22

2.2.2 Synonyms and near- synonyms 24

2.2.3 Superordinates 24

2.2.4 General words 26

2.3 Reiteration in separated parts of a print advertising text 27

2.3.1 Headline 27

2.3.2 Body copy 29

2.3.3 Slogan 32

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions 34

3.1 Majors findings 34

3.2 Effectiveness of using reiteration in the language of advertising 35

PART C: CONCLUSION 37

1 Summary 37

2 Application 38

3 Suggestions for further studies 39

Magazines and newspapers are regarded as the most reliable means to advertise By using these means, advertisers have enough space to express their messages to specified customers Those pieces of advertisement will exist for a longer time because the readers can save them or cut them to stick in other places That is why print advertisements should

be designed in nice images and impressive language

Language in advertising is characterized not only by being short, informative, persuasive, and impressive but by also being coherent Hence, cohesive devices (grammatical and lexical devices) serve as integral means in pieces of advertisements Traditionally, almost learners' attention has been drawn onto grammatical devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction) and very little on lexical ones despite the fact that the later can contribute a significant part on creating coherence Among the lexical devices, reiteration is considered the most common one appearing in advertising texts Being so interested in the language of advertisement and reiteration in English, we find it very interesting and appropriate to emphasize what people have already known about the features of the products to draw messages onto their mind.

For all reasons above, we have chosen the topic "Reiteration in the language of

advertising."

2 Aims of the Study

The thesis has been carried out with aims to:

- Emphasize the important role of reiteration in the language of advertising

- Study the effectiveness created in advertisements by using reiteration

- Suggest some practical applications on reiteration in teaching and learning English

3 Scope of the Study

We have no ambition to cover all kinds of lexical devices and all kinds of advertisements The thesis only focuses on studying:

- Four types of reiteration provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including repetition, synonyms, superordinates and general words

- Print advertising texts available in some popular magazines and newspapers in the United States and Vietnam such as People, Newsweek, The Oprah, Real Simple, The

Guide, The TiÒn Phong, The Thanh Niªn, The Hoa häc Trß, TiÕp ThÞ Gia §×nh …

4 Methods of the Study

The thesis is carried out through analytical and synthetical methods The quality research design is used and supported by an empirical of data collected

5 Design of the Study

The thesis includes three main parts:

Part A: Introduction

This part will introduce the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study

Part B: Developement

This part consists of three chapters:

Chapter 1: Theoretical background

Chapter 2: Reiteration in the language of advertising

Chapter 3: Findings and discussions

Part C: Conclusion

This part summarizes what have been disscussed so far and also provides some practical applications as well as some suggestions for further studies

Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term "discourse" has been defined in many different ways A discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his Introducing Discourse Analysis (1995), "is a stretch of language that may be longer than one sentence." Barbara Johnstone (2002: 2) claims that:

"discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language."

In this thesis the notion by Guy Cook (1995: 198), seeing discourse as "stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive" seems to be the best to adopt

1.2 Text and Discourse

The distinction between the two terms "text" and "discourse" are rather controversial To some linguists, the two terms can be used interchangeably, as they state:(1) A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be longer than a sentence

(Nunan, 1995: 1)

(2) A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue It may be any thing from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all day discussion in a committee

(Crystal, 1992: 72)

On the other hand, some linguists suppose that it is worth seeing the two terms in different ways Widdowson (1979), for instance, suggests that: One way sees it [language beyond the limit of sentence] a text, a collection of formal objects held by the pattern of equivalences, or frequencies, or by cohesive devices The other way sees language as

discourse, a use of sentences to perform act of communication which cohere into large

communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication

(Quoted in §Æng H÷u Phíc, 2006 – B.A Thesis)

Widdowson's differentiation is rather similar with that of Brown and Yule (1983: 6) who "use a text as a technical term to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act"; and that of Crystal (1992: 25) defining discourse as "a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative" and text as "a piece of naturally occurring spoken written or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis It is often a language unit with definable function, such as a conversation, a poster."

1.3 Concept of Cohesion

The concept of cohesion is tightly connected with discourse According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4), cohesion is a semantic concept that refers to the relation of meaning

existing within the text, and that differs it from what is not a text More specifically, they stated that "Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it." (1976: 4)

A group of sentences often constitutes a text but it is not the case that any set of sentences can compose a text To be a text, such a text must consist of related elements This condition is referred to as texture, which is widely agreed to be created by cohesion

Cohesion, thereby can be called formal links between elements (within or beyond sentence-boundaries) that makes a text cohesive It is much involved, but not coincided,

with another notion known as coherence

1.4 Types of Cohesive Devices

In this thesis, we adopt the division of cohesive device by Halliday and Hasan (1976), which can be illustrated by the graph as follows:

Reference Grammatical cohesion Substitution

Ellipsis Conjunction

Linguists have introduced similar definitions of lexical cohesion For example, Halliday and Hasan (1976:318) hold that lexical cohesion is established through the structure of the lexis, or vocabulary Raphael Salkie (1993:28) similarly stated "lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a text are semantically related in some way - in other words, they are related in terms of their meaning".

Hence, lexical cohesion can most generally be seen as the textual cohesion

existing between linguistic elements in discourse thanks to the exploitation of semantic relations of lexis.

1.5.2 Types of Lexical Cohesion

As can be seen from the graph given above, there are two types of lexical cohesion: Collocation and Reiteration Collocation is not included in the scope of the thesis; however, it is worthy mentioning a clear difference from reiteration

Collocation is concerned with the tendency of linguistic items to co-occur in the same lexical environment without depending on any semantic relations

Ex: "Put that gun down," said one of the lawyers at the table His name was Rafter

He was a hard man in the courtroom, maybe the hardest lawyer that Drake and Sweeney had

(Grisham, 2001:1)

It is unlikely to define which semantic relation the two words "lawyers" and

"courtroom" hold, but there is apparently difference between them and a strong collocation bond This type of lexical cohesion is distinct from, though related to, reiteration

1.6 Reiteration

1.6.1 Concept of Reiteration

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), "Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the discourse by direct repetition or else reasserting its meaning by

exploiting lexical relations." It is a major relation between vocabulary items in texts which makes the texts coherent.

1.6.2 Types of Reiteration

According to Halliday and Hasan, reiteration can be divided into four main types:

Repetition, Synonyms or near - synonyms, Superordinates and General words.

1.6.2.1 Repetition

Repetition is the way we repeat exactly the lexical items mentioned in the previous text Repetitions of nouns, adjectives, verbs, proper names are the most commonly used in texts

Ex: “There is a boy climbing that tree The boy is going to fall if he doesn’t take care.”

(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 279)

The second "boy" is directly repeated and this is called repetition

1.6.2.2 Synonyms and Near - synonyms

Nguyen Hoa in his book "An introduction to Semantics" defines that "synonyms are actually words of the same parts of speech which have similar meaning, but not identical meanings They may share a similar connotational or denotational meaning

Ex: There is a boy climbing that tree The lad’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.”

(Halliday and Hasan 1976: 280)

"Lad" and "boy" are both general nouns and have similar denotational meaning They are called synonyms

1.6.2.3 Superordinates

According to Nguyen Hoa, superordinate is the member whose extensional meaning is broad enough to cover the hyponym.

Ex: There is a boy climbing that tree The child’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.”

(Halliday and Hasan 1976: 280)

The sense of "child" includes the sense of "boy" Therefore, child is the superordinate of boy

1.6.2.4 General Words

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 247), "general words are concerned with only general nouns for the reality that not all general words are used cohesively; in fact, only the nouns are."

Ex: There is a boy climbing that tree The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care.”

(Halliday and Hasan 1976: 280)

“Idiot” refers to people in general This general noun reiterates the sense of “boy” Thus, reiteration takes the form of a general word "idiot"

1.7 Advertising

1.7.1 Definition of Advertising

According to Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary, "Advertising is defined as an action to describe a product or service publicly in order to persuade people to buy or use it." Fair Fax Cone, a famous advertiser, has said that:" Advertising is something you do when you cannot go to see somebody."

The A.M.A (American Marketing Associating) had given a definition to the word advertising as" Any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods,

or services by an identified sponsor." Advertising, therefore, has four basic features as follow:

It is a paid presentation

It is a non-personal presentation

It promotes specific ideas, goods, services through the mass media channels of communication designed to reach the public These may include Television, newspaper, magazines, radio, billboard and so on.

The newest definition of advertising is given by Brett Robbs on Online Encyclopedia in 2005 considered advertising as “a form of commercial mass communication designed to promote the sale of a product or service, or a message on behalf of an institution, organization, or candidate for political office.”

The second way to classify advertisements is based on the methods of advertising through a wide variety of media Advertisements exist under various forms and in order to reach consumer, advertisers employ a wide variety of media According to Advertising Age, a trade advertising magazine, in the United States, the order of the most popular media, as measured by the cost of advertising is that television, newspapers, direct mail,

radio, magazines, the Internet, outdoor advertising

1.7.3 The Language of Advertising

1.7.3.1 Role of Language in Advertising

It is undeniable that language plays a key role in advertising Although there is such

an emphasis placed on image in print advertising, language is also inevitably essential Since magazine advertisements cannot rely on moving or talking images as the television, they obviously count on language as their means of persuasion Therefore, language must

be effective and persuasive enough to visualize the message content

In order to enhance the appeal of an advertisement, advertising writers pay much attention not only to such expressive devices as plates, color and the layout of a printed page, but also to the choice of words or phrases, to make an advertisement beautiful and attractive

1.7.3.2 Characteristics of Language in Advertising

Language, as explained above, plays a key role in advertising, attracting readers' attention and persuading them to buy the product As a special practical style, it has its own features in the creative design or in the use of words

Advertising language is considered one of the most populous and pervasive modern discourse types Concentrating particularly on language, authors present a useful framework for examining the ideological work that advertisements do The framework has

three parts which are building images, building relations and building consumers.

In what follow, we will look at how language is used to build images, relations and consumers

(Quoted in Ng« ThÞ Ph¬ng Lª, 2006 – B.A thesis)

Building images

A key component of the way the products and services are advertised, and their images built, is through the way they are named and described In order to create the reality for an advertisement, the advertising writers tend to use simple statements to assert facts about the world

Vocabulary is clearly the central element in building the image of a product In advertising language, vocabulary has three general characteristics which are familiar,

positive and memorable Now we will look at each characteristic and see how they work

in the context of advertising

If the consumers are to identify with the product, even collaborate to build the image, vocabulary should be familiar and everyday Researchers have pointed out the familiarity of words in adverts Toolan (1988:57) and Leech (1966) claim that the verb

can is the most common modal verb found in advertising, as it conveys both possibility

and permission Other common verbs that can be found in advertising are: make, get, give,

have, see, buy, come, go, know, keep, look Adjectives are used popularly include new, best/better/good, free, fresh, delicious, full, sure, clean, wonderful.

In advertising language, negative meanings are avoided, that is why the copywriters often choose words that have positive meaning Clearly, words that evoke positive associations are more persuasive that those that evoke negative one because advertising normally emphasizes the positive side of the product

Ex: It s 3 free ’ classic Penn dining chairs worth $, 185

Instead of using negative words such as dated or old-fashioned, the copywriter used classic that has a better connotational meaning

Lastly, in order to build the image, adverts have to be memorable, and vocabulary choice can be used to achieve this by making use of linguistic structure Exploitation of sound, such as alliteration or repetition or rhymes, is one of the common devices A second level of linguistic structure can take place in orthography: the spelling and

appearance of word, for example: The evocative of BeoVision 7 Coined words, for

instance Nefficiency (Neff), also make good effect, often through coining new words using part of old ones Syntax can be unusual and ungrammatical, grammatical rules are made to be break in the language of advertising

Building relations

In magazine advertising, using features of face-to-face conversation is one of the key techniques It helps to create ordinariness, personal relationship and to downplay power differences

Ex: Think you can crack us? Well, do ya, punk? ‘

Actually, advertising is impersonal, mass communication In order to reduce the impersonality and shorten the distance between the product or producer and the consumers, advertisers often address consumers directly “you” and call themselves “we,

us” It gives the feeling that the producer is talking face to face to the consumers, making sincere promises, honest recommendations and commitments

Ex: - We leap You soar (Standard Chartered)

- We are 66,000 people in 50 countries And everyday, a two-person operation You and us (UBS)

Another technique applied to create the face-to-face interaction is to use “how about ” and

“rhetorical question” Both of them are common devices in everyday conversation and they seem to invite suggestions Besides, relationship between advertisers and consumers can be set up through the use of imperatives and interrogatives For example: Colour

your business (Epson); Doesn t feel like all that synergistic, does it?’ (SYBASE)

Toolan (1988:54) describes “an intimate, interactive addressing of the reader, with ample use of interrogative and imperative forms, in conscious effort to engage the reader rather than simply convey information” as one of the main emphases of advertising language in printed press

Building consumers

In building consumers, adverts construct “positions” for consumers that will give them a good fit with the product being advertised “Positioning consumers can be done by presupposing that a consumer has certain knowledge, beliefs, aspirations, income, habits

or possessions or implying that they should have them.” (Judy Delin, (2000:131)

Positioning of the reader can be done through the choice of vocabulary, using words that are familiar to the reader

Ex: blisserama (Tampax)

Expressions that implicate meanings unstated explicitly are the most pervasive positioning devices It is a part of the natural processing of language to draw inferences from what is heard or read Conventional implicature occurs when, through the use of a particular word or phrase, an implicature is drawn

Ex: No picture is more accurate (Pioneer) implies that Pioneer pure vision gives consumers the most accurate picture.

Chapter 2: REITERATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF PRINT

ADVERTISING

2.1 General Structure of an Advertising Text

An advertiser might be trying to persuade customers to buy something Therefore, the copywriters try mainly to attract attention, not to impart knowledge Through each company's typical choice of color, style of font, images, language, advertisers can present their ideas, describe the unique characteristics of their products and catch the readers' attention in different ways However, how to design an advertising text is not easy at all Obviously, there is not a certain frame for designing such a text The advertisers are free

to show their intention, to express their creation in ad skills Under the general category of text, there are five main parts included in an ad text: Brand name (Honda), logo, headline (Be You with Honda), body copy, slogan (The Power of Dreams) Each part

contributes an integral role in making an advertisement successful The power of language lies in the way advertisers make headline, body copy and slogan The tendency of using lexical devices varies in each part

2.2 Reiteration as Seen in Types

rhyming headlines or slogans

• Sounds

One of the most important features of a good advertisement is creating funny and memorable messages Exploiting repetition in advertising has an incredible effect It makes the messages more interesting and easier to remember Therefore, repetition of sounds is very commonly applied in creating advertising headlines and slogans Repetition

of sounds can be classified into three terms: rhyme, chime and alliteration

more information flows into their head, they perceive the rhymed statement to be more accurate than a non-rhymed one

Ex: - “Don’t mess that dress.”

(Ban deodorant)

- “Gi u à canxi, h¬ng mªly.

(Sao S¸ng instant noodles)

In these slogans, “mess dress – ” and canxi “ – mªly ” are the pairs of rhyme, using rhymed sounds in the slogans has a strong effect on making the statements rythmical, funny and easy to remember This is a very useful way to draw the advertising messages in the readers’ mind and to create good condition to bring the products closer to the clients

A particular feature is that the rhymed sounds are the name of the product or its important characteristics Therefore, whenever they call out the utterances with rhymed sounds they can pay attention to those features or the brand that encourage the customers’ curiosity and they will want to try using the product

• Chime

Chime is the way that key words in a phrase begin with identical consonants

Ex: “The best in business.”

(AT & T telecommunication)

• Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of three or more vowels or consonants It is originated

in Latin that means “putting letters together”

Ex: - “What we want is Watneys.”

(Watney’s beer)

- “You’ll never put a better bit of butter on your knife.”

(Country Life butter)

- “The soul selects her own society.”

(Emily Dickinson)

- “The daily diary of the American dream.”

(The Wall Street Journal)

Alliteration is applied to create longer statements “What- we- want Watneys – ” are four words beginning with the same consonant “w” helps customers remember long headlines or slogans more easily, particularly the content words that the advertisers desire

to emphasize on

2.2.1.2 Words

This is the way to repeat exactly one word Repetition of words is very popularly used in advertising text The advertisers want to emphasize on some prominent features of their products, they repeat many times those words describing the typical characteristics Our research shows that repetition of words is exploited in headline, copy body and slogan, and the repeated parts of speech used in this technique are various, they can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc

Ex: - “Ameristar More casino More fun.”

(Ameristar Casino Kansas City)

- “Mua c ngà nhiều, cơ hội c ng à cao.”

(Panasonic)

- “Bệnh tật v tai nạn l những rủi ro đôi khi không thể tránh khỏi trong cuộc sốngà àcủa mỗi chúng ta v đi kèm với chúng l nhiều nỗià à lo: lo mất nguồn thu nhập, lo không