Pragmatic Analysis of the Advertising Language. Abstract

7/28/2019 Pragmatic Analysis of the Advertising Language. Abstract

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Shayma Abdulla Al-AzzawiPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE ADVERTISING LANGUAGE An Abstract

PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THEADVERTISING LANGUAGE

An Abstract

Shayma Abdulla Al-Azzawi

Supervised byAsst. Prof. Abdul Karim Fadhil, Ph.D

Instr. Salam Hamid Abbas. Ph.D.

1. Preliminary RemarksWith the rocketing development of technology and

commercial economy, the design and types of advertisement

vary greatly. In the mean time, the social role that

advertisements play attracts more and more attentive eyes in

the society. It is clearly seen that advertisement makers exert

great effort in the use of language, which becomes more and

more delicate, attractive, and offers much for thought.

Advertising language, considered as having interactional

function, does not merely inform the customers about what is

sold, but also to attract the customers attention so that an act

of purchasing will expectedly follow from the language

expression. Thus, it is evident that the advertisers attempt to


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establish a good social relationship with the customers.Therefore, the charming specialty and exquisite form of

advertising language contribute considerably to the selling of

products. The study and analysis of advertising language, as

well, becomes a new item for language learners. The

following will mainly focus on the analysis of advertising

language from the pragmatic aspect, especially Grices

cooperative principle.

The pragmatic implicature in advertisement use still

has many good and typical examples. Through the analysis

in the light of the cooperative priniciple, it is better to

understand the advertising language and help develop the

design of new and more exquisite advertisements. In the

meantime, it can be seen that the implicature of most

advertisements can be controlled and give consumers enough

space to deduct the deep and non-conventional implications

from the literal semantic meanings.

The hypothesis of the research states that, In

advertisement, implicature and entailment are made use of in

a way that serves the purposes of the advertiser irrespective

of whether the addressees entailment is the same as that of

the advertiser or not.


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Advertising often takes advantage of implicature tomake claims that people interpret to be more powerful than

they really are. It has been shown that understanding

advertisements is not merely a matter of decoding, and that

the interpretation of advertisements is best approached from

a pragmatic point of view. However, it has been suggested

that pragmatists who have analysed advertisements do not

present a convincing and thorough account of the nature and

role of context. Instead they attempt to make use of notions

of goal-bounded activities or sets of rules, which are

demonstrably insufficient to explain how audiences

understand advertisements. In short, existing approaches to

the language of advertising share the defects of the theories

of communication on which they are based.

2. The Communicative Form of The Advertising

Language

From the communicative point of view, one piece of

advertisement can be seen as a communicative action, one-

way communication. Advertisers have to keep good social

relationships between producers and consumers through the

only effective way which is advertising. There will be no

chance of mutual communication and information exchange.


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Therefore, advertising language pays more attention than anyother to the interpersonal function of language, concerning

closely with psychology, sociology, aesthetics, etc. At the

same time, Grices cooperative principle is fully reflected in

advertising language (Guowen 1997: 2).

3. The Cooperative Principle of Grice and The

Advertising Language

Grices suggestion is that there is a set of over-arching

assumptions that guide the conduct of conversation. These

arise from basic rational considerations and may be

formulated as guidelines for the efficient and effective use of

language in conversation to further cooperative ends. Grice

identifies as guidelines of this sort four basic maxims of

conversation or general principles that underlie the efficient

cooperative use of language, which jointly express a general

cooperative principle. The cooperative principles are

expressed as follows: the maxim of quality, the maxim of

quantity, the maxim of relevance, and the maxim of manner.

In this regard, Widdowson (2007: 130) demonstrated that,

These are the four tenets of the cooperative

principle. The quantity maxim relates to amount of

information provided, the quality maxim to its truth, the


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relation maxim to its relevance, and the manner maximto how it is expressed.

In short, these maxims specify what participants

have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient,

rational, cooperative way. Thus, they should speak sincerely,

relevantly, clearly, and provide sufficient information.

Grices theory leads to new studying interests in pragmatic

field, and eventually becomes the basis for pragmatic study

(Grice 1975: 41-43).

The appropriate application and control of Grices

cooperative principle in advertising language help the full

expression of producers in their selling and provide sufficient

food for thought.

The study of implicatures has developed very well and

now it is forming the cornerstone of most pragmatic

approaches. This linguist and philosopher Herbert Paul Grice

is principally associated with implicatures. He argued that in

natural language, communication can take place when

speakers enter a non-verbal agreement over methods of

interpreting what is being said. This agreement takes into

considerations the rules by which implicatures work and

have a form of cooperation which is called the cooperative

principle, this principle including its maxims of quality,


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quantity, relation and manner, has been greatly influential ingrammar studies (Finch 2000: 149).

An important note about these maxims is not to

consider them representing a descriptive statement of how

conversational contributions are. For there are occasions

when speakers decide to unostentatiously violate a maxim,

s/he may lie, s/he may give information that has lack of

relevance, or may provide utterances that can be later

realized as ambiguous. Moreover, there are much more

important occasions when a speaker breaks a maxim for

certain reasons such as s/he faces a clash between two

maxims, and that would make it impossible for the

speaker/writer to be as specific as s/he should be and still his

speech would lack adequate evidence, perhaps he chose to

flout a maxim, that is to say he may blatantly fail to fulfil

it. In such cases, the conversational maxims provide a basis

for the reader to infer what is conversationally being

implicated (Coulthard 1985: 31).

3.1. Maxim of Quality

This maxim requires making the contribution one

that is true, specifically:

a) Do not say what you believe to be false.


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b)

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.Generally, for selling, advertisements will state mainly

the strong points of the products to help consumers know

about them and trust them to the best advantage. However,

from the communicative point of view, a piece of

advertisement is one act of behaviour. Advertisers are

required to convey true information to consumers to help

them make purchasing choices. Therefore, still advertisers

should remember that saying the truth is always the vitality

of advertisements. Proceeding from the interests of the

consumers state, the shortcoming may gain unexpected

results. This is noticed from the following example of a

Pizza Hut ad:

A meal for two for $2.99 each. Any medium feast pizza

and regular salad for only $5.98

This simple advertisement of Pizza Hut adopts no

colourful decorations in language, but only tells the truth and

useful information. Yet it attracts a great number of

customers every day.

According to Grice, the use of metaphor, irony and

exaggeration are all against the maxim of quality. Yet, the

suitable use of them will also gain good effect. This can be

shown from the next travelling advertisement in Thailand.


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The problems of a holiday in Thailand: heavy-traffic,falling masonry, getting trapped, getting lost, eye strain,

excess baggage, missing your flight.

Superficially, the advertisement exaggerates the

inconvenience of travelling in Thailand, but actually implies

that the beauty of the city and colourful shopping may make

the tourists forget about their returning journey.

Another advertisement is taken from The Times of

London occupying a full page of the newspaper with a

picture of the vehicle that carried the first astronaut to the

moon with the legend printed below It is ugly but it takes

you there. Then, just beside the logo of Volks Wagon

printed. Here, the advertisement admits that the Beatle is

ugly but it does the work

An example of an ad that violates the maxim of quality is:

Pioneer: Everything you hear is true.

This ad by generalizing the use of everything is

violating the maxim of quality for not proving adequate

evidence.

3.2. Maxim of Quantity

This maxim demands:

a) Make your contribution as informative as is required (forthe current purposed of the exchange).


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b)Do not make your contribution more informative than isrequired.

Advertisements have no fixed form. Being longer or

shorter will mainly rely on the needs of the designers and

makers. Of course, advertisements are conclusive,

systematic, informative and rigorous. For instance, the

following famous medicine advertisement successfully

passes the information to their consumers that: the

effectiveness of a kind of medicine does not depend on the

quantity but quality. For example:

Two pills, one in the morning, one at night, remove

sneeze.

This ad shows that these pills are of a great

quality that only two of them a day can help a person get rid

of sneezing that is caused by flu or allergy.

Another advertisement about margarine,

vegetable butter. Since an ad should tell the truth according

to the law, the margarine could not be labelled as butter

because butter is a dairy product, but the advertisement

wanted to identify the product as The butter that is not

butter.

An example of an ad that violates this maxim is,

Clariol: Does she? .... or doesnt she?


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This ad violates maxim of quantity because its contributionis not as is required (Grice 1975: 58).

3.3. Maxim of Relevance

This maxim requires making the contribution

relevant. As it is stated by Grice:

a) Be relevant.This is the most significant advertisement designing,

which often employs association to pass useful information

and to touch consumers. Precise, relevant and appropriate

association contributes greatly to the selling and the

understanding of the products. Of course, association should

be natural but not fabricate.

One surgery operation monitor advertisement is as

follows:

No one should have to work without a net.

This ad is matched with a frame of a man walking the

wire without any safe net, audiences may feel puzzled at the

first sight, but with the second thought, the relevance is

obvious. As everyone knows, operations are dangerous and

demands superb skill of the doctors. Without the monitor is

just like without the safe net. The important role of the


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operation monitor is cleverly indicated through theadvertisement.

3.4. Maxim of Manner

This maxim demands the users to:

a) Be perspicuous.b) Avoid obscurity of expression.c) Avoid ambiguity.For example an ad about rat-hunting service:

One call ... Thats all

This ad clearly indicates that if you have a rat at home,

all you need to do is calling that service and the help would

be on its way to help you from this problem (Grice 1975: 50-

54).

However, Grice did not assume that all people should

constantly follow these maxims. Instead, he found it

interesting when these were flouted or violated (either

purposefully or unintentionally) by speakers, which would

imply some other, hidden meaning. The importance was in

what was not said. For example: It is raining is in

violation of quality and quantity of spoken language;

however, in context (e.g when someone has suggested a

game of tennis) the reasoning behind this fragment

sentence becomes clear (Mey 2001: 76).


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An example of an ad that violates the maxim of manner is:The Economics: For top laps.

This is a manner maxim violation for it is an ambiguous

claim.

4. Flouting Grices Maxims

Human interaction would be very difficult and

counterproductive if it lacks cooperation. Therefore, the

Cooperative Principle and the Gricean Maxims are not

specific to conversation but to interaction as a whole. For

example, it would not make sense to reply to a question

about the weather with an answer about groceries because

that would violate the Maxim of Relevance. Likewise,

responding to a request for some milk with an entire gallon

instead of a glass would violate the maxim of quality.

However, it is possible to flout a maxim intentionally

or unconsciously and thereby convey a different meaning

than what is literally spoken/ written. Many times in

conversation, this flouting is manipulated by a speaker/

writer in order to produce a negative pragmatic effect, as

with sarcasm or irony. One can flout the maxim of quality to

tell a clumsy friend who has just taken a bad fall that his

nimble gracefulness is impressive and obviously intend to


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mean the complete opposite. The Gricean maxims aretherefore often purposefully flouted by comedians and

writers, who may hide the complete truth and manipulate

their words for the effect of the story and the sake of the

readers experience (Ibid: 77).

5. The Cooperative Principle and Conversational

Implicature:

Utterances, as a kind of language information passing

state, are not always so direct and clear, but on the contrary,

in a roundabout way with the basic condition of maintaining

communication. The correct and successful application of

pragmatic implicature can be a significant way of language

expression technique. Moreover appropriate language

technique will in different degrees change the conventional

language to a non-conventional ones and to achieve

speakers special purposes. However, the use of

conversational implicature should be better controlled and

take the audiences comprehension level, the position of the

content and the aesthetic requirement into consideration.

This is especially crucial in advertising language (Guown

1997: 2).

Moreover, Language is the media for human

communication and information transmission. In daily


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communication, our conversation includes both conventionaland non-conventional sense of the linguistic expressions

uttered. However, non-conventional implicature indicates

more than what is actually said. The conversational

implicature of the speaker is expressed through the

combination of literal semantic meaning with a specific

context. Pragmatics recognizes the importance of context,

and thus can reveal the meaning underlying a certain

utterance. To construct the appropriate meaning in an

exchange, the speakers and the hearers need to negotiate it,

taking physical, social, and linguistic contexts as well as the

meaning potential of the utterances into consideration

(Thomas 1995:20 ).

Grice (1975: 45) shifts the focus to those aspects of

meaning which are not semantically determined. He calls

these conversational implicature, as opposed to

semantically determined conventional implicature.

Conversational implicature is worked out from the meaning

of the sentence uttered, together with the context, on the

basis of the assumption that communication is goverened by

the co-operative principle. The assumption is that the speaker

has observed certain general maxims of communication.


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In a series of influential and controversial papers ofGrice (1957:66), (1968: 4), (1969: 68). He argued that the

meaning of a word or a non-natural sign in general is a

derivative function of what speakers mean by that word in

individual instances of uttering it. That is, the universal

type meaning, or a set of such meanings, for a given word

is an abstraction from the token meanings that speakers

mean for the word in specific instances of use.

Among other things, this account opposes the formalist

orthodoxy in semantic theory, according to which the

universal conventional meaning or set of meaning of a word

predetermines what that word may mean by a word in a

certain utterance; in order to understand the utterance, it is

enough to know what the word means tout court. But Grice

holds that what a word means derives from what speakers

mean by uttering it; and he further holds that

a particular speaker or writer means by a sign on a

particular occasion among well diverge from the

standard meaning of the sign (Grice 1957: 381).

6. Sperber and Wilsons Relevance Theory

Sperber and Wilsons Relevance Theory provides the

most comprehensive account of utterance interpretation.

Their framework is based on ostentation (an attempt to hide


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the real thing), the communicators intention to communicateand to publicise his intention, and the principle that an

ostensive stimulus creates a presumption of optimal

relevance. The task of the audience in ostensive

communication is to process the communicators utterance

against background information and derive an interpretation

which is consistent with the principle of relevance.

Relevance Theory will now be applied to the analysis of

advertisements, focussing on convert communication, puns,

and metaphors.

Moreover, Sperber and Wilson (1995: 260) postulated

that there are two principles of relevance, defined as follows:

1- Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation ofrelevance.

2- Every act of ostensive communication communicates apresumption of its own optimal relevance.

The first principle is to do with cognition, while the second

one is about communication.

7. Implicature in the Advertising Language

7.1 Implicature and Entailment

Entailment is a term derived from formal logic

and now often used as part of the study of semantics; it is

also called entailingness. It refers to a relation between a pair


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of sentences such that the truth of the second sentencenecessarily follows from the truth of the first, e.g. I can see a

dog- I can see an animal (Crystal 2003: 162).

Another example can be given about entailment:

a)Jane drives a Ford.b)Jane drives a car.It is easy to notice that if (a) is true, then (b) has to be true

too, therefore, (a) entails sentence (b).

Moreover, the concept of implicature differs

slightly from entailment, but these two concepts are related

in a way that makes them sometimes tricky to tease apart, as

far as language use is concerned.

Let us take this pair of sentences:

1) Not everyone is going to come.2) Someone is going to come.

A reader may believe that sentence (1) entails sentence

(2), but it actually does not. That is if you arranged a school

party and invited friends; I may say not everyone is going to

come, you respond with at least someone is going to

come and you would be surprised to arrive and see that

absolutely no one showed up, because the sentence not

everyone is going to come implicates that someone is going

to come, but however does not entail it. Moreover, it is


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important to notice that not everyone is going to come canalso be true in a situation which no one is going to come.

Considering the above illustration, it is seen that

the Gricean maxim of quantity plays a role. For if a person

wanted to mean that no one is going to come s/he would

have said so and that contribution would be as informative as

required.

Bearing this in mind, implicature can be implied to

the advertising language as this ad:

ABC filters remove bacteria from your drinking water.

In a normal language use, a reader can understand this

ad as, if you use ABC filters, these filters will remove all the

bad bacteria from your drinking water; but that is not

actually entailed from the mentioned advertisement. On the

one hand, some entailment is that bacteria is removed by

ABC filters, then this claim is true. On the other hand, if that

is the truth, then the consumer would be deceived if s/he

buys ABC filters on the basis of the above claim, because

s/he understands what is implicated not what was entailed.

Implicature is the essence of our communication, and people

often understand implicature to be the same as entailment in

our daily communication, although the two concepts are not

the same (Gazdar 1979: 42).


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It is worth mentioning that this type of sentence used inthis ad is called generic because it has a possible general

reading. Generic sentences have the property of making

strong statements, such as dogs bark which means that a

general property of dogs that they bark. In the bacteria

advertisement, the consumer finds the generic reading which

is often the default reading in such constructions which is

all bacteria. However, also there is a possibility that the

sentence has a non-generic or literal reading. If the advertiser

meant by his ad that only some bacteria will be removed by

ABC filters then s/he violates the maxim of relevance, that is

if we consider the consumer is interested in buying the filter

to ensure water purity. The advertiser here is exploiting the

default nature of generic reading in order to take advantage

of the consumers belief upon his ad as referring all

bacteria or all harmful bacteria.

Based on the previous discussion, it is noticed that

advertising often takes advantage of implicature in order to

create claims which people interpret to be more powerful

than they actually are.

Moreover, there is another example of an ad using

implicature:


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Cambells soup has one third less salt.This ad could seem a bit vague from the first glance, but

reasonably it can be interpreted as the soup is one third less

salt than other relevant benchmark. That benchmark could

have less level of salt compared to a major competitor,

considering the average of all nationally sold soups, of an

earlier productions of Campbells soup. This analysis is due

to Gricean maxim, for it would be totally irrelevant to claim

that the mentioned soup contains one third less salt than the

Dead Sea. Here it is realized that communication can be

misleading since advertisement readers make implicatures

that are not necessarily true, for all it would take for the ad to

be true for the advertiser to claim that the sentence is literally

true.

The main point to draw attention to is the limitations of

logical entailment for understanding how meaning works, for

implicature plays a huge role in our daily communication

with each other.

And advertisers take advantage of that by making many

misleading claims. For sometimes advertising misleading

can be surprising. Consider this ad:


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The Ford LTD is 700% quieter.A reader may interpret that Ford LTD is 700% quieter

than other kinds of cars, or other Ford brands, but apparently

Ford company admitted that they meant the Ford LTD is

700% quieter than the outside. In this case, Ford here by

this claim is testing the line between vague claims and deceit

(Kempson 1986:239).

8. Advertising and the Pragmatic Theory of Truth

The pragmatic truth theory refers to those

accounts, definitions, and theories of the concept of truth in

question, various along lines that reflect the influence of

several thinkers initially and notably, Charles S. Pierce and

William James, there are also a number of common features

can be identified. The most characteristic features are a

reliance on the pragmatic maxim as a means of clarifying the

meanings of difficult concepts, truth in particular, and an

emphasis on the fact that the product is variously branded as

belief, certainty, or truth is the result of a process, namely

inquiry. As Pierce (1901: 565) states:

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with

the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would

tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the

abstract statement may possess by virtue of the


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confession of its inaccuracy and one-sideness, and thisconfession is an essential ingredient of truth.

Pierce understands all thoughts as signs, and thus,

according to his theory of thought, no thought is

understandable outside the context of sign relation. Sign

relations taken collectively are the subject matter of a theory

of signs. Therefore, Pierces semiotics, his theory of sign

relations, are keys to understanding his entire philosophy of

pragmatic thinking.

According to the Pragmatic Theory of Truth in

Advertising,

Advertisers should be held responsible not only for

conventional implicatures of what they say, but also for

conversational implicatures of what they say (Cline 1998:

18).

For example:

Beasline, Baby Shampoo, Extra Gentle, No Tears!

Here the advertiser makes a number of claims,

including the above claim. The advertiser tries to convince

the consumer to buy Beasline Baby Shampoo. It is obvious

that kids tend to open their eyes when they wash their hair

during bathing, the ad states that this shampoo does not hurt

their eyes even if the shampoo goes into their eyes; this


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claim could be false, in case even one kid faced visionproblems or eye infection after using this no tear shampoo.

Conclusion

In accordance to the Pragmatic Theory of Truth in

Advertising: Advertisers should be held responsible not

only for conventional implicatures of what they say, but also

for conversational implicatures of what they say (Cline 1998:

18).

The result of the research above, points to the fact that

advertisers do not always do that and this means, that

advertisers have failed their responsibilities in his respect.

The data are then analysed for investigating hypothesis

of the research which states that, In advertisement,

implicature and entailment are made use of in a way that

serves the purposes of the advertiser irrespective of whether

the addressees entailment is the same as that of the

advertiser or not.

In the ad ABC filters remove bacteria from your

drinking water explained in 7.1. above does not specify

the type of bacteria removed even though it is actually the

harmful type which is actually entailed from the ad whereas


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what is implicated as the consumer will decode it is all typesof bacteria. And since the general consensus amongst

ordinary language users is that implicature and entailment

are one and the same, the consumer is then misled by the ad.

Other examples of such controversies may be identified in

the data in the appendices of this research. This leads to the

verification of the hypothesis of the research as stated above.


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Pragmatic Analysis of the Advertising Language. Abstract

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