Scarica Discourse Analysis in Advertising: Understanding Texts and Genres e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity!
APPUNTI – Lingua e Comunicazione Inglese 3
Introduzione e informazioni di base Chi fa la tesina: pesa 50% del voto, si parte da argomento a piacere Language as ideology: nel concetto di ideologia è sotteso un argomento di tipo persuasivo Testi multimodali: con elementi di organizzazione del testo che aiutano a esplicitare le funzioni dello stesso Un testo scritto per essere letto è sempre un “visual arrangement → visual text” – esiste una gamma di significanti che ha una importanza cruciale nell’elaborazione e nella lettura di un testo. Party election broadcast → spot elettorali Commercial → pubblicità televisiva (in UK viene chiamato Broadcast) I social hanno una funzione importante nella diffusione di messaggi di campagna politica dei diversi partiti Elezione = contest (lotta, competizione) → a seconda che il focus della comunicazione sia su uno o l’altro elemento avremo delle strategie di persuasione che vengono attivate e saranno incluse nel testo (approccio bidirezionale → dal contesto al testo e dal testo al contesto) inferire una serie di variabili contestuali basandosi sul testo TESTO CONCRETO SIA COME PUNTO DI PARTENZA CHE COME PUNTO DI ARRIVO Comunicazione = processo di negoziazione (presuppone una continua capacità di adattamento → sintonizzarsi sulla frequenza dell’interlocutore – FIND TUNING) Comunicazione → non è il passaggio di un messaggio da A a B Controllare gli effetti della comunicazione → ottenere gli effetti desiderati (per evitare fraintendimenti) Language as Culture – Language as Ideology
COMMUNICATION AS A SOCIAL ACTION
Communication has to be considered both:
- as a "process", or interactive event, during which choices are made from within the system of meaning potential (as Halliday calls it);
- as a "product" — or manifest outcome — of those choices, realised as chain and choice. The lexicogrammatical system works on two levels, and it is organized in a chain, according to a syntagmatic chain (from left to right) and a system of paradigmatic choices (from within the same lexicogrammatical category). It is really important to remember that “meaning works by contrast”, a quote by the famous sociolinguist Deborah Cameron → she says that: “the words you choose acquire for the words you choose acquire force from an implicit comparison with the ones you could have chosen, but you did not.” You will always have to ask yourself: “What could I have said instead and I decided not to say? What I have been made by my different choices?”. Two different headlines: “The policeman shoots the gun and killed the boy” “The gun went off and the boy dies” The second sentence does not content any voluntary process (like a self-generated process), while in the first one there is an animate actor performing a material process (shoot) and an effective participant (the boy) which is the goal of the action (to kill). This first sentence portrays what happened as a voluntary action, a conscious action, on the part of an animate human participant, who is well aware of the consequences of the voluntary action. Whereas the second one prefers to encode this experience/cognitive meaning (Halliday) as the result of an accident (while he was running after the boy, the policeman inadvertently put his hand on the gun and it went off, so the boy died as a result of this involuntary action (this is what I am let to infer from this sentence). In the first case the journalist has already decided who’s fault it is. Since communication does not take place in a vacuum and it is usually for a purpose, so there is not such thing as English for general purposes (Communication is always for a purpose). (My purpose on saying: “Nice weather, isn’t it?” on a bus stop to a stranger is to make contact with that person, to start communication and to keep the flow of communication going, to keep the channel of communication open). It makes no sense to speak of language for specific purposes → language is always one and the same, it is a system of communication but not only, it is a system of systems (according to Halliday) which on the one
The ad of Buitoni pasta, a specific range of Buitoni product called “Buitoni Fresco” It is a multimodal text. Packshot → it is the visual representation of a product used to portray the product's reputation in advertising or other media. The slogan/claim/baseline “Share the Italian love of food” is a tried stereotype (Italians love food). This idea of sharing is translated visually by the image on the image on the top right-hand corner (the couple sharing food). The closing sentence is usually called, in advertising discourse, the payoff → unique selling proposition (USP) → reason why (what distinguishes your product from similar products manufactured by competitors) The reason why/main value associated with this specific product is “to keep up with…” (stare al passo con…) → if you buy our products you are going to be more like an authentic Italian who can enjoy a refined lifestyle (a question of style, not only eating food) → representation of the product as a status symbol. 26/02/ Compare and contrast verbal and visual differences between the two Mitsubishi campaigns (Italian vs. English campaign) Fig. 2 → headline: scritte in bianco sull’immagine / visual: immagine della publicità / body copy: a tiny paragraph (parte descrittiva in basso a destra) / slogan: CREATING TOGETHER / different pacshots (three different car models) / payoff: CAR AS DIFFERENT AS YOU This advertising is a narrative because there is a great deal of verbs n the past forms evoking different steps in the life of the protagonist, in the process of growing up. The main protagonists are GARANTOR/ENDORSER in advertising terms → testimonial (in italiano) The cultural construct evoked in the advertisement is that of a sense of freedom, represented mainly from the wild horses which are not static, they are moving, then, the wide landscape. The headline focuses on another important aspect: individual choice → we are all different (basic value of the American culture, which is a low context culture, and of the American dream: the self-made man → what matters is individual in low context cultures). The bid “I” on the advertising is a salient element → salience is a process where an element is constructed as noticeable and relevant, this relevance is carried not only through relative size which is much bigger than the rest of the writing, but also with reference to the position on the visual space → this headline proceeds from top to bottom and from left to right (as people who belong to western culture read). There is a reading path which creates a vector leading to the visual representation of the product (the pacshot) and to the main protagonist and his son. Subdividing the visual space in two different sections:
- an upper section containing the visual, the headline and the pacshot;
- a lower section containing the body copy, the slogan, the logo, the different representation of three models of the car, a subclaim/a baseline which positions the product on a specific segment of the market identified by the advertising strategy.
There is range of elements both verbal and non-verbal which indicate the main idea which is the creative concept that is constructed in the text. The headline, which is a lexical chain, contains a series of lexical and grammatical devices which create cohesion and coherence. The use of past tenses and the repetition of the same structure focus on specific steps/stages of the process of growing up (it is represented a visual progression of a gradual achievement; in fact, the sentences get increasingly bigger). FREE = keyword highlited in italics. Symbol = a matter of conventions. As a society, we decide to ascribe a specific meaning to an object which is socially agreed. The referent and the meaning of an object is one of contiguity or causality (ex. smoke is an index of fire / fire causes smoke). An ICON → The relationship between the referent and its meaning is one of similarity (ex. on a computer desktop you have a number of icons which resemble the function or the contents of the specific element that they indicate / the main page of a web site is visually represented through the icon of a home). The optical centre of the advertising is the right-down part, where it can be seen the Mitsubishi car, the garantor and the big “I”. The choice of colours: this is a sign that it has probably been shot at sunset → very warm colours; it is a hyperreal colour coding representation ( sensory coding representation ) → it represents reality, but it exaggerates it because its main aim of the advertising is to evoke feelings and emotions. There are also:
- the technological coding orientation → it has to do with science (ex. the use of graphs, tables, formulas, exc.)
- and the abstract coding orientation → it is typically realized through the use of B&W, sepia, monochromatic choices, exc. (ex. political posters, …) The connective “so” acquires an important status in advertising discourse in the sense that it translates into words the ontological leap (the metaphorical passage from the world of advertising to the world of consumption) → this logical relationship freezes the moment when the mature consumer decides to make the self-fulfilling prophecy visualized in the eyes come true by buying the car (this is the world as it might be like, but it may and will come true if you decide to subscribe to the garantors call to action by deciding to buy the car and use it). The process of identification between the garantor and prospective customer is the final aim of any advertising campaign. Fig. 3 → the garantor of the Italian ad is the lady on the back side of the car who is putting some shopping bags on it. Here the visual impact is different: framings are used, it is not a wide picture → on the left there is a port od Bologna/Padua. For the verbal part, the clothes that the protagonist of the ad is wearing tell something about her social status, probably she belongs to an elite → she represents a status symbol and the car reflects it. One of the verbal cues are the words which reveal this meaning is: the simple fact to get into this car sliding door enables you to become a member of the exclusive group of “who’s who” (chi è chi) → so the function
Graphic representation of the various levels of discourse analysis on advertising texts: 04/03/ The difference between low context and high context cultures (Hall’s theories): the main distinguishing features of high and low context cultures → low context cultures rely more on a line-logic style of reasoning based on problem solution (ex. different approaches in business discourse by Americans and Japanese → what matters most to a Japanese businessman is the kind of personal relationship that he or she can establish with his or her business partner and so the style of management is more affective intuitive (a business problem is not something that has to be solved on the grounds of the implementation of specific solutions and practical steps to be taken, but the focus is on the relationships). Texture is what defines a text as a meaningful semantic unit with cohesion and coherence. The differences between these two terms are not precise because it is very hard to distinguish between cohesive devices and coherence devices. In making meanings we apply the presuppositions, the stereotypes, the cognitive setup typical of the culture in which we grow up and defines who we are.
Fig. 5 → it is a corporate advertising – pubblicità istituzionale: the sponsor is Canon. It is a print advertisement published on a magazine, split in two pages. Different sections are not only identified by the separation between the left-hand page and the right-hand page, but also by frame lines (the contrast between the picture and the rest of the page) for example. The two photos taken alone have no meaning. The first “ideas” refers to the first image, the second one refers to the second image. Under the two images there is the base line or the claim in italics of the advertising. What is visualised in this advertising is not a product, but a concept, an abstract idea of usefulness vs. uselessness. It is important this contrast between the two images → the first image (an apple and an orange tied up) and the second one have the same elements (the constant between the two images), but in the second one the apple and the orange become something edible and useful (an example of implementation of an idea being exploited and put in good use). Picture and the respective caption constitute a single unit. The first unit (in the left) refers to the competitors of Canon, put in comparison with themselves (in the right → the second unit), which can offer something more and unique. On the macrolevel of analysis:
- the left-hand page functions as the thematic component of the structure (what customers already know), whereas the right-hand page functions as the grammatic part, which typically contains new information (the advantage/benefit/added value provided by the company).
- if you relay on the separation between the upper part (visuals and captions) and the lower part (body copy and brand name), the first one depicts the ideal promise made by the company, while the second one is related to the real dimension describing the product benefits and its concrete qualities.
- Company’s vision : where the company wants to be in the future (perspective achievements)
- Company’s mission : a set of values which identify the company’s DNA (what makes that specific company different from other similar ones, what it endorses as its core values) REGISTERS → are varieties of language (language is a system of systems) according to what you are doing with reference to the nature and purpose of the social activity in which you are engaged. Registers include institutional and occupational varieties (for example, a Political discourse is a register). The extreme instance of register differentiation is languages for specific purposes, which are different from RESTRICTED LANGUAGES.
Each metafunction represents the speaker’s meaning potential respectively as:
- OBSERVER
- INTRUDER
- TEXT ORGANISER Focusing on the ideational metafunction, the text maker is an observer of reality who decides what participants to take into account and after that, she/he decides what kind of interpersonal meanings or connotations she/he wants to ascribe to those participants (she/he becomes an intruder , providing a specific outlook and judgements about reality). Then she/he decides how to encode those meanings and judgments in what specific linear or dynamic form (becoming a text organizer → what status to give to each participant for example). The elements that come into play when we analyse Field, Tenor and Mode are: Fig. 1 – 02. An introduction to REGISTER: TEXT STRUCTURE: there is a campaign slogan/payoff “New Labour. New Britain.” like an advertising; the politician name (Tony Blair) in bold type at the top and its “company” position, an image of him, too, which works like the packshot of an advertising; it looks like Tony Blair has signed every single letter, this gives a sense of originality of every single letter → it creates a sort of direct relationship between the text maker and the intended addressee; focusing on the image, it is a demand picture, which tries to give the sensation that he is smiling midely at you and wants to establish an eye contact (there is a symmetric relationship of
equality between him and you because the camera was positioned at the eye level of Tony Blair). The dress code of Tony Blair in the photo is formal and the colour coding orientation is B&W, which is abstract → in this case it symbolises novelty (he is the leader of the New Labour → the new name he gave to the party to distinguish it from the old orthodox socialist party), in line with the Third Way (Tony Blair built it together with the German and French leaders). From what regards VERBAL CONTENTS, in the text there is a shift from “we”, the party, to “I”, its leader. It is a letter which focuses on the individual and which wants you to feel important for the Labour Party (in fact there is a constant use of “YOU” → an imperative, a command to perform a specific action, that is to join the party). It can be perceived as something more personal, more intimate rather than a letter from the party to you, here we have directly Tony Blair which refers to you, to the addressee/receiver of the letter. There is also an exchange of good and services in the sense that the politician is asking for votes in exchange for a vision (something immaterial) → a religious term. Other religious terms are crusade and “the many, not the few” → to give the impression that Tony Blair is the saviour (it reminds of Jesus and the last supper). Another important word is covenant (a secret pact/agreement which provides a strong religious connotation to the political register) → a term that Tony Blair borrowed from Bill Clinton. 05/03/ Fig. 1 (Tony Blair adv) The participants involved are the politicians and British people. Voters place their trust to a given politician. The interpersonal dimension of discourse activated by the Tenor analysis the participants statuses and the party leader is the member of individual in authority. He is pragmatically entitled to address society (a collective entity) and to receive legitimation from society. The politician must act as a persuader → his discourse of role will be that of arguing for the goodness oh his/her own ideas and challenging the opponent by showing the faults and the damage that the opponent can do if they get in to government. Where the individual takes presidency over the party, the personality of the leader is very important. The function is issuing a command demanding goods and services through the imperative “Join us now” → analogy with advertising discourse. Money is dirty, something you are not supposed to be talking about. In political discourse “Vote for us” is only used in the moment of campaigning and even the imperative mood is most congruent of the most typical command but in this case, it is such a demand to support a common cause → parallelism with Uncle Sam “I want you!” during war. The addressees/voters are in authority because they are free to vote/support the party and be persuaded of the goodness of the writer’s argument. Even if it is a monologic text it contains a dialogic component → in order to take into account people who don’t share the same opinion and anticipate their critics assuming that my opponent/my enemy wants to challenge the consistence of my position.
The scheme is an overall framework to contextualise and identify the underline narratives that are at work in static and dynamic texts. They rely on the representation of political confrontation as a social activity in its own right → in the sense that through political discourse, stakeholders and political agents establish relationships and organise society as a hole. The election may be seen as an activity linking to main set of participants → each party and the nation (abstract concept but it has got a cultural meaning → a nation is identified through values, beliefs and ideals that keep the community together) are the two main sets of participants related through political rhetoric and political marketing. In this kind of discursive activity, the general election may be seen from the point of view of the party which is in government at the present moment as a celebration of stability and status quo → each government tends to believe that its action has a positive effect on the country (the argument is based on the “expectation of continuity” → the “feel good” factor, a statement which is challenged by the opponent). Conversely, the opponent project a vision of opportunity to change the country in better if they win the elections. There is a common language which links political marketing to advertising → the celebration of a successful leader is a common trade which links both the election as a celebration of stability. The achievement of this mission is also, from the point of view of the opponent, a common trade which is present also on the representation of the election as a fight against a common enemy. You can have retrospective fears (the past) and prospective fears. ITF = Intertextual thematic formation It is a recurrent pattern of semantic relations (relations of meaning, meaning making) used in talking about a specific topic from text to text → ex. election as a fight against a common enemy is an ITF which links Blair’s poster to other similar texts but also contra textually (considering the representation of reality from the opposite point of view) other similar texts which present it as a danger. So, an ITF, is a discourse pattern which is repeated in the same text or across different texts produced in, for and by a given sociocultural and discursive community. So, you can link texts according to three different dimensions/parameters:
- texts dealing with the same theme (“co-thematic” texts) → same mode of discourse
- texts which share similar participant structures and participant roles (“co-actional” texts) → same field of discourse
- texts with similar interpersonal orientations/points of view (“co-axiological” texts) → same interpersonal structure in terms of orientations, judgements, point of view, … WORKING WITH TEXTS → Exercise 1 The relationships of inter- and contra-textuality in and between electoral posters: Intertextual relationships link each single text with a range of other texts and discourses from related domains from different discursive situations. 18/03/ The practice of producing televised texts which last from a few seconds to a few minutes promoting ones party and ones electoral pledges or manifesto → a series of measures to be implemented by either the incumbent government which is asking for a confirmation of the electorate trust or promoted by the opposition. Party Political Broadcasts and Party Election Broadcasts have been part of the British political scene since the early 1950s and are a recognised feature of British life → the British people were used to watch this televised texts which took two different forms: from the easiest ones to produce (like the politician going in front of the tv camera and speaking to the country → face the nation approach) and other more elaborate forms which retained the qualities of documentaries of feature films which involve a very recognisable creative effort on the part of the film director (a lot of money going into the professional production of this texts that aim at getting the electorates support and changes the electoral behaviour especially that of people who are still undecided about their voting intentions). A one-to-one relationship cannot be established between the effectiveness of a given Party Election Broadcast and the election outcome as we can not establish a one-to-one cause effect relationship between a good piece of advertising and a boost in the company’s sales. Politicians need to regain people trust because they do not believe more that politicians have some kind of interest in their needs. Party Political Broadcasts and Party Election Broadcasts represent, of course, not the public’s view of Britain, but the politicians’ ideas of the nation’s concerns and supposed values, they reflect, in their own way, developments in national interests and self-perception → they capture society trends and the country concerns and aspirations (mainstream ideas and values → what country needs in terms of policies and concrete actions). The ideal picture about what the country needs tend to condense in a single, memorable image or punchline functioning as a slogan → it encapsulates all that a given party stands for at a given point in time (for example: “New Labour. New Britain”, “From the many, not the few”, …). Party Election Broadcasts are deeply engrained in a country’s cultural system of meaning making → multimodal patterns which basically project and reflect the temporal and situational context of their production and reception.
The only condition that makes political advertising possible is that PEB and PPB should retain a strong informative component (details and data which corroborate the sponsor’s claims) → they are called broadcasts and not commercials because the promotional component has to be down toned. The ultimate aim which they pursue is achieved through image and connotation rather than concrete and well-formed verbal arguments. The power of images, non-verbal modes and semiotic codes Ex. The first televised debate between Richard Nixon and J. F. Kennedy → there is a mismatch between the impression that the audience got from the TV Broadcast of the debate and the impression they got from listening to the debate on the radio without watching the two politicians (for those who watched the debate on TV the winner was Kennedy, who was more telegenic, modern and at ease with this new medium, whereas Nixon was more shifty, ambiguous and less transparent than Kennedy, but he was considered the winner from who listens the debate on the radio). Men and women tend to judge politicians from different angles and to see gender-specific qualities in them, possibly due to differences in male and female cognitive schemata, as well as to cultural specificities and situational contingencies (e.g. the candidates’ respective personalities and programmes). There is also experimental evidence which shows that:
- negative messages are more memorable than positive ones and have greater emotional impact on the text receiver;
- visual information is better retained in negative messages while audio information is better remembered in positive messages. 25/03/ Culture bound approach to the analysis of political marketing which abandons the traditional classification of political messages into positive, negative and comparative posters/broadcasts and links the presence of positive or negative (in the sense of image oriented and position taking elements) to the projection of a specific future reality or the representation of the past in terms of shared values and beliefs. In the past studies and researches into political advertising have been based on a breakdown into true negative or attack ads, comparative ads and hope or positive ads → this classification focuses on the presence or not of specific emotion and feelings → this old classification has been replaced by an analysis of what goes on in a given discourse community. Political communication is dominated by a commercial media logic which intertwines advertising technique with a political discourse proper. In order to understand what a Hyperthematic shot or sequence is and how the different thesis/stretches of text which possess cohesion and coherence (= which develop one specific part of the text → they fulfill a specific function in the overall structure composition) you have to familiarize with two important notions that were investigated by Van Dijk:
- SEMANTIC MACROSTRUCTURE (meanings and different networks of meaning made by and in specific texts): the organisation of any text as a network of discourse topics → thinking of text as the basic unit of meaning what matters is the development of the text not as a sequence of isolated sentences or individual words but a network of topics and functions which are which are assigned different status (from micro- to macro-topics) in the semantic representation the macrostructure of the text in terms of content;
- THEMATIC MACROSTRUCTURE: is organised into a schematic form (functional superstructure) (There is a distinction between:
- Macrostructure → has to do with content and semantics
- Superstructure → has to do with form and pragmatics) The functional superstructure of a given text is culturally determined → each type of text given in a discourse community has a specific sequence of elements which make up its generic structure potential ( ex. a well-formed newspaper article in the Anglo-Saxon context, especially if it is a feature article which offers information about a given event, will inevitably contain in its lead paragraph an answer to the WH- questions → what, where, when, why and how). In other words, there is a network of blocks which defines its schematic superstructure, its genre or the register configurations of the texts in terms of Field, Tenor and Mode (= in terms of the functions that the text is fulfilling in that specific context). Regarding the culture bound taxonomy, in the analysis of political posters, we tended to identify each and every poster falling into three main categories:
- a “celebration of stability” (in the form of a coronation) → a celebration of the incumbent achievements in order to rule the country;
- the election as a “journey” - or, more precisely, a “rite of passage” - (in the form of a conquest) → the opponent is supposed to be making a new reality come true (the election becomes a rite of passage from negative situation/a dystopic reality to an ideal vision of what a country might be like if voters choose the sponsor and take this journey leading them to a new land of hope and opportunity);
- a “fight against a common enemy” (in the form of a contest), the overarching interpretative construct in the two broadcasts at issue here → ex. “New Labour, New Danger” (New Labour was depicted as absolute evil → demonization of opponents not only through words, but also through nonverbal cues and especially visual and auditory devices like the squeaking sounds on the background soundtrack, red tinted scene pervading the law and order section of the broadcast) → the idea is to identify the cultural framework which is exploited to convey a given view of what is going on in terms of the action being performed in and through language both verbal and nonverbal. After this (understanding how the argument is build up between one of the three categories), you have to identify the elements which realise the typical generic structure of these texts that is based on the linear sequence of the following elements in terms of superstructure: This structure is determined by a series of constraints that are listed in describing the Context of situation → situational constraints that have to do with the temporal and special setting of text fruition (broadcast are shown in the context of more serious programs like TV news or feature films that are likely to be
(a) Institutional constraints : given the statutory ban on TV political advertising in the UK, political broadcasts must retain a high degree of informativity, or referentiality, which is meant to distinguish them from "commercials" in the strict sense of the word. As a rule, then, their alleged primary function is to inform, and maybe, by implication, also to entertain and challenge, whereas their commercial component tends to be de-emphasised — at times even "narcotised" —, at least on the surface of discourse. In fact, as anticipated in the above definition of what a PPB is (quoted from GOULD), commercial elements are clearly visible, especially when the underlying structure of the text is 'unpacked'. (b) Socio-cultural constraints : the promotional event "political broadcast" is inserted into a precise sociocultural and historical context, i.e. the election campaign as a global, ongoing event, which develops not only contra-textually (in relation to the opponent's own campaign), but also intertextually, both synchronically and diachronically. The result is that, ex post, the various PPBs often appear to be logically and temporally sequenced in such a way as to develop a coherent argument, which is reinforced as the campaign progresses, and to form a new macro-text in its own right. Secondly, in order to reach a wide audience, and to reach it while producing the desired impact, PPBs often exploit the format and conventions of other easily recognisable, well-established genres. (c) Situational constraints : the temporal and spatial setting in which political broadcasts are shown potentially assures them of a huge audience, but, at the same time, it poses a very serious threat which risks compromising their intended effect. The threat resides in what GOULD (1999: 320) refers to as the 'turn-off' factor, [whereby people tend to] watch the first forty-five seconds or minute [of the PPB], then they turn over and surf around, then they come back, thinking perhaps it has ended, and watch another forty-five seconds be-fore surfing some more only to return again, maybe watching the last forty-five seconds while waiting for it to end so they can watch the news. 26/03/ The use of will in political discourse is specific of this discourse type → according to the rules of grammar, if you want to talk about a future state of affairs with the first person plural (WE), the modal you are supposed to be using is SHALL (“we shall overcome…”). The function that the modal WILL fulfils in political discourse is projecting a future reality with the maximum degree of speaker’s commitment as to its realization → when a politician speaking for the Party says “we will make Britain a safe place”, he is committing himself and his own Party to carry out what is projected as a future vision (the essence of a political discourse). A common technique in PPB is to quote your opponent and modify his/her quotations to make fun of them or to discredit the opponent (reusing the opponent’s words to prove that they are not trustworthy) and propose yourself as a better/reliable solution. 15/04/ In the analysis of a political speech, first of all you should identify the overall macrostructure of the text (= contextualize the text is the first step in both situational and cultural terms). Then, you should identify the broad organisation/structure of the text → In the case of PEB there is the typical structure featuring:
- an AG (Attention Getter), the initial sequence which aims at capture the viewer’s attention and get them to go on watching the video → it is important for the sponsor of the text to ensure that the money they
spend on producing a very elaborate taste does not go to waste and produce profits in terms of mobilizing the electorate to vote for the sponsoring Party;
- thematic blocks containing a reiteration of the macro-Claim which contains the Slogan and a sort of argues in general terms about what is contained in the broadcast as the main thesis → the Claim is a recursive element accompanied by an illustration/example touching a specific electoral topic/domain/field of interest for the electorate (this redundant structure is obligatory, in fact the viewing of the broadcast is discontinuous in many cases and so the sponsor has to make sure that at least one thematic block will catch the viewer’s attention and the main-Claim will be grasped by the viewer);
- the final element which may or may not be there is the CALL TO ACTION → the element that actually asks for the citizens’ vote and this may come in the form of an Imperative (like “Vote Labour!”), a paraphrase (“Give Tony Blair your mandate” in Fitz the Bulldog) or something like a call to fight and stop the enemies (“Only you can stop Y to vote X”). THE THORIES IN BRIGHTON (PEB by the Labour Party) A very effective strategy is to appeal the viewers to the power of imagination (“what would happen if…”) → the definition of imagination, according to Coleridge, is “the willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes political faith” → it is necessary for the electorate to momentarily believe that the vision projected by the political leader will and can come true in order for the voter to cast his/her own vote and trust in the politician. This willing suspension of this belief crystallizes the empathic bond between the politician projecting his/her vision for the future and the voter. Another very important characteristic typical of the election as a fight against a common enemy (ex. The Tories in Brighton) is the use of the language of enhancement → the comparison between the situation of the country under the opponent and what the country might be like if the sponsor were allowed to win this fight against an enemy that is damaging the lives of ordinary citizens. Another common feature is the use of data/statistics/newspapers headlines as corroborating evidence for the sponsor’s main-Claim → the argumentative strategy exploited to get the viewer to believe what the sponsor is saying is based on invited negative inferences (= deductions, logical reasoning patterns → for instance: “If the Tories got in again, they’d continue to pull apart the NHS”). The intertextual thematic formation of the voter as a competent chooser is conveyed through the use of a high camera angle → the viewer looks down at the scene (= he or she is in control of the situation and has the power to change this outrageous attitude by the Tories who are depicted completely out of touch with reality and not even caring about what is going on for ordinary citizens outside the Brighton centre). If the voter is framed as a competent chooser, the sponsor (the imaginary external narrator/the addressor of the imperative mood “Imagine if”) is depicted as a prophet, as somebody whose aim is to save the country → the politician as a saviour is a way to establish a strong bond of empathy and a strong sense of community between the politician and the people (a strategy to enhance trust in order to get more votes). The use of screen asymmetry → the captions are positioned most of the time in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen (it is the domain of the new and real information). In comparative political advertising (messages which compare and contrast two different candidates from different Parties) it is very typical for the opponent to be visualised on the left in the domain of the given, as if to say: “this is what you already know, this is the situation as you know it, and we are the alternative/the solution”.
