AN INVESTIGATION INTO COHESION IN HEALTHCARE ADVERTISEMENTS ON AMERICAN TELEVISION

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COHESION IN HEALTHCARE ADVERTISEMENTS ON AMERICAN TELEVISION

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6(91).2015 143 AN INVESTIGATION INTO COHESION IN HEALTHCARE ADVERTISEMENTS ON AMERICAN TELEVISION Luu Quy Khuong1, Truong Van Tuan2 University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Danang; lqkhuong@cfl.udn.vn Viet Nam Korea Friendship Information Technology College; trglamtuan2110 @gmail.com Abstract - Cohesion is considered to be one of the most important elements of the text as it allows the text to become meaningful as well as understandable In order to have a cohesive text, speakers or writers not only try to make sentences and paragraphs unified in content but also connect sentences or paragraphs together by using cohesion It can be seen that cohesion is used in most genres of discourse This paper presents the findings of a study on cohesion in televised healthcare advertisements based on evidence from 50 video clips retrieved from American television channels Thereby, it is hoped to help English learners improve their listening skills for English advertisements on television, especially televised healthcare advertisements Also, those who are interested in the field of TV advertising might get a deeper knowledge of how to produce utterances and documents of this language type in a clear and coherent way Key words - Cohesion; cohesive text; TV advertising; healthcare advertisements; discourse analysis Introduction To attract the attention of modern people who become more and more interested in healthcare issues when having better living standards, many advertisers have chosen mass media, especially television, as a means of transferring their healthcare advertisements “The aim of advertising is to cause consumers to buy products, or services, or at least to present the most persuasive selling message to the potential clients or customers for the products or services” (Kirkpatrick and James, 1970:33) Therefore, the advertising language should be simple, well-arranged, effective, communicative, and understandable Unlike advertisements on radio or newspapers, television advertisements have the ability to combine visual images, sounds and motion In fact, television advertising is a discourse in context One of the factors making healthcare television advertisements communicative is the use of cohesion Viewers are confused when a text lacks cohesion as they cannot easily follow from part to part, recognize the most important ideas, and determine how ideas are related Therefore, this study investigated and analyzed the cohesion used in healthcare television advertisements with the hope to help English learners improve their listening skills for English advertisements on television, especially televised healthcare advertisements Also, those who are interested in the field of TV advertising might get a deeper knowledge of how to produce utterances and documents of this language type in a clear and coherent way Previous studies related to the research There have been different studies related to the advertising field, for example, “The Language of Advertising” by Angela and Goddard (1998) focusing on linguistic principles for analysis of text, “A Discourse Analysis of Travel Advertisements in English and Vietnamese” by Ton Nu My Nhat (2005) reviewing literature on discourse analysis and proposed an analytical framework for the linguistic description of this unfamiliar specific advertising genre Other researchers have also been interested in advertising language, such as Ngo Thi Hong (2004), Nguyen Thi Bich Lien (2004), Nguyen Thi Hong Minh (2011), and Ho Thi Thien Trang (2011) As can be seen, most of the studies mentioned were conducted on newspapers, print, billboards, etc There has not been any research on TV advertisements about the healthcare field which is the main theme of this paper Some Theoretical Concepts 3.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis According to Crystal (1992: 25), discourse is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon argument joke or narrative.” Sharing the same notion, Cook (1989: 156) states that discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive” Therefore, it can be concluded that a discourse is coherent sentences on the basis of a purpose and a topic such as healthcare As Jorgensen and Phillips (2002: 12) contend, “Language is structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in different domains of social life”, and “Discourse analysis is the analysis of these patterns.” 3.2 Cohesion in Discourse Cohesion, together with coherence, is a term used in discourse analysis and text linguistics to describe the properties of texts In Baker’s (1992: 180) opinion, “cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which provide links between various parts of a text” Delu (2001: 85) argues that cohesion is more than the literal meaning of a sentence It also connects different sentences on the basis of something common of these sentences, or in certain context As proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4), “the concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relation of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” Cohesion is a combined result from grammar and lexical items From the above discussion, it could be concluded that cohesion is a relational concept It is not the presence of a particular class of item that is cohesive, but the relation between one item and another Semantically, cohesion 144 Luu Quy Khuong, Truong Van Tuan means the links between sentences which mutually offer information or clues to each other Cohesion serves as glue sticking elements of a sentence or a passage together Moreover, cohesion is not just structural conformity, but also echoes in meaning 3.3 Classification of Cohesion According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion includes grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion which can be briefly outlined in the following diagrams: Grammatical Cohesion Reference Substitution Ellipsis Personal Nominal Nominal Demonstrative Verbal Verbal Comparative Clausal Clausal Conjunction Additive Adversative Causal Temporal Lexical Cohesion Reiteration Collocation Repetition Super-ordinate/ Hyponym Synonym or near Synonym Antonym Same ordered series Unordered lexical sets Part to whole Part to part 3.4 Advertising, television advertisement, and televised healthcare advertisement According to Wells, Moriarty, and Burnett (2005), advertising is a one-way form of communication that is paid to publicize products or services Television advertisement is “any material included in a television programme service which is designed to advance the sale of any particular product or service or to promote the interests of any organization, commercial concern or individual; whether by means of words, sound effects (including music) and/or of visual presentation and whether in the form of direct announcements, slogans, descriptions or otherwise, as well as any promotional reference in the course of a programme to any products or services.” (Communications Authority of Ofcom, UK, 2013: 6) Based on the theoretical background above, it can be understood that televised healthcare advertisements are commercials on television through which healthcare products or services are introduced Methods and Procedures The research was conducted with several methods: the descriptive method for a detailed description of cohesion, the analytic method for clarification and proving a certain feature or characteristic, and the inductive method for synthesizing the findings as well as drawing out the generalizations and conclusion For practical reasons, fifty advertisements (20-30 seconds in length) of cancer care, hair care, heart care, skin care and tooth care from American television channels such as ABC News, CSTV New York, CNN News etc were collected from February to December, 2012 and then transcribed for analysis The advertisements were analyzed in terms of grammatical and lexical cohesion based on the theory in “Cohesion in English” by Halliday and Hasan (1976) The results were displayed in percentage in tables From that the frequency of each category was discussed and evaluated Findings and Discussion Findings from the data analysis show that various types of grammatical and lexical cohesion were used in healthcare television advertisements at different levels of frequency of occurrence 5.1 Grammatical cohesion used in healthcare television advertisements 5.1.1 Reference Regarding types of references, the healthcare advertisers employ only two kinds of reference of the three ones mentioned by Halliday and Hasan: Personal Reference and Demonstrative Reference Personal reference can be seen in advertisements No 5, 18, 19, 30, and 33, in which personal pronouns are used by advertisers to keep the relationship between sentences and ideas without repeating the words or phrases (1) I was very impressed with the doctors and the staff there They were the first ones that gave me hope (Advertisement No 5) In (1), the word “They” is interpretable by referring to “the doctors and the staff” at the Space Coast Cancer Centre Demonstrative references, which involve the use of the determiners and the adverbs here, there, now, and then, are found in advertisements No 1, 7, 8, 10, 16 For example, the determiner “this” plus disease in example (2) refers to the preceding mentioned disease “Kid’s Cancer” In (3), the adverb “here” refers to “Lexington Medical Centre” which is shown on the screen at the end of the clip (2) The last few years have seen real progress in our goal to eradicate kid’s cancer However, there is still a lot of work to to get this disease beaten (Advertisement No 8) (3) Cancer had stolen her identity but in time my mother looked deeper and came to realize, you are still you, nothing in this world, even cancer, can take that away…… never forget we are here for you (Advertisement No 10) In terms of the frequency, demonstrative pronouns are found to be the highest with 16% Meanwhile, personal pronoun only makes 11.7% This shows that advertisers have a strong tendency in using demonstrative pronouns; next come personal pronouns, and there are no comparative ones to be used 5.1.2 Substitution From the data, we discover such substitutions as THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6(91).2015 Nominal Substitution used in advertisement No and as well as Verbal Substitution in advertisement No 32 with the frequency of their appearance 1.5% and 0.7%, respectively It is noticeable that no clausal substitution occurs in this type of advertisement For instance, we can see that the nominal substitution “ones” substitutes for “doctors” in (4), and the verbal substitution “so”, for the verb phrase “use soap that can really dry their skin” in (5) (4) I was very impressed with the doctors and the staff there They were the first ones that gave me hope that I would return to a full, active and productive life (Advertisement No 5) (5) Good news, men use soap Bad news, men use soap that can really dry their skin, some of men doing so for over 20 years (Advertisement No 32) 5.1.3 Ellipsis The data analysis allows us to see that two of the three types of ellipsis mentioned above are employed in these advertisements: Nominal Ellipsis (in advertisement No 28) and Verbal Ellipsis (in advertisement No 10, 30, and 46) Let’s look at some examples In (6), nominal ellipsis is used because a noun (phrase) after the phrase “the best” is omitted The full sentence can be “Swedes is ranked amongst the best medical centers/ hospitals in the nation for heart care and with good reason In (7), the verb phrase “look at” is absent from the full sentence “She won’t look in the mirror anymore, just look at pictures” as verbal ellipsis is employed (6) The team at Swedish America knew exactly what it was Swedes is ranked amongst the best Ø in the nation for heart care and with good reason (Advertisement No 28) (7) She won’t look in the mirror anymore, just Ø pictures Dear Carol, your photograph inspired me My mother fought cancer and with the loss of her hair, she too struggled to look in the mirror (Advertisement No 10) In terms of frequency, the verbal ellipsis has the highest percentage with 2.2%, the nominal ellipsis ranks the second with 0.7%, and clausal ellipsis is not found in the advertisement samples 5.1.4 Conjunctions Four types of conjunctions are found in the advertisements: Additive, Adversative, Causal, and Temporal with different levels of frequency The additive one is used most with 45.3% Next is the causal one which takes up 9.5%, and then the adversative conjunction with 6.6% The lowest frequency with 5.8% belongs to the temporal conjunction Additive conjunctions, signaled by such words as and, or, and not only…but also, are exploited in advertisements No 1, 15, and 25, in which these additive conjunctions explain, supply or clarify more information about the purpose or the following activities or what is mentioned ahead They can be exemplified in extract (8): the additive conjunction not only… but supplies more information about the subject “they” 145 (8) I don’t think that they realize that they’ve not only helped save my mum but helped save my family (Advertisement No 25) Such adversative conjunctions as but, however, and still can be found in advertisements No 8, 10, and For example, However and still are used in (9) to express a contrast between two sentences (9) The last few years have seen real progress in our goal to eradicate kid’s cancer However, there is still a lot of work to to get this disease beaten (Advertisement No 8) Causal conjunctions which are signalled by so, because, and then are found in advertisements No 19, 44, and 46 to expresses “result, reason and purpose” For instance, because is used in (10) to express a reason (10) Children can laugh and show their smile without any reservation because smiling comes naturally (Advertisement No 44) Temporal conjunctions, such as ago, now, and until then are utilized in advertisements No 5, 19, and 46 The temporal conjunction Now in (11), for example, is used to describe an event taking place at the moment (11) When your hair has split ends, everyday can feel like a bad hair day Now Nexus Salon Hair Care breaks the pattern with new Nexus Pro-Mend (Advertisement No 19) As a whole, the distribution of the four categories of the grammatical cohesion devices can be summarized in Table Table Distribution of grammatical cohesion types in the healthcare TV advertisements Grammatical Cohesion Occurrence Rate % Conjunction 92 67.2 Reference 38 27.7 Ellipsis 2.9 Substitution 2.2 137 100 Total From the data in Table 1, we can state that the grammatical cohesion plays a very important role in making healthcare television advertisements more coherent, interesting and understandable All of the grammatical cohesion devices such as conjunction, reference, ellipsis and substitution are used in healthcare television advertisements However, their frequency is quite different from each other The use of conjunction dominates with the highest percentage 67.2% Next is the use of reference that occupies 27.7 % Meanwhile, the use of ellipsis accounts for only 2.9%, and the last is the use of substitution with a low frequency of 2.2% 5.2 Lexical cohesion used in healthcare television advertisements 5.2.1 Reiteration The data analysis also shows that the advertisers tend 146 Luu Quy Khuong, Truong Van Tuan to use a lot of reiteration, including all of the three types Repetition (in advertisements No 1, 6, 29, 31, and 50), and Synonymy (in advertisements No 11, 16, and 18), and Hyponymy/ Super-ordinates (in advertisements No 26, 27, 30, and 45) Repetition, which means repeating exactly a lexical item mentioned previously in a discourse, can be exemplified in (12) with the repetition of the phrase St Agnes Hospital It is really effective in making a deep impression on viewers so that they can remember the products or services easily and naturally An instance of synonym is in (13), where the advertiser uses the synonym “solution” to substitute for “resolution” For hyponymy/ super-ordinate instance, in (14), the lexical “heart care” covered both “cardiology services” and “coronary intervention”, which makes “heart care” be called a hyponym/super-ordinate (12) In fact, compared to the advances in treatment here in St Agnes Hospital it seems insignificant but when you’re in a hospital alone, scared and yes thirsty St Agnes Hospital Amazing medicine, amazing grace (Advertisement No 6) (13) Make the ultimate resolution for 2011 Kick off the New Year with the guaranteed solution to hair loss (Advertisement No 16) (14) When it comes to healthcare bigger isn’t always better At Alaska Regional we’re proud to be number one in Alaska for heart care like cardiology services and coronary intervention (Advertisement No 27) In regard to level of frequency, repetition is commonly employed with 73.8%, followed by hyponymy with 3.8%, and the last is synonymy with 2.8% 5.2.2 Collocation From the data, there are only three out of the five types of collocation found to be utilized in the advertisements: Antonymy, Part to whole, and Part to part Among these, Antonymy has the highest percentage with 9.3% Meanwhile, the collocation in the form of Part to whole accounts for 8.4%, and Part to part comprises 1.9% There is no exploitation of Same ordered series and Unordered lexical sets Specifically, antonymy is found in advertisements No 15, 27, 30, 32, and 49 For example, in (15), the word pair “small-big” is used to show the contrast Additionally, along with antonym, we can see collocation in the forms of part to whole and part to part as in advertisements No 3, 5, and 17) In (16), for instance, the collocation used here is part to whole with the noun “patients” as a part of the noun “hospital” Lastly, the nouns “hair” and “scalp” belong part to part as they are parts of the human body (15) Maybe that’s why Alaska Regional is rated number one in the state Smaller hospital Bigger heart Alaska Regional not bigger just better (Advertisement No 27) (16) Research and experience against each patients challenge It’s a way of working you won’t find in other hospitals even in our fellow national cancer institute designated centers (Advertisement No 3) (17) We want to help you find out why your hair is thinning and falling out so you too can find the right solution, and now you can Hans Wyman is offering you a complimentary hair and scalp analysis (Advertisement No 17) As can be seen from the findings above, both types of lexical cohesion (reiteration and collocation) are used in healthcare television advertisements However, the frequency between them is quite different as shown in Table Table Distributions of types of lexical cohesion in healthcare TV advertisements Lexical Cohesion Occurrence Rate % Reiteration 86 80.4 Collocation 21 19.6 107 100 Total The use of reiteration dominates with the higher percentage (80.4%) Meanwhile, the use of collocation makes up only 19.6% That collocation comprises a small proportion in lexical cohesion shows that advertisers are very careful in using of collocation in making television advertisements Conversely, they have a tendency to use reiteration, especially repetition, to help viewers remember the products or services easily and longer 5.3 Distribution of Cohesion types in Healthcare Television Advertisements Table Distribution of Cohesion types in Healthcare Television Advertisements Type of Cohesion Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion TOTAL Occurrence Rate % 137 56.1 107 43.9 244 100 As can be seen in Table 3, the grammatical cohesion is used more than the lexical one in healthcare advertisements on American Television (56.1% versus 43.9%, respectively) Conclusion To sum up, through the study it was discovered that the healthcare television advertisements on American television utilized both the grammatical cohesion and the lexical one with grammatical cohesion to be more frequently used one It was also found out that the use of conjunctions, references makes up a high proportion in the grammatical cohesion, and the use of repetition ranks second among the other cohesion used in the healthcare television advertisements It is expected that the results of this study could provide useful information for anyone who is interested in advertising field, particularly copy-writers and advertising agencies In order to design an appealing, impressive, and persuasive piece of advertising, especially THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO 6(91).2015 a televised healthcare advertisement, besides a combination of images and sound effects which is out of the scope of this research, it is necessary that a copywriter or advertising company should study and understand how to write and use the words as well as the effective use of cohesion In this aspect, what has just been presented in this paper is, in fact, worth reading REFERENCES [1] Angela and Goddard, The Language of Advertising, Routledge, London (1998) [2] Baker, M., A Coursebook on Translation London, Routledge (1992) [3] Communications Authority of Ofcom, UK, Generic Code of Practice on Television Advertising Standards (2013) Retrieved from http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/othercodes/tacode.pdf [4] Cook, G , Discourse, Oxford University Press (1989) [5] Crystal, D, Introducing Linguistics, London: Penguin (1992) 147 [6] Halliday, M.A.K and Hasan, R, Cohesion in English, London, Longman (1976) [7] Ho Thi Thien Trang, A Discourse Analysis of Tourism Advertisements In English and Vietnamese, M.A Thesis, Danang (2011) [8] Jorgensen, M., and Phillips, J., L, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method, London: SAGE 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Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall (2005) [15] Zhang Delu, Cohesive Forces and Coherence of Texts Foreign Language Teachingand Research (2001) Vol 1, 85-86 (The Board of Editors received the paper on 06/29/2014, its review was completed on 08/14/2014) ... easily and longer 5.3 Distribution of Cohesion types in Healthcare Television Advertisements Table Distribution of Cohesion types in Healthcare Television Advertisements Type of Cohesion Grammatical... Moreover, cohesion is not just structural conformity, but also echoes in meaning 3.3 Classification of Cohesion According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), cohesion includes grammatical cohesion and lexical... D, Introducing Linguistics, London: Penguin (1992) 147 [6] Halliday, M.A.K and Hasan, R, Cohesion in English, London, Longman (1976) [7] Ho Thi Thien Trang, A Discourse Analysis of Tourism Advertisements