A systemic functional linguistic analysis of english advertising slogans of cars

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH ADVERTISING SLOGANS OF CARS (Phân tích hiệu quảng cáo xe tiếng Anh theo quan điểm ngôn ngữ học chức hệ thống) ĐANG THI THU HUONG Field: English Language Code: 8220201 Hanoi, 2020 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH ADVERTISING SLOGANS OF CARS (Phân tích hiệu quảng cáo xe tiếng Anh theo quan điểm ngôn ngữ học chức hệ thống) ĐẶNG THỊ THU HƯƠNG Field: English Language Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Phan Van Que Hanoi, 2020 ii CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entited A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH ADVERTISING SLOGANS OF CARS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Hanoi, 2020 Dang Thi Thu Huong Approved by SUPERVISOR Date: iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Phan Van Que for his guidance and continuous help throughout the completion journey of this thesis The momentous support given by Dr Phan Van Que is indescribable and his persistent patience is of a top-notch appreciation that will be always remembered Also, I would like to thank my beloved husband for his never- ending encouragement and extra-ordinary guidance I am mightily thankful for his sincere support and precious effort shown from the beginning up till the end of the completion of this research Last but not least, a special thank is dedicated to my family and my friends who instantaneously helped me through my hard times iv ABSTRACT One of the ways to promote certain products is through advertisement Advertisements may appear in brochures, magazines, newspaper, radio, television and also internet The interesting thing from advertisements is the language they use They frequently use persuasive language in order to attract the consumers or buyers One of the ways to persuade the consumers or buyers is using interesting slogans The aim of this study was to analyze the slogans’ language in terms of transitivity system and the images based on multimodality theory This qualitative research is conducted on a total of 76 life insurance slogans chosen from car company’s official website The study aims at giving readers a brief description and analysis of advertising slogans and their accompanying images The analysis was based on a combined framework of Halliday‟s SFL and Kress and Leeuwen‟s Multimodality theory The study firstly tries to investigate transitivity to clarify six main types of processes: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal and existential processes Secondly, image-text relations were expounded based on Systemic Functional theory across semiotic modes The findings indicated that advertisement designers employed various linguistic devices to attract customers In these slogans, material, relational and mental processes are the most frequently applied The paper also figures out that images help extend or add new meaning to the verbal text Thus, the language use and images in advertising slogans consist of different distinctive features to enable advertisers to communicate with customers The paper hopefully will entail useful implications for the use of language and other modes of communication v LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: The three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday (1978, pp 36-58) 14 Figure 2: The image of co-tangential circles 14 (Halliday and Martin, 1993, p 25) 14 Figure 3.1: Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday, 2004: 219) 26 Figure 4.1: The percentages of different processes 30 Table 2.1: Types of relational process 16 Table 2.2: Relational Attributive Clauses 16 Table 2.3: Relational Identifying Clauses 17 Table 2.4: Types of Beneficiary and Range functions 19 Table 2.5: Types of circumstantial element 19 Table 4.1: The frequency of occurrence of all the techniques 30 Table 4.2: Illustration of Material Process 31 Table 4.3: Structure of Mental Process 34 Table 4.4: Illustration of Relational-attribute Processes 35 Table 4.5: Illustration of Relational-identifying Processes 36 Table 4.6: Illustration of Existential processes 37 Table 4.7: Illustration of Behavioral processes 38 Table 4.8: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Representational meaning 42 Table 4.9: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Interactive meaning 46 Table 4.10: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Compositional meaning 51 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT v LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi TABLE OF CONTENTS vii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims 1.2.2 Specific Objectives: 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Methods of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of previous studies 2.2 Theoritical background 2.2.1 Advertising 2.2.2 Slogans 2.2.3 Systemic Functional Linguistics 10 2.3 Theoretical framework of the study 15 2.3.1.Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics 15 2.3.2 Visual Analytical Framework 20 2.4 Summary 24 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 25 3.1 Research approach 25 3.2 Methods of the study 25 3.3 Data collection and data analysis 25 3.3.1 Data collection 25 3.3.2 Data analysis 26 3.4 Summary 28 CHAPTER 4: ADVERTISING SLOGANS OF CARS FROM SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE 29 vii 4.1 Analysis based on Systemic Functional Linguistics 29 4.1.1 Material process 31 4.1.2 Mental process 34 4.1.3 Relational process 35 4.2 Analysis based on Multimodality theory 40 4.2.1 Representational meaning 41 4.2.2 Interactive meaning 46 4.2.3 Compositional meaning 51 4.3 The implications for teaching and learning English advertising slogans of cars 54 4.4 Summary 54 CHAPTER 5.CONCLUSION 56 5.1 Recapitulation 56 5.2 Concluding remarks 56 5.3 Limitation of the research 57 5.4 Recommendations and suggestions for further research 58 REFERENCES viii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Together with the development of the world, thousands of new products and services are introduced everyday, which are in need to find an effective way to reach customers Most of products including food, beverages, medicines, airlines services, are presented to the public via mass media namely television, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, radio, etc Consequently, manufacturers take advertisements into consideration as a key tool to spread their goods worldwide Advertisements play a crucial role in economic, sociological and psychological viewpoints Using advertisements is considered the solution of seeking a channel for organizations or companies to reach out the world with their messages Slogans are taken as the heart of advertisements and cover the most focusing points sent to customers by the advertisers However, the question to create a good and successful slogan to bring in customers’ mind the image of the product and encourage them to buy is not always at ease Therefore, with advertisers, the art of using some valuable words in slogans requires a deep understanding of phonology, lexicology, syntax and other elements Language in the field of advertising has drawn considerable attention because advertising helps inform customers about quality brands in the market and promote sales for companies, so advertising should be fascinating, exciting and creative Slogans are considered the heart of an advertisement so the language of advertising slogans is pervasive, influential and ubiquitous Slogans can be catchy phrase or short sentences which help corporations or businesses tell the world what makes their products or services different Indeed, creating a successful slogan is real art of language use Theoritically, the language of advertising has been studied by several scholars from different sub-fields of linguistics One of the most reowned studies on the language of advertising was conducted by Geoffrey N Leech (1996), who described British television advertising from a liguistic point of view In his study, Leech developed the concept of “ Standard Advertising English” by listing the most prominent and widespread characteristics in his research of advertisements Although some common linguistic features of advertising in English have been revealed in his research, those features of a specific product have not been mentioned In Vietnam, some linguists such as Mai Xuan Huy (2005) with Ngôn ngữ quảng cáo ánh sáng lý thuyết giao tiếp have also noticed the importance of advertising language but his study analyzes some aspects only Practically, in teaching and studying English, especially conversational English and advertising slogans in particular, teachers and students only focus on linguistic features, which leads to the insufficent understanding of advertising slogans As a result, a study on systemic functional linguistic analysis of English advertising slogans of cars can be of great value A number of researches have been conducted on advertising slogans, but advertising slogans on cars is still an open field An investigation into these slogans will hopefully reveal interesting features in language used in car slogans and meanings of images That’s the reason why the author chooses to conduct a research into English advertising slogans of cars 1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 1.2.1 Aims This study is carried out with the aim of helping teachers and students understand the systemic functional linguistic analysis of English advertising slogans of cars and also the meanings and functions of the images accompanying with the slogans 1.2.2 Specific Objectives: The objective of this study is to describe and analyse characteristics of language used in English advertising slogans of cars from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective Another objective of the study is to investigate images accompanying these slogans to figure out their meanings and functions The results of the study will provide some implications for English teachers and learners 1.3 Research questions This study is carried out with the aim to describe and analyze characteristics of language used in advertising slogans for cars from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective Then, images accompanying these slogans are also investigated to figure out their meanings and functions based on multimodal analysis In order to achieve these aims, the following questions are addressed: What are the characteristics of language use in English advertising slogans of cars from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective? What are the meanings and functions of the images included in English advertising slogans of cars on multimodal analysis? What are implications for teaching and learning English advertising slogans of cars? number of analyses based on Systemic Functional Grammar, to some extent, is still limited Besides, within the limited scope of a minor M.A thesis, the author cannot cover all aspects Apart from that, the potential of bias and exaggeration may also be unavoidable in some cases The data is collected from one source – Internet, which may more or less affect the result’s objectivity 5.4 Recommendations and suggestions for further research Although some analysis of advertising slogans of cars have been done in the thesis, it can not cover all the aspects relating to such broad and changeable from time to time like advertising Therefore, further researchers can collect data from various sources such as newspapers, magazines, leaflets or television Researchers should also focus more on the context in which the discourse occurs Some other linguistic aspects are worth investigating further, e.g., Mood system, Theme – Rheme structure, cognitive metaphors, figures of substitutions and rhetorical devices By doing so, they will be able to gain a deeper insight and valid conclusions 58 REFERENCES Bloomfield, L (1914) An Introduction to the Study of Language New York, Henry Holt and Company Bolen, W.H (1984) Advertising New York, John Wiley and Sons Brown, Gillian & Yule, George (1983) Discourse analysis United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press Bui Thi Bich Thuy, (2008) An investigation into the style of the English language used in advertising slogans is used by some world-famous airlines Luận văn thạc sĩ, Hà Nội, Tr ng Đại học Ngoại ngữ – Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội Cook, G (1989) Discourse Oxford, Oxford University Press Cook, G (1992) The discourse of advertising London, Routledge Dyer, G (1982) Advertising as communication London, Routledge Forceville, C (1996) Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising Oxon: Routledge Fries, P.H (1993) Information flow in written advertising in James Alatis (ed.) Language, communication and social meaning Washington, D.C., Georgetown University Press 10 Goddard, A (1998) The language of advertising London, Routledge 11 Guo, L (2004) Multimodality in a Biology Textbook, in K.L O’Halloran (ed.) Multimodal Discourse Analysis, London: Continuum 12 Hall, G A., & Nelson, M E (2005) Locating the semiotic power of multimodality.Written Communication 13 Halliday M.A.K (1985) An introduction to functional grammar, London, Arnold 14 Halliday and Hasan (1985) Language, context and text, Aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective Deakin University Press/OUP, Geelong/Oxford 15 Halliday, M.A.K (1985) "Systemic Background" In Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol 1, Selected Theoretical Papers from the Ninth International Systemic Workshop, James D Benson and William S Greaves (eds) Ablex Vol in The Collected Works, p 192 16 Halliday, (1985) "Systemic Background" In Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol 1, Selected Theoretical Papers from the Ninth 59 International Systemic Workshop, Benson and Greaves (eds) Vol in The Collected Works, p 193 17 Halliday, M., & Hasan, R (1989) Language, Context, and Text, Aspects of Language in a Social Semiotic Perspective Oxford, Oxford University Press 18 Halliday, M.A.K (2002) On Grammar, Vol 1, in The Collected Works of M.A.K Halliday London, Continuum 19 Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.) London, Arnold 20 Halliday, M A K (2008) Complementarities in Language Beijing, The Commercial Press 21 Harris, R., & Seldon, A (1962: 40) Advertising and the Public London, Institute of Economic Affairs 22 Keller and Kotler (2012) Marketing Management Pearson 23 Kress, G R., & Van Leeuwen, T (1996) Reading images, The grammar of visual design London, Routledge 24 Kress, G R, and C Jewitt.(2003) Introduction In C Jewitt and G Kress (eds.) Multimodal literacy New York: Peter Lang 25 Kress, G R., & Van Leeuwen, T (2006) Reading images London, Routledge 26 Leech, G (1966), English in Advertising London, Longman 27 Mai Xuân Huy (2005) Ngơn ngữ quảng cáo ánh sáng lí thuyết giao tiếp, Hà Nội, Nxb Khoa học Xã hội 28 Matthiessen, C., & Halliday, M (1997) Systemic functional grammar London, Penguin 29 Matthiessen, C (2010) Systemic functional linguistics developing Annual Review of Functional Linguistics, 2, 8-63 30 Machin, D (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis London, Hodder Education 31 Michel Monnot (1982) Selling America: Puns, language and advertising University Press America 32 Thompson, G (1996), Introducing functional grammar London, Routledge Publisher 60 33 Toolan, M (1988), The language of press advertising in Ghadessy (ed.) Registers of written English, situational factors and linguistic features London, Pinter (Open Linguistic Series) 34 Turner, E.S (1965) The shocking history of advertising UK, Penguin in association with Joseph 35 Trần Thị Thu Hiền (2012) Tìm hiểu đặc trưng phong cách ngôn ngữ quảng cáo tiếng Việt (trong so sánh với tiếng Anh) Luận án tiến sĩ, Hà Nội, Viện Ngôn ngữ học 36 Vestergaard, T., & Schroder, K (1985) The language of advertising Oxford, Blackwell Internet sources https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/features-slogan-5762.html 61 APPENDICES APPENDIX 1: 75 car clogans collected from car companies Car company Slogans Range Rover It’s how the smooth take the rough Hyundai Always be there for you It’s a whole new Hyundai Audi Slogans Never Follow Everyone dreams of an Audi BMW Slogans The Ultimate Driving Machine Ford Slogans There is a Ford in your future Everything We Do is Driven By You Have you driven a Ford lately? 10 Better Ideas Driven By You 11 Ford has a better idea 12 Build for life in Canada 13 Built Ford Tough! 14 The Best Never Rest 15 Go Further 16 Make your own way Volkswagen Slogans 17 Think Small 18 If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen 62 19 To you we listen 20 20(a) If gas pain persists, (20b) try Volkswagen Isuzu 21 You have my word on it Mercedez – Benz Slogans 22 Unlike Any Other 23 The best or nothing 24 Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedez Benz? Jaguar Slogans 25 Grace… Space… Pace… 26 26(a) Don’t Dream It (26b)Drive It Jeep Slogans 27 Have fun out there 28 The sun never sets on the mighty Jeep 29 29(a) If it’s not trail rated, (29b) it’s not a Jeep Nissan Slogans 30 (30a) Everything you want (30b) Nothing you don’t 31 You can with a Nissan Saturn Slogans 32 Like Always Like Never Before 33 33(a) A different kind of company (33b) A different kind of car 34 34(a)What kind of car is that? 34(b) It’s a Saturn 63 35 It’s different in a Saturn Toyota Car Slogans 36 (36a) What will you with all (36b) the money you save? 37 Get the Feeling 38 Oh What a Feeling Toyota 39 (39a) You, asked for it (39b)You got it, Toyota 40 The best built cars in the world 41 The passionate pursuit for perfection 42 The car in front is a Toyota 43 Today tomorrow Toyota 44 Drive your dreams 45 Who could ask for anything more? Mercury 46 Live life in your own lane Cadillac Slogans 47 The Penalty of Leadership 48 Life, Liberty, and The persuit The new standard for the world Mazda Slogans 49 Zoom, Zoom, Zoom 64 Pontiac Slogans 50 We are driving excitement Renault Slogans 51 Drive the Change 52 Smart Slogan 53 Open your mind Chevrolet Slogans 54 Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet 55 Building a better way To see the USA 56 Eye it Try it Buy it 57 (57a) The road isn’t built (57b) that can make it breathe hard 58 An American Revolution 59 Find New Roads Subaru Slogans 60 Think Feel Drive 61 The beauty of all wheel drive 62 (62a)When you get it (62b) You get it Mitsubishi Slogans 63 Wake up and drive 64 Better built Better backed Plymouth Slogans 65 And the Plymouth win-you-over beat goes on 66 Plymouth – Isn’t that the kind of car America wants? 65 67 (67a) If it’s important to you, (67b) it’s important to Plymouth Buick Slogans 68 Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick? 69 Isn’t it time for a real car? 70 It makes you feel like the man you are Dodge Slogans 71 Bigger in Texas, Better in Dodge Hummer Slogan 72 Like nothing else on earth Citroen Slogan 73 Just imagine what Citroen can for you Peugeot Slogans 74 The lion goes from strength to strength 75 Motion & Emotion APPENDIX 2: 12 printed advertisements BMW 66 Chevrolet Chevrolet 67 Chevrolet Ford 68 Ford Mercedes 69 Toyota Toyota 70 Toyota Toyota 71 Toyota 72 ... features, which leads to the insufficent understanding of advertising slogans As a result, a study on systemic functional linguistic analysis of English advertising slogans of cars can be of. .. in advertising slogans of cars on multimodal analysis - Practically, the result of the study helps teachers and students understand the systemic functional linguistic analysis of English advertising. .. (transactional) Chevrolet-3 Analytical Ford-1 Analytical Ford-2 Reactional process Mercedes Analytical Toyota-1 Classification Toyota-2 Reactional process Toyota-3 Analytical Toyota-4 Classification