Previous studies of advertising from cross-cultura- 123docz.net

Firstly, studies of Chiluwa (2007), Al-Azzawi (2010), or Lipping Ge (2011) explore advertising language based on Grice’s maxims of cooperation in communication.

(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines(LUAN.van.THAC.si).a.cross.cultural.pragmatic.analysis.of.commercial.advertisements.in.american.and.vietnamese.magazines

Chiluwa (2007) uses the speech acts theory by Austin (1969) and Searle (1969, 1976) to interpret the language of soft drink advertisement in the context of Nigeria in terms of persuasive actions. The results of the study indicate that the directive act and the representation act, which involve requesting, appealing, claiming, reporting, asserting and suggesting, are more frequently demonstrated in the advert. These, therefore, could be considered the best persuasive strategy in the adverts as “they particularly appealed to the consumer‟s sense of ego, sex class and self-worth.”

Al-Azzawi (2010) analyzes advertising language from the pragmatic aspect, especially Grice’s cooperative principles. The results reveal that in advertisement, implicature and entailment are made use of to serve the purposes of the ad-writers “irrespective of whether the addressee‟s entailment is the same as that of the advertiser or not.” However, there was no discussion on the use of presupposition and other pragmatic aspects which may be used in the advertising.

Ge (2011) fills Al-Azzawi (2010)’s gap by conducting research on pragmatic functions of presupposition in advertising English. The findings reveal that presupposition is a linguistic device that can be used to imply that certain conditions exist or that certain things have happened or have not happened.

Therefore, presupposition is an effective way of creating the biggest contextual effect in recipients with the least processing effort to achieve the most advertising effects.

Zhu Wenzhong and Li Jingyi (2013) examine the application of vague language in the context of English commercial advertising from the data of commercial advertisement in the newspapers in four English-speaking countries namely USA, UK, Australia and Canada. Based on the pragmatic theory, Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature, the study finds that vague language plays both positive and negative roles in commercial advertising. Its positive functions include improving the flexibility of communication by

displaying politeness and naturalness; enhancing the expressiveness of language;

enriching the message of idea as well as ensuring the accuracy of information.

However, if inappropriately exploited, vague language may mislead or cause the readers to have false interpretations of the advertisements.

Secondly, a number of studies have been conducted to investigate politeness strategies in advertising language or how politeness is expressed in speech acts in advertising. These studies include ones conducted by Koga &

Pearson (1992), Hongfei Ke (2006), Wise (2011) or Pishghadam and Navari (2012). While Hongfei Ke and Wise mainly employ Brown & Levinson’s politeness model for analysis, Koga & Pearson’s and Pishghadam & Navari’s research combine the theory of Brown & Levinson and other politeness theories like Ting & Toomey’s (1988) or Leech’s (1983).

Based on cross-cultural pragmatic perspective, Koga & Pearson (1992) combine Brown & Levinson’s (1978, 1987) and Ting & Toomey’s (1998) model of politeness to measure politeness strategies of ads. The results of the study reveal that Japanese advertisers use more social strategies correlating with collectivistic, vertical and high-context culture in contrast with the use of more individual strategies correlating with individualistic, horizontal and low-context culture of American advertisers. However, the research only deals with female readers, which may affect the objectivity of the results as gender is often found to be an influencing variable. Additionally, a more precise approach in categorizing face strategies should be utilized.

Hongfei Ke (2006) applies a model of politeness derived from the theory of Brown and Levinson in order to compare Chinese and American advertisements. The study utilizes negative versus positive face value, individual versus social face value, and self versus other face value as well as their combination to analyze 70 advertisements. It is found that Chinese advertisers use more collective face and negative face strategies, which correlate with

collectivistic, vertical and high context culture of Chinese whereas American advertising contains more individual, positive face strategies in correlation with individualistic, horizontal and low context culture. Additionally, American ads use more other face strategies while Chinese ones use more self-face strategies.

With regard to combined features, Chinese advertisements mainly employ Association/ Collective/ Other face concern while Association/ Individual/ Other face concern is the priority of American ads. The findings of the research are meaningful and enlightening for Chinese and American corporations to do the international product promotion. Furthermore, the analytical framework of the study which combines pragmatic and advertising culture helps to enrich the interdisciplinary research and the development of pragmatics and cross-cultural communication studies. However, it would be better if the sample of the study were larger and a more precise approach in categorizing face strategies could be provided.

Wise (2011) does research on speech acts and politeness in Spanish and English magazine advertising from cross-cultural pragmatic perspective. By applying speech act theory and models of politeness of Brown and Levinson (1987) and Leech (1983), Wise analyzes directives and commissives in advertising. The researcher finds out that the speech acts in the Spanish and English advertisements tend to orient towards positive politeness strategies.

Additionally, there are structural linguistic features specific to each language within the speech acts that can support politeness strategies. Despite the in-depth analysis, Wise’s corpus consists of advertisements from only two magazines, one for each language. Therefore, the result of the study cannot be generalized.

Moreover, the study just focuses on two types of speech acts, so additional types of speech acts should be added.

Pishghadam and Navari (2012) investigate the politeness strategies adopted in English and Persian ads so as to compare and contrast their

persuasive factors. To this end, a corpus of 100 Persian and English ads is analyzed based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) taxonomy of politeness functions. The study indicates that English advertisements made more use of positive politeness strategies while in Persian adverts indirect off-record strategies were more favored. Additionally, the findings also reveal that the choices of psychological strategies made by ad-writers to persuade readers are also in accordance with their intended culture, i.e. the individualistic nature of culture for England and collectivist for Persian. However, this research only discusses the availability of different politeness strategies used in English and Persian advertisements. Therefore, this present study provides information not only about the availability but also the proportionality and manifestability of various politeness strategies utilized in American and Vietnamese advertising.

Another trend of exploiting politeness in advertising is to examine principles of conversation which include both the cooperative principle and politeness strategies. Such studies include research by Fang Liu (2012) or Abel (2014).

Fang Liu (2012) analyzes advertisements based on the cooperative principle by Grice and the politeness principle by Leech. The findings indicate that advertising could achieve special effects by applying the principle of conversation. In the communication of advertisements, advertisers often impart information in an indirect way by openly and intentionally flouting the maxims of cooperative principles so as to allow readers of advertisements to infer the conversational implicature from the literal meaning. Additionally, the study also revealed that the tact maxim, generosity maxim and sympathy maxim of the politeness principle proposed by Leech (1983) are often applied to advertisements, especially in public service advertising because when using such maxims, the ads can gain more attraction and fulfill the ultimate objective of persuading consumers successfully. It would be better, however, if the study could provide a deeper analysis.

Abel (2014) examines a variety of billboard adverts from different industries using pragmatics theory of speech acts, presupposition, non-verbal communication and cooperative principles and Leech’s (1983) politeness principle. The research tried to figure out the relationship between the texts and the structure, graphic symbols and meanings conveyed. The study observes that illocutionary forces are intentionally direct towards the advertisers’

communicative intentions. Additionally, in commercial adverts, language is mainly a persuasive instrument in which ad-writers rely on their mutual knowledge with the audience. Last but not least, presuppositions are potent in commercial bill-board advertising.

Thirdly, there exist certain studies investigating politeness in advertisement based on non-verbal cues or using inferential pragmatic approach to analyze advertising language. However, the methods used in these studies are only suitable for certain cultures and it is hard to do the similar research in other contexts.

Chuchu and Mahali (2014) conduct research on politeness in Brunei and Malaysian TV advertisements based on non-verbal cues derived from al-Quran and al-Hadith from Islamic perspective. The findings reveal that realization of politeness in the form of non-verbal communication can be seen in facial expression, eye communication, touch communication, clothing and voice meanwhile realization of impoliteness can be seen from the physical environment communication which is appearance or more specifically clothes.

Moreover, realization of politeness in TV Brunei and TV Malaysia does not have much difference. The slight difference is that the realization of politeness through clothing on TV ads in TV Brunei is more evident than on TV Malaysia.

Much more importantly, all factors that influence the realization of politeness are basically a way of life; i.e. “Malay Islamic Monarchy” philosophy for Brunei and “One Malaysia’ concept of Malaysia. Despite the fact that the analysis is

specifically detailed, the analytical framework may only work well for Islamic people, and hence cannot be appropriate for the present study.

Using inferential pragmatic approach, Qadafi and Wahyudi (2014) investigated the way cigarettes are promoted without explicitly exposing them in the context of Indonesia. This research reveals that the language of advertisements operated subtly at the level of cognition and comprehension to persuade smokers. In persuading smokers, the cigarette companies first chose inputs which have greater relevance and cognitive effects, then explicated the messages; implicated assumptions and finally concluded the messages.

There are also a few studies conducted in Vietnamese context from pragmatic perspective like Mai Xuân Huy (2005) or Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Hà (2011).

These studies focus on speech acts employed in only Vietnamese advertising or in Vietnamese advertising in comparison with English advertising.

Mai Xuân Huy (2005) studies the language of advertising in light of communicative approach. He explores advertising language basing on pragmatic approach, or more specifically, speech acts in Vietnamese advertisements.

Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Hà (2011) investigates linguistic features of the advertisements of food and drinks in English versus Vietnamese. The study found that regarding the use of speech acts in the ads of food and drinks, both English and Vietnamese are found to employ the major speech acts like representatives, directives, commissives and questions for both informative and persuasive functions. Moreover, as regards the stylistic devices, English and Vietnamese have at disposal means to carry out the surface structure operations that make sentences and their constituents more prominent and influence the interpretation of text meaning in terms of stylistic values.

As can be seen, most of the studies under the light of pragmatic perspective mentioned above investigated advertising in terms of speech acts, politeness and other aspects related to cooperative principles. However, there has been rarely any research examining politeness strategies in their full

manifestation which might lead to insufficient understanding of the language in advertising industry. Additionally, in Vietnamese context, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the number of studies on advertising is limited, especially ones on the comparison between Vietnamese and American advertising. As a result, the author attempts to do the research on cross-cultural pragmatic of commercial advertisements in American and Vietnamese magazines.

Previous studies of advertising from cross-cultural pragmatic

Previous studies of advertising appeals

The hybrid negative-positive politeness strategy in American and