VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT ************* GRADUATION THESIS REITERATION IN THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING (PhÐp lÆp trong ng«n ng÷ qu¶ng c¸o) Field: English linguistics Supervisor: Ng« §×nh Ph¬ng. Ph.D. Student: Hå ThÞ HiÒn Class: K46-A1- English Vinh, 2009 1 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my supervisor, Mr. Ngô Đình Phương, Ph.D. for his great supports, precious comments and enormously essential corrections during the time I have done the thesis. Without his helps, the thesis could not have been completed. Secondly, I am grateful to my lecturers in the Foreign Languages Department, Vinh University for providing me a variety of valuable documents, for their enthusiastic encouragement and their great helps during the passing time. Especially, I would like to show my deep thanks to some old students of our department who used to be students of K44 B1 – English for their important suggestions and encouragement. Thirdly, my profound thanks come to my lecturer, Ms. Sandy Gannon, for her great ideas and for providing me good information and integral sources of documents which has served as an important tool for me to carry out the paper. Finally, I would like to thank my dear family and my good friends who have been always beside me and helped me to overcome difficulties in order that I could complete the thesis. Vinh, May 2009 Hồ Thị Hiền TABLE OF CONTENT 2 Acknowledgements ii Table of Content iii PART A: INTRODUCTION .1 1. Rationale . 1 2. Aims of the study .2 3. Scope of the study 2 4. Methods of the study 2 5. Design of the study .3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background .4 1.1. Theory of discourse .4 1.2. Text and discourse .5 1.3. Concept of cohesion 6 1.4. Types of cohesive devices .6 1.5. Lexical cohesion 7 1.5.1. Concept of lexical cohesion .7 1.5.2. Types of lexical cohesion .8 1.6. Reiteration .8 1.6.1. Concept of reiteration .8 1.6.2. Types of reiteration 9…… 1.6.2.1. Repetition 9 1.6.2.2. Synonyms and near-synonyms 9 1.6.2.3. Superordinates .9 1.6.2.4. General words .10 1.7. Advertising 10 1.7.1. Definition of advertising 10 3 1.7.2. Classification of advertising .11 1.7.3. The language of advertising .12 1.7.3.1. Roles of language in advertising .12 1.7.3.2. Characteristics of language in advertising .12 Chapter 2: Reiteration in the Language of Advertising .16 2.1. General structure of a print advertising text 16 2.2. Reiteration as seen in types .16 2.2.1 Repetition 16 2.2.1.1. Sounds .17 2.2.1.2. Words 19 2.2.1.3. Phrase structure 22 2.2.2. Synonyms and near- synonyms 24 2.2.3. Superordinates 24 2.2.4. General words 26 2.3. Reiteration in separated parts of a print advertising text .27 2.3.1. Headline .27 2.3.2. Body copy .29 2.3.3. Slogan .32 Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions .34 3.1. Majors findings .34 3.2. Effectiveness of using reiteration in the language of advertising 35 PART C: CONCLUSION 37 1. Summary 37 2. Application .38 3. Suggestions for further studies .39 4 REFERENCES .41 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Advertisements are available everywhere, on TV, in magazines, in newspapers, on the Internet, on the sacks, on the billboards, or even on the walls. Advertisement plays a crucial role for the companies to popularize their products, services and brands to customers everywhere in the market economy. Together with music, color, models, language is a very important factor that makes advertisements successful, particularly, with those in magazines and newspapers which are included in print advertisements. Magazines and newspapers are regarded as the most reliable means to advertise. By using these means, advertisers have enough space to express their messages to specified customers. Those pieces of advertisement will exist for a longer time because the readers can save them or cut them to stick in other places. That is why print advertisements should be designed in nice images and impressive language. 5 Language in advertising is characterized not only by being short, informative, persuasive, and impressive but by also being coherent. Hence, cohesive devices (grammatical and lexical devices) serve as integral means in pieces of advertisements. Traditionally, almost learners' attention has been drawn onto grammatical devices (reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction) and very little on lexical ones despite the fact that the later can contribute a significant part on creating coherence. Among the lexical devices, reiteration is considered the most common one appearing in advertising texts. Being so interested in the language of advertisement and reiteration in English, we find it very interesting and appropriate to emphasize what people have already known about the features of the products to draw messages onto their mind. For all reasons above, we have chosen the topic "Reiteration in the language of advertising." 2. Aims of the Study The thesis has been carried out with aims to: - Emphasize the important role of reiteration in the language of advertising. - Study the effectiveness created in advertisements by using reiteration. - Suggest some practical applications on reiteration in teaching and learning English. 3. Scope of the Study We have no ambition to cover all kinds of lexical devices and all kinds of advertisements. The thesis only focuses on studying: - Four types of reiteration provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976) including repetition, synonyms, superordinates and general words. - Print advertising texts available in some popular magazines and newspapers in the United States and Vietnam such as People, Newsweek, The Oprah, Real Simple, The Guide, The TiÒn Phong, The Thanh Niªn, The Hoa häc Trß, TiÕp ThÞ Gia §×nh .… 6 4. Methods of the Study The thesis is carried out through analytical and synthetical methods. The quality research design is used and supported by an empirical of data collected. 5. Design of the Study The thesis includes three main parts: Part A: Introduction This part will introduce the rationale, aims, scope, methods and design of the study. Part B: Developement This part consists of three chapters: Chapter 1: Theoretical background Chapter 2: Reiteration in the language of advertising Chapter 3: Findings and discussions Part C: Conclusion This part summarizes what have been disscussed so far and also provides some practical applications as well as some suggestions for further studies. 7 PART B: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Theory of Discourse Until the first half of the 20 th century, traditional linguists had been working under the orientation point of view that sentences are the largest complete unit to be studied. It has, however, gradually been realized to be a mistaken one. Many problems concerning with both linguistic theories and practices appeared to be unthoroughly solved with this viewpoint. This fact eventually led to the appearance of a new subject in the 1960s and early 1970s, studying languages through units above sentence level. Discourse Analysis (as the new subject was termed), as Michael McCarthy (1991: 5) puts it, "is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used", under the assistance of traditional linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Since the time Discourse Analysis came into being as a branch of linguistics, the term "discourse" has been defined in many different ways. A discourse, according to David Nunan in the introduction of his Introducing Discourse Analysis (1995), "is a stretch of language that may be longer than one sentence." Barbara Johnstone (2002: 2) claims that: "discourse usually means actual instances of communication in the medium of language." In this thesis the notion by Guy Cook (1995: 198), seeing discourse as "stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive" seems to be the best to adopt. 8 1.2. Text and Discourse The distinction between the two terms "text" and "discourse" are rather controversial. To some linguists, the two terms can be used interchangeably, as they state: (1) A text, or a discourse, is a stretch of language that may be longer than a sentence. (Nunan, 1995: 1) (2) A text may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue. It may be any thing from a single proverb to a whole play, from a momentary cry for help to all day discussion in a committee. (Crystal, 1992: 72) On the other hand, some linguists suppose that it is worth seeing the two terms in different ways. Widdowson (1979), for instance, suggests that: One way sees it [language beyond the limit of sentence] a text, a collection of formal objects held by the pattern of equivalences, or frequencies, or by cohesive devices. The other way sees language as discourse, a use of sentences to perform act of communication which cohere into large communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication. (Quoted in §Æng H÷u Phíc, 2006 – B.A. Thesis) Widdowson's differentiation is rather similar with that of Brown and Yule (1983: 6) who "use a text as a technical term to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act"; and that of Crystal (1992: 25) defining discourse as "a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative" and text as "a piece of naturally occurring spoken written or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis. It is often a language unit with definable function, such as a conversation, a poster." 1.3. Concept of Cohesion The concept of cohesion is tightly connected with discourse. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4), cohesion is a semantic concept that refers to the relation of meaning 9 existing within the text, and that differs it from what is not a text. More specifically, they stated that "Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another. The one presupposes the other, in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it." (1976: 4) A group of sentences often constitutes a text but it is not the case that any set of sentences can compose a text. To be a text, such a text must consist of related elements. This condition is referred to as texture, which is widely agreed to be created by cohesion. Cohesion, thereby can be called formal links between elements (within or beyond sentence-boundaries) that makes a text cohesive. It is much involved, but not coincided, with another notion known as coherence. 1.4. Types of Cohesive Devices In this thesis, we adopt the division of cohesive device by Halliday and Hasan (1976), which can be illustrated by the graph as follows: Reference Grammatical cohesion Substitution Ellipsis Conjunction Cohesion Collocation Lexical cohesion Repetition Reiteration Synonyms or Near-synonym Superordinates General words 1.5. Lexical Cohesion 1.5.1. Concept of Lexical Cohesion 10 . According to Advertising Age, a trade advertising magazine, in the United States, the order of the most popular media, as measured by the cost of advertising. one appearing in advertising texts. Being so interested in the language of advertisement and reiteration in English, we find it very interesting and appropriate