Advertising Discourse
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 13 (2000): 67-88
Text World Creation in Advertising Discourse
Laura Hidalgo Downing Universidad Autónoma, Madrid lhidalgo@bosque.sdi.uam.es ABSTRACT This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a textworld model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement. 1. Introduction The creative potentiality of advertising as a discourse type which plays with the evocation of imaginative situations has been pointed out recently by several authors (see, for example, Cárter and Nash, 1990, Cook, 1992,1994, Semino, 1997). Thus, Semino has observed that "advertising is a genre where the setting up of vivid contexts and discourse situations is often crucial to the achievement of the text producers' goals" (1997: 53). Indeed, some authors have observed the similarities between certain types of advertising and literary writing, in that both discourse types créate fictional worlds in order to pursue a communicative purpose; this must be partly due to the fact that many present-day advertisements are less concerned with the listing of "objective properties of things", than in linking "the product to some other entity, effect or person..., creating a fusión which will imbue the characterless product with desirable properties" (Cook, 1992: 105). Thus, the advertisement projects imaginary situations or worlds which invite the addressee to identify
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Revista Alicantina de
Text World Creation in Advertising Discourse
Laura Hidalgo Downing Universidad Autónoma, Madrid lhidalgo@bosque.sdi.uam.es ABSTRACT This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a textworld model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement. 1. Introduction The creative potentiality of advertising as a discourse type which plays with the evocation of imaginative situations has been pointed out recently by several authors (see, for example, Cárter and Nash, 1990, Cook, 1992,1994, Semino, 1997). Thus, Semino has observed that "advertising is a genre where the setting up of vivid contexts and discourse situations is often crucial to the achievement of the text producers' goals" (1997: 53). Indeed, some authors have observed the similarities between certain types of advertising and literary writing, in that both discourse types créate fictional worlds in order to pursue a communicative purpose; this must be partly due to the fact that many present-day advertisements are less concerned with the listing of "objective properties of things", than in linking "the product to some other entity, effect or person..., creating a fusión which will imbue the characterless product with desirable properties" (Cook, 1992: 105). Thus, the advertisement projects imaginary situations or worlds which invite the addressee to identify
68
Revista Alicantina de