Chapter 1 Advertising and Society
What is Advertising
At first sight this question might em a bit superfluous. After all, advertising is with us all the time: whenever we open a newspaper or a magazine, turn on the TV, or look at the hoardings in tube stations or on buildings, we are confronted with advertiments. Most of the will be of the type which Leech(1996:25)describes as ‘commercial consumer advertising’. This is indeed the most frequent type, the type on which most money and skill is spent and the type which affects us most deeply, but there are others.
In the first place it is possible to distinguish between noncommercial and commercial advertising. As examples of noncommercial advertising one way mention communication from government agencies to citizens like the British metrication campaign, or appeals from various associations and societies, whether their purpos are charity or political propagandainstructor.
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Commercial advertising covers first the so-called prestige or goodwill advertising, where firms adverti not a commodity or a rvice, but rather a name or an image. This type of advertising aims at creating long-term goodwill with the public rather than at an immediate increa in sales. Examples are particularly frequent in the business pages of the Sunday papers where large firms often publish extracts of their reports and accounts. Since shareholders will receive this information by post anyway, the only purpo of the advertiments must be to remind people of the existence of the firm and to leave a generally favourable impression. In some cas prestige advertising contains a more or less explicit element of political propaganda. Consider the following extract from two-page advertiment for Exxon(in Europe: Esso)which appeared in the American Ms Magazine in September 1976:
Who’s really qualified to tackle America’s energy needs?
Experienced companies who can take the technology they’ve developed in one area and make it work in another.首饰设计培训
英语四级查询网站Exxon has been doing it----for years.
In addition to boosting the prestige of the particular firm behind the advert, this advert is intended to make the public adopt the same attitude as the industry towards what is regarded as undue英语招聘广告 government interference.
The cond type of commercial advertising is known as industrial or trade advertising. Here a firm advertis its products or rvices to other firms. Industrial advertising is most likely to be found in specialized trade journals or, again, in the business pages of newspapers. This type of advertising differs from both prestige advertising and consumer advertising in that it can be regarded as communication between equals(e pp.7-8), that is, both the advertir and the prospective reader have a special interest in and a particular knowledge about product or rvice advertid. For this reason industrial advertising typically lays greater emphasis on factual information than prestige and consumer advertising, and, inverly, less emphasis on the persuasive elements.
Harris and Seldon(1962:40)define advertising as a public notice ‘designed to spread infor
dopmation with a view to promoting the sales of marketable goods and rvices’. This definition will be en to cover both industrial advertising and commercial consumer advertising, where the advertir is a firm appealing to individuals private consumers rather than to other firms. The two participants in the communication situation(e further chapter 2)defined by consumer advertising are thus unequal as far as interest in and knowledge about the product advertid are concerned(cf. Wight 1972:9,’amateur buyer facing a professional ller’), and the central concern of this book will be to investigate how the u of language is affected by the function it has to rve in this particular situation. For this reason—and becau it is the most important type—we shall deal almost exclusively with consumer advertising; some comments will be made on prestige advertising, but industrial advertising will not be dealt with.
考研多少分过线Yet another distinction can be made between classified and display advertising. In newspapers and magazines, display advertiments are placed in prominent英语四级成绩什么时候出来 places amongst the editorial material in order to attract the attention of readers who main interest in the publication is not this or that particular advert. Classified advertiments, o
n the other hand, are placed on special pages and ordered(classified)according to subject. Normally, classified adverts will be read only by readers with a special interest in some particular product or rvice. Moreover, the display advertiment is typically inrted wsnby a large firm or association—normally through the gamma functionmediation of a professional advertising agency—whereas the advertir behind a classified advert is normally a smaller local firm or private individual who will have drafted it himlf. Classified advertising thus lacks two of the characteristics of other advertising. First, although classified adverts are of cour inrted ‘with a view to promoting the sales’, persuasive elements are often virtually abnt and, at any rate, nothing or very little is done to persuade prospective buyers to read the advert. A classified advert thus comes very clo to being merely a notice informing interested gments of the public that something is available at a certain price. Second, becau of the shared interest in the thing advertid, classified advertising is also quite clo to being communication between equals. This is, of cour, most clearly the ca when the advertir is a private individual, in which ca the product cannot even be considered a commodity(for the distinction between product and commodity, e p.8).
