A Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements in Malaysia

Advanced Discourse Analysis ENGL 6106

IhsanIbadurrahman (G1025429) Mohd. Ridzuan Mat Zin (G1126649)

I. Introduction Advertising is very common in our daily lives nowadays. In Malaysia, advertising abounds; it could be found almost everywhere such as in mass media, buses, LRT, handrails of escalators, billboards, and wallpapers. However, given this ubiquity, it is strange that most of us do not realize that advertising is a form of discourse by the means of language that would consciously or unconsciously influence our behaviors and thoughts in our daily lives. The use of word play, puns, rhymes, pictures, colors and other elements in advertising somehow has its own role in order to catch our attention towards it. This pretty much explains the meaning of the word advertising itself, derived from the Medieval Latin verb advertere which means to direct ones attention to. According to El-daly (2011), advertising is any type of form of public announcement intended to direct peoples attention to the availability, qualities, and/or cost of specific commodities or services (p. 25). It is essential that a critical look to advertising be done so that we, as consumers, are not fooled by its persuasive power and end up buying the products not because we need it, but we want it, a process known as commodification (Govindasamy&Hasan Khan, 2007). One such tool to investigate it is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA is defined as is a multidisciplinary, problem-oriented approach in investigating the enactment of power abuse, dominance, and inequality that is present in text and talk and thus in its stand, try to understand and resist social imbalance (Dijk, 2001). Through CDA, it is possible to examine the strategies of manipulation and persuasive power that are often implicitly and carefully used in advertisements. However, not much study has been undertaken to explore critical discourse analysis of advertisements especially in the Malaysian context. This paper attempts to cast some light into a critical look of the advertisements found in Malaysian media such as newspaper and TV by using a three-level approach of critical
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discourse analysis: linguistic, social, and cultural analysis. The present study is an extension to the study of adverts in Japan conducted by Esposito (2011) by applying the same approach to critical discourse analysis in a different context, which is in Malaysia. II. Literature Review Before going through a brief survey of literature, it would be imperative to discuss first some of the theoretical underpinnings of critical discourse analysis of advertisements. Unlike the conventional discourse analysis which merely looks at the forms and features of texts, critical discourse analysis delves deeper in that it seeks to reveal the ideological assumption of language use (Esposito, 2011). Van Dijk (1998) defines ideology as a system of ideas, beliefs, and values which provides a limited view of the world. Ideology is rendered effective only when a majority of people deem it to be common sense (Gramsci, 1971 as cited in Esposito, 2011). Once things have become a common sense, shared by many people, we would tend to regard it as normal and therefore would never tend to look at them critically. It is therefore crucial to look back and open our mind to critically examine how language creates such shared ideologies. It is generally understood that in the discussion of discourse, text and context are closely intertwined. In the discourse of advertising, text refers to the language itself. Context, on the other hand, is the setting in which the language is used, such as substance or the physical material of the text, music and pictures, paralanguage, situation, and co-text. Because CDA largely concerns language as social practice, it must take into consideration the context of language use (Wodak, 2001). This is supported by Cook (2001), who asserts that a study of language should always take context into account. He goes on to argue that language without context is like a journey without destination (p. 5). Text and context are inextricably woven together to interact in a meaningful way with the observers or participants who see the
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ads. It could be said that discourse of advertisements is inter-discursive and inter-textual in nature (Fairclough, 2001). It is inter-discursive because in order to make sense, it needs to relate to other context or features specific to a given culture. It is inter-textual because each separate text is at play with other texts in the ad to create meaning. Having outlined some theories that underpin critical discourse analysis on advertisements, we shall now look briefly at some of the studies done in the field. There has not been much literature that can be found specifically on critical discourse of advertisement in Malaysian context. However, one study that is closely related to this paper is one that is led by Govindasamy and Hasan Khan (2007) who investigate advertisements on global popular culture such as movies, music, reality shows and soap operas using a critical discourse analysis from various electronic, as well as print media that are prevalent in Malaysia. Although the present study focuses more on everyday commodities, the study conducted by Govindasamy and Hasan Khan has nevertheless put forward an interesting fact about advertising in Malaysia. It is revealed that global texts of popular culture thrive in Malaysia and is disseminated rapidly due to the accessibility of media by consumers. One of the ways in which the media is disseminated is generally through the growing number of available TV stations in Malaysia since 1970, and specifically the Malaysians thriving satellite TV named ASTRO, in 1996. Another means of how global popular culture is advertised generously is through the ubiquity of press media industry particularly The Star and New Strait Times, where they include a special section in their paper dedicated to news related to movie celebrities or western pop music entitled. New Strait Times and the Life & Times section available in both newspapers particularly deal with reviews of recent movies shown in TV and Cinemas. The study concludes that the language use in advertising is mostly

direct and to the point. The lexical choices are simple and comprehensible to those who read the reviews or watch the show. Another study that is closely related, but done in a different context, is one that is carried out by El-Daly (2011) who examines the nature of the discourse of advertising, specifically on consumer advertising which is directed towards the promotion of some product or service to the general public in Egypt. By referring to the advertising from the Egyptian media, El-Daly attempts to examine advertising persuasive strategies by looking at three linguistic theories: pragmatic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic. It discusses the relationship between culture or what he called schemas and the advertising discourse, which cannot be separated from each other. El-Daly also explains rhetorical devices used in Arabic advertising such as parallelism, rhyme and rhythm and alliteration, all of which are absolutely crucial in order to analyze the discourse of advertising as it is inseparable from the culture of the advertising text. Another recent study on the critical discourse of analysis of advertisements is undertaken by Esposito (2001) who utilizes CDA as a pedagogical means of enhancing critical thinking skills in a Japanese EFL classroom. Using a multidimensional approach to the discourse of advertising, the study involves 37 university students taking an elective course of Critical Discourse Analysis in their third or fourth year of study. Students are asked to bring their own ads from magazines and analyze them using a three dimensional approach: linguistic analysis, social analysis, and cultural analysis. Linguistic analysis primarily deals with a careful description of how the language is used in the advertisements. During this stage of analysis, elements such as text and imagery are identified. The social analysis deals with a thorough explanation of how ads might appeal to specific audiences. The researcher believes that because they are part of the target audience, they could relate best to the ads messages.
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The last part of analysis, the cultural analysis, specifically aims to examine how advertising influences modern life. The findings reveal that Japanese ads convey their messages primarily through a clever combination of language and imagery. For example, in an advertisement for Kewpie Mayonese, the word SUGAO, also translated as sugar, is boldly written in red capital letters against a white background denoting naturalness for working women wearing no make-up, which are their intended target-audience. Other common features found in Japanese ads are the use of allusions, puns, and metaphors. This research paper extends Espositos (2010) study mentioned above by using the same three dimensional approaches to investigate advertisements found in Malaysia. The next section shall briefly outline how the present study is conducted.

IV. Results and Discussion The first ad is the new Nikon 1 compact digital camera. In the ad, theres a picture of a young girl standing in the middle of the jungle while holding the Nikon camera with the capital word I AM YOUR SMART PARTNER. Based on that picture, it infers that the product (Nikon camera) can be a persons best friend as it can be taken anywhere, anytime. This is due to the fact that the camera is a compact digital camera which is compatible, small, lightweight, and can be used to take pictures in order to preserve good memories. . The ad is also smart in a sense that the idea of I am your partner might also imply the girl in the picture herself. Either way, the ad strongly represents the idea that those who buy the camera do not need to have other friends, implying that the camera (or the girl) would never disappoint you. That is
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why in the ad of the new Nikon 1, there is only a picture of a beautiful girl holding the camera and no one else. Thus, its also promoting individuality and promoting people to engage in the use of new technology, in this case, a compact digital camera.

Based on the findings of all the ten ads that were analyzed for this research, one of the most salient feature of language used in the ten ads is parallelism which specifically serves to foreground the linguistic units, and thus render the quality of the product more effective (Cook, 2001; El-Daly, 2011). This suggests that ads in Malaysia tend to use of parallelism to sell their products. The use of parallelism can also make the wording presented in the ads sound catchier. For instance, in the McDonald ad, the repeated use of the word EASY emphasizes that the burger is easy on every aspect; easy to enjoy, easy on you r wallet, easy on the go as you can just grab it even if you are in a hurry, easy happiness as you can make yourself and someone else happy by eating and enjoying the burger and easy fishing from RM4 to indicate that the price is reasonable for such delicious burger. The analysis of the ads also entails not only human cognitive process but also features specific to a given culture. Culture is very important in order for us to understand the way society lives, in order for us to fully understand a certain group of people, on how they think, react and so on. Cook (2001) mentions that culture is inseparable component in the task of discourse analysis in advertisement because it is needed to describe the phenomenon that occurs in the text and context of a discourse. A prime example of this would be Guinness St. Patricks ad which uses the green color and the symbol of the leaf in promoting the event. In the Guinness St. Patricks ad, the use of a specific color is very significant and cultural-related because the green color is a trademark for the St. Patricks celebration whereas during the St. Patrick Day, people from all around the world will wear green clothes and decorate their
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houses or buildings in green. The same goes with the use of the symbol of the leaf. The symbol of the leaf are also related with the celebration of St. Patrick Day as we can see that leaf symbol everywhere whenever there is a celebration of St. Patrick Day. In other words, if we did not know the Irish culture and about their celebration of St. Patrick day, the leaf symbol and the color green will means nothing and theres nothing unusual or significant about it. It their valiant attempt to promote the products, ads tends to have certain impact towards the people or towards the audience who see these ads. As pointed by Cook (2001), ads can make people feel dissatisfied with what they have and thus consume more. By looking at the ads, people will think that what they have now are inferior to what they have now and thus would be tempted to buy more or buy a new one. This is done by the use of clever words or pictures such as picturesque view of Petronas Twin Tower building of the Menara 238s advertisement, which as we have suggested, can be deceiving. In the ads of Oriss watch for example, the use of clever words, Real watch for real people, may suggest that other watches are phony, and those who do not buy Oriss watch are not real people. And as such, it is deceiving in a sense that it merely persuades people to buy the watch for the sake of wanting to be called real, and it also makes other watches inferior thus it tempts people to buy these watches.

V. Conclusion From the 10 analyzed ads, it can be concluded that in discussing adverts, we cannot separate text with its context. This means that in order to critically analyze adverts, one must look into the substance, pictures, music, paralanguage (font color and size), intertextuality and inter7

discursivity that prevail in the text (Fairclough, 2001). Such complexity means that advertising always holds more to be analyzed, leaves more to be said. (Cook, 2001: 5). The study also suggests that we should be vigilant of the persuasive power of ads which results in commodification, where we buy the product not because we need it but want it (Govindasamy& Khan, 2007). Costumers should be judicious in buying the products from the ads they see. By critically analyzing the discourse in adverts using the three dimensional approach proposed by Esposito (2011), these persuasive power in creative language use could be demystified. Due to the paucity of research done in the area, similar studies should be conducted more. Future studies may address some of the limitations found in this study by having more samples, or by using a more robust research instrument. A more specific research topic could also be conducted for future studies, as our research scope of ads is quite broad. This could be done by narrowing the area down only to newspaper ads, or TV ads.

References Cook, G. (2001). The Discourse of Advertising (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Creswell, J. (2009). Research Design. California: SAGE Publication. El-daly, H. M. (2011). Towards an Understanding of the Discourse of Advertising: Review of Research with Special Reference to Egyptian Media. African Nebula, Issue 3, pp. 25-47. Esposito, J. (2011). A Critical Approach to the Analysis of Advertisements.The Linguistics Journal, Vol. 5, pp. 197-219. Fairclough, N. (2001). Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research.In R. Wodak.& M. Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 121-138). London: Sage. Govindasamy, S. & Khan, M. H. (2007).Selling the Global Popular: Reading Adverts in Malaysia. In P. Krish, Discourses on culture and identity: an interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 47-70). Selangor: Pearson Malaysia. Neuman, L. (2011) Social Research Methods, Boston: Pearson. Van Dijk, T.A. (2001). Multidisciplinary CDA: a plea for diversity. In R. Wodak.& M. Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 121-138). London: Sage. Wodak, R. (2001). What CDA is about a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments. In R. Wodak.& M. Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 113). London: Sage.