Introduction

Advertising is the best way to make people be aware of important things. Shocking adverts
are everywhere; they help us to think about important issues such as the climate change and
illnesses.
In this paper I am going to closely analyze three adverts by well-known organizations that
deal with deforestation, the increase of sea level , the climate change in the North Pole and its
consequences.
Obviously this will be made from and Pragmatic and Semantic point of view with the
knowledge acquired during this course.

“Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It

deserves to be a huge priority.” Bill Gates
Once upon a time…

The first advert was published by Greenpeace and shows a deforested landscape and a road,
where a girl with a basket and a red hood is walking. On the top left side we can read “You
don’t want to tell this story to your children, do you?” It is a clause composed by a Subject +
Verb + Predicate, and in the predicate there is a Direct Object (this story) and an Indirect
Object (to your children). Moreover, there also is a yes or no question: Do you?

But we may not know the story that the advert is talking about, without knowing the specific
contextual information of the ad, it is impossible for us to understand it properly.
Almost everybody, who lives in a European country, knows that the child represented in the
advert is Little Red Riding Hood. She is the main character of the famous fairytale by Perrault
also named Little Red Riding Hood. The fairytale relates the story of Red Hood who went to the
forest to visit her ill granny. She took some cake and flowers in a basket. While she was on her
way to her granny’s house, she met a wolf that asked her which path she was taking thorough
the forest. She replied, I am taking the path that leads to my grandmother’s cottage.
While Red Hood was busy picking more flowers to take to her granny, the wolf went to the
cottage and swallowed granny. Then the wolf put on the granny’s cap and waited for Red
Hood in the bed. Later on she arrived and after a small talk, the wolf ate the girl. Fortunately, a
woodsman came and cut the wolf with his axe and the Granny and Red Hood came out.
Taking into account this well-known fairytale and relating it with the purpose of the advert,
which is making us aware of the problems of deforestation and its impact in our lives. We can
realize the equalisation between the advert and the actual world; in both cases trees
disappear and without forests, there cannot exist wolves or other kind of animals.

As a consequence, the famous story of Red Hood could have never existed and with that, our
childhood memories would not be the same. Deforestation has some shocking changes in our
live, such as the increase of dioxide in the atmosphere, the extinction of several animal species
or the changes in the rainfall cycle.

So, the slogan “You don’t want to tell this story to your children, do you?” is asking us if we
want to tell our children a story that will not be able occur as a consequence of deforestation.
It is also making a “simile” with our children’s future, a future that may be not able to exist is
we continue cutting down the trees. The question “do you?” is a sort of appealing to the
readership, so that they have to take the decision of being respectful with nature in their
lifestyle; separating trash and buying recycled paper instead of paper, which source is the
primary forests that still remain in the whole world.
What about some fish?

The second advertisement I have chosen, was edited by the worldwide Non-governmental
Organization (NGO) WWF. Its main aim is to protect animals and their habitats.
The advert shows a mutant human being who is metamorphosing into a fish; his head has a
fish mouth, operculum and some scales. Below the mutant, it is the slogan in big white letters,
requesting us to “Stop Climate Change before it changes you”. This is a command composed
by two clauses, united by the conjunction before ((Verb + Direct object) + Conjunction +
(Subject + Verb + Direct Object)).

I am convinced that everybody knows the meaning of this advert, but surely we have to take
into account a large number of data about climate and greenhouse effect, if we want to
completely understand the advertisement’s meaning. The greenhouse effect occurs when
certain gases in the atmosphere remain there, in order to make the planet warmer.
However, in the last decades, the greenhouse effect has become stronger. Scientists believe
this is because humans have been using large amounts of fossil fuels, such as coal which
release carbon dioxide when it is burned. As these greenhouse gases remain in the
atmosphere, the Earth is getting warmer and warmer. Consequently, the pole caps are
melting and this melting can have serious consequences for all organisms on Earth. Besides
being important for marine life, ice caps help regulate sea level and global temperatures.
When polar ice caps melt, they melt directly into the ocean, increasing the volume of water,
and forcing sea higher onto land.
This brings me to the ad’s meaning; if we cannot stop the climate change, it will change us. So,
if we do not stop burning fossil materials, it will come the day when the rise of the sea level
will be harmful for people who live close to the coast. But, this advert goes beyond and it
draws a mutant human who is getting like a fish. As the sea level covered all the land and
human beings had to transform into aquatic animals in order to survive in this new world;
adapting their respiratory system and skin.
The expression of the mutant’s face is clearly sad and melancholic, as he missed his old way of
living and home, now submerged in the seas.
The purpose of the advert, published in 2008, was to make people aware of the destructive
effects of the rise of sea level because of “As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing
the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never
happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but
the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions.” (Al Gore, 2001)
Teddy Bear or Nightmare?

Finally, I choose this shocking advert done by The Big Ask, which was a campaign by Friends of
the Earth calling for a new climate change law in the United Kingdom and 15 other EU member
states. In the image we can see a skinless polar bear in the North Pole; the bear is holding its
own skin with one hand and dragging it across the ice. The slogan is almost invisible in the
advert, as if it was less important than the bear. The affirmative sentence “The earth is heating
up” is composed by a (Subject + (Auxiliary verb + Main verb)). The main verb is the phrasal
verb “heat up”, the use of this phrasal gives a sense of informality and that the exposed
problem affects everyone.

As I said before, some background is necessary if we want to understand the whole

advertisement. As I have already mentioned, the greenhouse effect is making our planet
warmer and as a consequence the polar ice is melting. In this case, I am going to focus on the
problems which melting causes on polar bears habitat.

Rising temperatures cause the ice to melt earlier in the year; therefore, bears that hunt seals
from the platform of ice cannot get sufficient fat reserves to survive when the summer ends.
The reduction of the sea-ice cover also forces bears to move closer to the Arctic Circle,
disappearing from countries such as Canada or Russia.
Then, taking into account this contextual information, we can interpret the advert into two
different ways. On one hand, we can understand that the bear has uprooted its skin because
he realizes that the greenhouse effect has heated up the temperature, and he feels warmer
even if it is in the snow. On the other hand, the bear is drawn without its skin and showing us
his muscles and meat, because it cannot accumulate fat for its hibernation.
A polar bear without his “cover” seems weaker and vulnerable to his extinction, even if it is a
quite big mammal. It is as vulnerable as we are when suffering the effects of climate change in
our own “skins”.