Advertising as a Multisemiotic Genre: Strategies and Features

Characteristics: Persuasive Genre

Direct appeal to the audience to buy the product, using indirect strategies like metaphor, humor, and language play to engage the audience.

Advertising as a Multisemiotic Genre: Stages of an Advertisement

1. Lead

Locus of attention, typically an image that draws the reader's attention.

2. Display

The product or service advertised.

Explicit

The image shows the product.

Implicit

The image shows a different entity or idea.

3. Emblem

The brand name or logo.

4. Announcement

The most salient text, usually the slogan or catchy phrase conveying the main message.

5. Enhancer

Longer text with a description of product properties, typically persuasive.

6. Call and Visit Information

Contact details such as address, phone number, or website.

Topic 9: Advertising as a Genre: Textual-Discursive Strategies in Advertising

1. Code Play

Advertising, like fictional writing, poetry, and humor, indulges in creative language use. This creativity spans graphology, phonology, lexis, syntax, and textual rhetoric, creating unique discursive patterns.

2. Use of Puns, Metaphor, and Metonymy

Puns create multiple meanings. Metaphor and metonymy introduce desirable domains and experiences associated with the product.

Register Features of Advertisements

1. Hybrid Text Types

Ads combine features of different text types, such as conversation and expository discourse.

2. Conversational Features in Ads

Conversational Tone

Ads often mimic a conversational tone to engage readers.

Direct Address

Ads directly address the reader to create a personal connection.

Example 1

"Don't you hate it when who signed for your package is a mystery? Consider it solved."

Example 2

"Have you had the great Sunday car washing ritual? Have you got better things to do with a car than run around it with a rag, and show it off to your neighbors? Then the Maxi is for you. Because the Maxi was made for doing things...."

3. Context Dependence

Context-Dependent Elements

• Deictic References: Referring to things in the immediate context of the ad.
• Real-World Context: Referring to real-life situations and actions outside the text.

4. Action Reflection

Purpose of Recipes

The goal is to perform the action described (e.g., cooking a dish).