The Decisive Role Of Humour In Advertising English Language Essay

The Decisive Role Of mental capacity In announce English Language Essay pettishness plays a decisive office in our daily life and it is as good as a subject of reside of slightly(prenominal) disciplines such(prenominal) as linguals, popular culture, psychology, mass communications, marketing and more or less(prenominal) new(prenominal)s. The discussion of what toughness is military personnel of ass be traced back to Aristotle and Plato. The complexity of this phenomenon has been an intrigue for m what perpetu solelyy researches. Humor is a universal human activity embed among all cultures and throughout all of recorded history (Alden, Hoyer, and Lee 1993). Humour is widely utilisationd in advertizing as a mental strain of communication in order to persuade customers to purchase products and operate since it is al in familiar believed among advertisers that fashioning us gag result encourage supportive thoughts and feelings toward their products and brands and ar go us in a receptive mood for their sales messages (Beard 2008 2). dodge say that publicizing is al instructions a handy and useful reverberate if we want to reflect on the way we be start out socially (Cook 19925). merely, the use of witticism in advertizement remains in truth controversial as its presence in advertising lowlife cause some(prenominal) positive and negative effects. Response to a sidesplitting ad keister be different as individuals have different sense of humor. Therefore body fluid is very individual and subjective b arg single at the very(prenominal) measure it is universal. harmonize to Raskin responding to humor is go bad of human behavior, ability, or competence, other part of which comprise such important social and psychological manifestations of Homo sapiens as delivery, morality, logic, faith, etc. Just as all of those, humor whitethorn be described as partly natural and partly acquired (Raskin 1985 2). passim its history in that respect were legion(predicate) attempts to define mood but n unmatched of the definitions accounts for all its possible attributes thus underlying its complexity. Humour tail end be broadly identified as a direct of communication in which a send rised stimulus may act to provide pleasure for an audience (Gulas and Weinberger 2006 95). Attardo states that linguists, psychologists, and anthropologists have taken humor to be an all-encompassing category, covering any event or object that elicits laughter, amuses, or is felt to be umbrageous (Attardo 19944). It is very important to distinguish between bodily fluid and laughter as irritability has been very much identified with laughter1which seems to be wrong as learning ability a mental phenomenon while laughter is rather a neurophysiological reaction to it.1.2 Aim and scopeThe objective of this thesis is to bestow to further understanding of whizz of the numerous strategies employed by advertisers, that is to say humo ur. However, this thesis does not set out to provide a hypothetic framework for humour in spite of the occurrence that the quest chapters exact frequent reference to the academic and scientific literature. The overall prevail of the memorize is not just now to provide a fail understanding of humour in home run advertising and give an insight into different lingual theories of humour as well as its different types but also to describe different linguistic features which advertisers use to integrated humour and exemplify this by means of empirical material ga in that locationd from a manikin of sources. Under this refer humour forget be split into both groups pun- base humour and non-pun humour. We deal with pun humour when the advertiser uses elements of language to create new meanings that result in humour. My supposition is that this is the type of humour which intimately often occurs in print advertising. In this regard such linguistic devices leave behind be described as polysemy, homonymy, idiomatic expressions, neologisms and nonce formations, and antonyms. However this would be just mere identification of a certain type of humour in advertising and its enabling factors. Therefore the extent of the airfield is to belief how different types of humour vary across different products and work advertised in magazines. Since it is generally believed that the best media suited to the use of humour atomic number 18 radio and TV, lots of studies exploring the use of humour and its effectiveness were conducted just aboutly in this field. Therefore this thesis is foc utilize on the ads presented in print media and does not feature ads that appear on the television, radio, internet, and cinema. There has always been a great debate over whether comical print ads work and of conformation there is no motivation to say that they do. We just have to consider that humour print involves a more intimate relationship. Graham Warsop, the compl etely creative director to have judged the big four international advertising awards, once said Print humour gets someone to smile in spite of appearance rather than outwardly (Aitchison 2004). This states again that not everybody go away laugh at the same things.It should be noted that headline and body copy of an advertisement will not be the crucial means of attraction since most advertisements atomic number 18 clownlike only due to the interplay of school text edition and image. The picture often break aways as an eye-catcher in the ad whereas its meaning differs from the meaning of the text. Cook considers pictures to be a part of advertising discourse as they are used to convey a central idea in the ad (Cook 20036). Thus, both pictures and headlines will be seen as equivalent and will be considered together as their interplay contributes to the overall meaning of the text.2 ad in its turn will be seen in the thesis as a communication answer.1.3 intimateAs shown in th e table of contents, this thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is the penetration in which the purpose and the research questions are declared. It starts by providing a setting of the subject of the thesis, and then moves on to translation of material and methods and ends by introducing the advertising language. Chapter Two is apply to a more detailed delimitation of the excogitation of humour, with an overview of the major humour theories which are needful for introducing the operational definition of humour that will be used in this study. Chapter Three presents humour types. It discusses numerous existing taxonomies of humour types and offers a new compartmentalisation which subdivides humour types into ii main groups pun based humour vs. non pun humour. The structure of this chapter is bear on on this taxonomy with the corresponding digest of the advertisements. Chapter Four is a research part of the thesis which analyzes the incidence of the identified humour types across various products and services and presents the collected empirical data as well as the results and findings. Chapter cinque functions as a summing-up in which the research questions are answered and the conclusions are drawn. A bibliography and appendix will conclude the thesis.1.4 Material and MethodAs stated above this thesis is focused on the advertisements presented in print media and does not feature ads that appear on the television, radio, internet, and cinema. The selected material consists of a total of cardinal twain humorous advertisements elect from the range of around both snow English-speaking magazines published between the years 2006 and 2010. Popular lifestyle magazines have been mainly used as they are directed toward a general audience and have a high content of ads which advertise a wide range of products and service. I used so wide range of magazines because one and the same ad have been represent in numerous magazines as well as in different issues of one and the same magazine. For this thesis I have mainly used such splashy magazines as Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, In Touch, Chat, OK, In Style, Self, The Economist and some others. No sexuality issues will be put forward in this thesis as well as no differentiation will be bugger off between humour in British and US magazines as it would give this thesis a whole new dimension.As a beginning step in the infusion procedure, I looked for any ads that displayed humorous context. The selection was relatively wide as this resulted in around 100 ads which I considered to be humorous. It should be noted that when browsing through numerous magazines it is very difficult to determine whether the ad is humorous or not as certain subjectivity is always involved into the bear upon of decision making. That is wherefore the subjectivity is inevitable. Despite the fact that such procedure of selection is often employed by many researches, I tried to avoid making decisions without consideration of opposing opinions and different points of view. For this purpose one wonder was conducted the aim of which was to exclude prevailed subjectivity in my selective procedure and to explore both basic questions which advertisements will be all the same considered as humorous consort to the wonderees and how they will determine the type of humour in matter the ad proves to be humorous. A remark should be made under this point that anyway it will be to a certain degree the so called unilateral decision as in the long run it is me who inflexible which ads would be included and which would be left out. It is also worth of mentioning that the audience is not the main purpose of this study and that is why its presence in the thesis will be moderate by the short description of its procedure and results.Coming back to the interrogate procedure, it should be noted that the interview was conducted in a small group consisted of cardinal participants. The length of the i nterview was two hours. Around one hundred fifty different ads were presented to the participants chosen on the assumption that all of them were humorous. In order to manipulate that the results would not be biased, the participants were not informed about this fact as well they did not know what the study was exactly about. The participants were asked to have a look at individually advertisement and to determine whether they consider it to be kindle or boring, creative or not creative and humorous or non-humorous. The two supplement questions besides the question about the presence or absence of humour in the ad were interjectd only with the purpose of try to avoid some potential disadvantages which are directly connected with an interview. This is the so called participant reflexivity, which means that the person macrocosm interviewed (interviewee) tells the interviewer only what s/he wants to hear. thence, since many people often expect from a humorous ad to make them burst into laughing and such an attitude would bias the results of the interview I decided to ask them to rate (in case they think the advertisement is humorous) how humorous it was on a five-point-scale. Rating an advertisement as 5 meant that they considered it to be very humorous, 3 indicated that it was a moderate representative of jocularity whereas 1 suggested that it was a very poor example of a humorous ad and should be probably excluded from the appoint. The results drawn after the evaluation of twelve questionnaires were strikely consistent. The agreement was particularly high for the identification of the given advertisements to be humorous or non-humorous. As for rating is concerned the results were not similar, give to say they were very inconsistent and that proves again that humour is always being judged individually and subjectively.After that all the ads were sorted out to determine which ads would be fruitful for a qualitative analysis. The advertisements which were considered by most of the participants as not humorous at all were excluded from the list of candidates for future analysis.1.5 Advertising terminologyNo need to say that advertising hat its own terminology. I am not going to list all the basis you can find in the field of advertising. Thus, the terminology will be limited to a few terms which are frequently used in this thesis. I will meet Cooks definitions which he presents in his Discourse of Advertising (2003).According to him Headline Phrase(s) found at the top of an ad.Caption Phrases (s) found in close proximity to an image.Body copy A piece of smaller text, often containing the main(or copy) information..CHAPTER 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND2.1 IntroductionAs was mentioned in the introduction, humour is by no means homogenous. Since there is no general acceptance in kick downstairsing humour, there is no ideal possible action of humour which can cover all its factors and embrace all its peculiarities. most of the existing h umour theories are mixed and it seems to be impossible to incorporate such a huge phenomenon as humour into a iodine integrated surmisal.As a starting point it can be asserted that humour is triggered by particular mechanisms (Spotts, 1987). Spotts states that these mechanisms can be grouped into third main categories the cognitive surmise, superiority guess, and the relief guess (Spotts et al. 199720). The chapter that follows is dedicated to some of the main threads of the theories of humour that have emerged although it is important to account that not all humour theories ever proposed will be presented in it and it will not be attempted to make a blanket(prenominal) survey of all these ideas. Only those theories will be discussed which play a significant role for working out an operational definition of humour for this thesis.2.2 incongruousness and Incongruity-Resolution TheoryIncongruity can be called in other words inconsistency or contradiction. The incongruity th eory goes back to Francis Hutchesons Reflections Upon jest published in 1750. Later on it was revisited and represented by Kant, Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. Incongruity theories are considered to be cognitive in their spirit. This is the group of theories which dominates humour research. According to McGhee (1979) humour is as reaction to incongruity and he defined incongruity as the relationship between components of an object, event, idea, social expectation and so forth. When the brass for the constituent element of an event is incompatible with the normal or anticipate pattern, the event is perceived as incongruous. The existing theories of incongruity have a difference based on the question whether incongruity is a necessary condition for humour to be produced and if yes, whether it is competent or probably there are other conditions needed to cause humour. Based on this fact two schools of thought about incongruity theories appeared the so called one-stage incongruity t heories and two-stage incongruity-resolution theories. One-stage incongruity theorists like many representatives of some psychological theories propose that we often laugh when we see or hear something unexpected. In terms of this theory it can be said that we cognitively process (or think about) the message in a single stage that includes three parts interruption (whats that?), perceptual contrast (theres something incongruous and unexpected here), and playful confusion (whats it mean) (Speck, 19877). other(a) theorists like Jerry Suls and Thomas Schultz, the opponents of the two-stage incongruity resolution theory, postulate that it is not sufficient for a message to be funny by itself and they insist on the overlapping of meanings of the incongruous parts and on the presence of a present moment stage, namely the resolution of the incongruity. Incongruity becomes stronger only when it follows a resolution process and is understood and accepted by its audience (Gulas and Weinberg er 2006 2326).Attardo considered incongruity theories to be cognitive in their temper and were often associated with linguistic theories of humour.To summarize the ideas, it can be added that incongruity theory is based on the idea of a contrast between two overlapping scripts whereas incongruity-resolution theory requires the presence of two stages incongruity as derivation from expectation and incongruity understood in resolution which in its turn results in amusement. Incongruity is seen by many researches as a humour type. I prefer to see it as a condition needed to produce humour.2.3 Superiority TheoryThe mho branch of the main humour theories is presented by theories of superiority. These theories have gone by lots of call such as disparagement, criticism, hostility, aggression, malice, degradation, and derision. This group of humour theories is based on the ideas of Aristotle, Quintillian, Plato, and later Thomas Hobbes ( seven-spotteenth century) and it is directly connec ted with the social function of humour which cannot be said about the incongruity theories which consider humour as an individual phenomenon. Superiority theory is a theory of mockery. In terms of this theory humour is pointed against something or somebody thus making us to believe that something or somebody is superior to somebody else. In other words we laugh from feelings of superiority over other people, from suddaine corona arising from suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves, by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others, or with our owne at one time (Critcheley, 2002 3). It is suggested that people joke about things that make them feel unsure and/or uncomfortable as a way of releasing feelings of tensions (Gulas and Weinberger 2006 28).2.4 discommode TheoriesRelease theories as well as superiority theories have numerous names such as arousal theory3, freedom theory4, and tension-release theory5. This group of theories describes how people respond emotionally to h umour. It was put forward by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century but it was better explained and thus it is better known from Freuds analysis of humorous utterances given in his book Jokes and Their recounting to the Unconscious (1905). Freud proposed that jokes provide us with a release from the constant need to repress our natural aggressive and sexual desires, and are thus experient as pleasurable. Like dreams, jokes come from the unconscious, bur are first transform into less explicit forms, thereby providing a socially acceptable way of breaking taboos (Ventola, Guijarro 2009 79).The release theory has rather to do with the physiological function of humour. It is based on the belief of homeostasis, which means that humans regulate their internal environment on the physiological level in order to ensure certain stability in response to strain, tension, and anxiety.Morreall (1983) talks about the biological function of laughter and insists on the possibility of coexiste nce of relief theory with other theories discussed above incongruity (relief through resolution) and superiority (relief through triumph.62.5 Linguistic Theories of HumourSince all the existing theories of humour are based on the notion of incongruity there is no theory about which it can be definitely said that it is a purely linguistic one. Linguistic in this case is rather a conditional name. Nevertheless, the first step into this focal point was put forward by Raskin, who suggested a script-based semantic theory highly-developed for verbal humour.Viktor Raskins Script-Based semantic Theory of Humour was presented in his book Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (1985) which was a great contribution to all of the humour theories ever proposed and a first attempt to describe humour from a linguistic perspective. Raskin set his goal as followers Ideally, a linguistic theory of humour should determine and formulate and the necessary and sufficient linguistic conditions for the text to be f unny (Raskin, 1985 47). The script-based semantic theory of humour was designed as a neutral theory which takes in account all the three theories discussed above. According to Raskins theory, verbal or written communication is considered to be a joke if the text is fully compatible with two different but at the same time opposite scripts. Script in this case presents a large chunk of semantic information. This is the main hypothesis of his theory A text can be specifyd as a single-joke-carrying text if both of the conditions are satisfied. i) The text is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scriptsii) The two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite in a special sense (). The two scripts with which the text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part on this text (Raskin 1985 99). Raskin introduces the notion of the trigger or a punch-line, which switches the listener from one script to another thus creating the joke (Raskin, 1985 36).Raskins theory can be interpreted within the terms of incongruity-resolution school of humour.Although his theory was in general developed for verbal humour it proves to be effective for many types of humorous advertising, both for verbal and for visual.It should be noted that there is also a revisited version of the SSTH called The General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH). This theory was a result of collaboration of Raskin and Attardo. The main aim of the GTVH was to broaden the scope of Raskins SSTH in order to apply it to any humorous text.7Attardo comments about it as following Whereas the SSTH was a semantic theory of humor, the GTVH is a linguistic theory at large that is, it includes other areas of linguistics as well, including, most notably, textual linguistics, the theory of narrativity, and pragmatics (Attardo 1994 222). Attardo postulates that resolution does not exclude the presence of incongruity they coexist and companion each other so that any humorous text will contain an eleme nt of incongruity and an element of resolution (Attardo 1994 144).2.5.2 Operational interpretationAn operational definition of humour will have to encompass all the above listed theories as all of them are important for the analysis of the advertisements in this thesis. Under this point I would fully agree with Raskin when he said that the incongruity-based theories make a statement about the stimulus the superiority theories characterize the relations or attitudes between the speaker and the hearer and the release/relief theories comment on the feelings and psychology of the hearer only. (Raskin 1985 40)The operational definition of a humorous advertisement will be worked out in terms of Raskins SSTH. The question arises why no I do not follow the GTVH. There are reasons for that. First, the GTVH adopted the main hypothesis of the SSTH. Second, the broadenings introduced, are not of much importance for a current analysis. The third reason is that the GTVH is still under developme nt and not all the problematic issues have been opinionated yet.So the advertisement will be considered to be humorous if it fulfills the following conditionsthe advertisement has two overlapping scripts which cause the incongruitythese two scripts are in the opposite relation to each other.The first condition but would not be enough for the advertisement to be humorous as the overlapping of two scripts may have a non-funny text as a result as well.CHAPTER 3. HUMOUR TYPES3.1 IntroductionSince there is no universal definition of humour, there are many ways to classify it and there is no universally accepted classification of humour types. Taxonomies of humour types are very different and not homogeneous. There have been many attempts to classify humour check to different criteria. Kelly and Solomon (1975), for example, classified humour according to proficiencys used in order to produce humorous effect and presented seven types such as a pun, an understatement, a joke, something l udicrous, satire, irony and humorous absorbed whereas Goldstein and McGhee talked about three types nonsense, sexual and aggressive.An overview of some main classifications is presented in tabulate 28, which proves the fact that the typologies of humour types are diverse and mixed as well as terminology used for different types of humour (Raskin)The classification of humour types presented in this thesis is based on the taxonomy offered by Catanescu and tom (2001) which in its turn used Reicks practitioner-oriented classification system as a basis. Catanescu and Tom adopted five types from this classification and added two new types which resulted in seven following humour types comparison, personification, exaggeration, pun, sarcasm, silliness, and bewilderment. As the study they conducted was not only devoted to homour in print advertising, not all humour types presented in their taxonomy could be included into classification for this thesis. Thus, such category as surprise h ad to be left out despite several examples of using this technique in a print advertisement which could be found during the analysis of selected material. The reason for that was the fact that the operational definition did not work with this humour type as some other mechanisms were involved in such advertisements which were beyond the current analysis. To avoid the mixture of devices, types and techniques about which Raskin spoke, all these types were divided into two main categories, namely pun humour and non-pun humour each of them was subdivided into several sub categories. In such a way polysemy, homonymy, nonce-formations and idiomatic expressions fell under the category of pun humour and such types as comparison, personification, exaggeration, sarcasm and silliness under the category of non-pun humour correspondently.The goals of this chapter are a) to introduce some definitions of a pun to frame the discussion, b) to give an insight into some types of pun taxonomies, c) to develop pun taxonomy for the current analysis and to describe the nature of the linguistic phenomena involved in puns illustrating it with the help of gathered material, d) to offer a taxonomy of non-pun humour taking into account the occurrence of each type in the advertisements collected from the magazines.3.2 Oh Thats a pun and I didnt mean it9Before talk of the town about pun-based humour it seems to be of great importance to determine what will be understood under pun. paronomasias are said to be the most common basis for humour.10The management of humorous language is largely a matter of devising transfers the transfer from set to set, from scale to scale, from layer to layer, until the clever conclusion of a double vision is achieved. At the heart of this process of continual and multiple transference, an important process aping the shiftiness of thought itself, is the simply frivolous device of pun word-play is the lure, the spinning toy that draws up the lurking and m irthful meaning. We take punning for a tawdry and facetious thing, one of the less profound forms of humour, but that is the prejudice of our time a pun may be profoundly serious, or charged with pathos (Nash 1985 137). As mentioned in the introduction, my supposition is that pun is the type of humour which most often occurs in print advertising despite quite the opposite points of view when puns were criticized for their spoil ambiguity and for representing a simple and less sophisticated form of humour. That is why many advertisers prefer not to include puns into advertisements believing that they have a low intellectual status. Nash defends the pun against such accusations offering his own list of puns and insisting on the fact that puns are common in the language of journalism (Nash 1985 137). Sherzer provides another argument in defense of puns in advertising stating that puns are higly appropriate for advertising as they deliver two meanings for the legal injury of one (Sher zer 1985). The same opinion shares Redfern Advertising space is costly. Economy is essential, and puns are highly economical (two meanings for the price of one word or phrase), and in fact much more of a labour-saving device than many of the products they try to promote. () Since the fundamental message of all advertising is known to everyone in advance, there is a need for diversification. Wordplay, with its distortions, bifurcations and re-creations, introduces variety and refreshment into saturation. Puns, the devious ones, are a way round those rather stuffy rules of the advertising watchdogs adverts should be legal, enough and true. A recipe for mass-producted boredom. The words of adverts are double-talk, necessarily. If adverts told only the verifiable truth, they would be pedantic and tedious. And so they have to approximate they have to say one thing and suggest another. Obliqueness is all. So why not make a virtue out of necessity, and a silk purse out of a sows ear? (Red fern 1982 130-131).Redfern asserts that puns are well suited for advertising as they are usually delivered with the requisite ambivalent mixture of false apology and only too real aggression (Redfern 1982275). Definitions of pun as well as definitions of humour vary greatly from researcher to researcher. Freud considered puns to be the lowest form calling them cheapest stating that they can be formed with the least effort.11Walter Redfern (1984) devoted a whole book to pun in which he said that pun can make an individual. () It can ruin lazy expectations subvert the nature of language and thought (Redfern 1984 ).Sherzer defined it as a form of mother tongue play in which a word or phrase incidentally and simultaneously combines two unrelated meanings (Sherzer 1978 336). This the point (the presence of two senses) on which all linguistic and non-linguistic analyses agree. Following the rules of the incongruity-resolution theory a phenomenon of pun can be defined as two meanings inc ongruously combined in one and the same sentence. These two meanings cause ambiguity due to which a conflict arises between the two senses which is subsequently resolved by the surprising punchline (Ross 19988).Following the operational definition of a humorous advertisement, a pun-based humorous ad has to fulfill the following conditions two meanings have to be semantically incompatible, i.e. opposed. This is the so called deliberate ambiguity in a pun which creates the incongruity. Then it must be followed by resolution leading to humorous interpretation.3.3 Pun taxonomyThere are numerous taxonomies of puns witch essentially differ from each other.Attardo criticized these taxonomies and attempts to explain the phenomenon of pun through its taxonomy. He tried to build the taxonomy of the taxonomies and tell four major types of pun classifications, namely taxonomies by linguistic phenomenon, by linguistic structure, by phonemic distance, and eclectic (Attardo 1994 112). Tanaka dist inguished four categories of puns in advertising nonsense puns, contextual puns, puns with sexual innuendo, and puns with two communicated meanings (Tanaka 1994 64-80). I will keep to taxonomy based on linguistic phenomena as it is the most applicable one for this thesis. Taxonomies based o