Chapter 6 Conclusion
2. Felicity conditions
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situation. The examples are thanking, congratulating, apologizing, threatening, and condoling. The last type of illocutionary act is declarations, speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration. The examples are naming, appointing, and sentencing. Searle regards this speech act as the special one because the action can only be made by people who have an authority to do this action. In advertisements, the last two types of illocutionary acts are found less frequently because they are speaker-oriented. In advertising, it is the hearer, namely, the consumer, that matters.
2.2.1.2 Felicity conditions of a speech act
According to Searle (1969), for a speech act to be successfully constituted, it must fulfill the requirements of the felicity conditions, which include propositional
content condition, preparatory condition, sincerity condition, and essential condition.
For example, in the utterance “I promise to give you a gift,” the propositional content
condition is about what the speaker intends to give to the hearer; the preparatory condition prescribes the speaker’s ability to be able to give the hearer a gift, and the
hearer also wishes the speaker to do the act onto him; the sincerity condition describes the speaker’s real intention of giving the hearer a gift; the essential condition confines the speaker’s future act that he must give a gift to the hearer.
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In advertising, the propositional content condition indicates what the advertiser says about the merchandise advertised. The preparatory condition reveals that the advertiser believes that he or she is able to offer the product with distinctive features
as described. The sincerity condition reflects the advertiser’s interest in the consumer’s benefit. However, in reality, what the advertiser wants is to gain profit
from the persuasion. The essential condition is related to the advertiser’s attempt to motivate the consumer to buy the product. This future act is realized when the consumer actually purchases the product advertised.
Since advertising is a speech act of persuasion, it fulfills the requirements of the felicity conditions, either by obeying the conditions or by violating them.
2.2.1.3 Indirect speech acts
Speech acts are either direct or indirect. Searle (1975: 60) describes indirect speech acts as “cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by ways of performing another,” implying that the form and the function of a given utterance
do not need to have a direct one-to-one relationship. That is, in a direct speech act, there is a direct correspondence between the literal meaning of a structure and the
speaker’s intended meaning; however, in an indirect speech act, the literal meaning does not coincide with the speaker’s intended meaning. In other words, in order to
decode an indirect speech act, the hearer needs to make inference, with the help of the
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communicative context, to obtain the speaker’s intention (ie. the primary illocutionary point).
Indirect speech acts occur when speakers, being restricted by socio-cultural conventions, are unable to express explicitly what they want to perform. In this case, in order to behave in a socially acceptable way, they execute a set of conventional rules in a particular way based on the relationship between the interlocutors and other contextual factors. Hearers, who share with the speakers the same social-cultual norms and the same conventional rules, should be able to derive what speakers want to say. In other words, speakers imply their meaning, and hearers infer for it (Thomas, 1995: 58).
As in ordinary face-to-face conversations, advertising communication is full of
indirect speech acts because the advertiser hides her intention of persuading the potential consumer to “buy the product” in various speech acts, such as
recommendation, offers, and promises. In this way, the potential consumer has to make inference so as to be persuaded by the advertisement and then buys the product advertised.
2.2.2 Cooperative Principle (CP)
Implicature is based on the fact that whenever the interlocutors are involved in a communicative situation, it is necessary for them to act in a cooperative way. The
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first to describe the rules according to which participants behave in a cooperative way was Grice (1975). Based on this premise that people intend to communicate with each other successfully, Grice proposes The Cooperative Principle (hereafter, CP), proclaiming that interlocutors should “make your conversational contribution such as
is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice, 1975: 45). What is to say and how it
is to be said are described by Grice as the maxims and submaxims of the CP,
observing which is necessary for being cooperative in verbal communication and, thus, for achieving one’s communicative goal. The following are the maxims and
submaxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1975:45-46).
A. Maxim of Quantity
(a) Make your contribution as informative as is required.
(b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
B. Maxim of Quality
(a) Do not say what you believe to be false.
(b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
C. Maxim of Relation
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marked, is more effective and should be used more frequently than conforming to them. However, the advertiser must balance between obeying the maxims and violating them in order to avoid deceptive advertising.
2.2.3 Politeness Principle (PP)
Although Cooperative Principle is powerful in describing how people act cooperatively in communication, it cannot explain why people communicate with each other indirectly. For example, a hearer may choose to ignore the speaker or a speaker may intentionally mention something not relevant to the on-going topic. To explain why such indirect communication emerges, the notion of politeness is proposed. In advertising, politeness is also used to attract and to persuade the consumer. In order to achieve this goal, the advertiser has to provide the consumer
with benefits and to satisfy their desire. Meanwhile, persuasion is a kind of speech act that influences the hearer’s decision and freedom of action, which is regarded as
imposition. To explain how persuasion is verbalized, Politeness Principle is needed.
2.2.3.1 Politeness Principle by Leech (1983)
In a conversation, politeness works as a device that enables the interlocutors to
demonstrate that they are aware of each other’s social needs, and allow them to treat each other with respect. Grice’s CP fails to explain why speakers sometimes express
themselves so indirectly. Hence, in order to supplement Grice’s CP, Leech (1983)
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(a) Minimize disagreement between self and other (b) Maximize agreement between self and other (F) Sympathy maxim
(a) Minimize antipathy between self and other (b) Maximize sympathy between self and other
The first four maxim are in pairs. Maxim A and Maxim B form a pair, with the former focusing on the hearer’s cost and benefit, and the latter on the speaker’s.
Following a similar line, in the pair of Maxim C and Maxim D, the former focuses on (dis)praise to the hearer, and the latter to the speaker. In addition, Maxim E and Maxim F focus on the interaction of the speaker and the hearer, with the former emphasizing (dis)agreement, and the latter antipathy or sympathy. Also, according to Leech, in each maxim, the first sub-maxim (a) is more important than the second one
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(b). In beauty products advertising, “self” means the advertiser, and “other” refers to the potential consumer. It is presumed that observance of the maxims and submaxims ensure a smooth flow of conversation. Further, according to Leech, PP works under the condition that the participants are cooperative, which means that CP and PP are interrelated. However, in terms of contextual needs, the observance of one principle may conflict with the observance of the other principle. Therefore, in order to be socially acceptable, the observance of PP comes prior to the observance of CP.
In advertisements, the Tact Maxim is applied to secure the minimization of the potential consumer’s cost and the maximization of her benefit. As far as the nature of advertising is concerned, the advertiser must obey this maxim, especially the submaxim of maximizing the consumer’s benefit. What the advertiser emphasizes most is the benefits that the potential consumer can have on buying the product. Since the advertiser cannot directly ask the potential consumer to buy the product, they put
stress on the advantages of purchasing the product, which are mostly presented as an improvement of one’s health and physical appearance.
Similarly, the Generosity Maxim concerns benefit and cost as well, but it assigns the minimization of the benefit and the maximization of the cost to the speaker (in this study, the advertiser). The advertiser seems to avoid the Generosity Maxim as much as they can. It is unwise for them to mention the benefits which they
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may obtain from the sale of the product. The advertiser does not want to make themselves sound selfish and concerning only with gaining profit for their own sake.
The Approbation Maxim refers to the minimization of dispraise of other and to the maximization of the praise of other. Regarding advertising, the advertiser is expected to make efforts to express admiration toward her consumer, and to avoid criticizing her consumer. After all, being exposed to praise is always more pleasant than being exposed to criticism. As a result, the advertiser strives harder to praise than to dispraise her consumer.
In a similar way, Modesty Maxim, which also reflects the notion of praise and dispraise, is directed toward the speaker, i.e. the advertiser. Opposite to the implementation of Generosity Maxim, presumely the speaker should avoid this maxim because it is not proper in any social conventions to praise oneself. However, in order to sell the product, the advertiser must praise the product and claim that the product is effective and efficient to reach the consumer’s goals. In doing so, the advertiser violates Modesty Maxim.
As for Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim, these two maxims take both speakers and hearers into consideration. According to the submaxims of Agreement Maxim, the advertiser should manage to minimize disagreement but to maximize agreement between herself and the consumer in advertising communication.
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As to Sympathy Maxim, the observance of its submaxims allows the advertiser to minimize antipathy and to maximize sympathy between herself and the consumer.
In advertisements, the advertiser is expected to take the consumer’s side, showing sympathy to the consumer’s problems. Compared with the other maxims, this particular maxim is less frequently implemented in advertising discourse; after all, if the advertiser mentions too much about the consumer’s flaws, the consumer may mistake the advertiser’s sympathy for antipathy or dispraise.
2.3 Linguistic Aspect 2.3.1 Metadiscourse
Metadiscourse refers to the ways by which writers (or speakers) project themselves in their texts to interact with their interlocutors. It plays an important role
in organizing a discourse, engaging the audience, and signaling the writer’s or the speaker’s attitude (Fuertes-Olivera et al., 2001). Writing and speaking are more than
just ways to communicate ideas; moreover, they are social acts through which interlocutors interact with each other to affect the ways that certain ideas are presented and understood (Hyland, 2005, and Amiryousefi and Rasekh, 2010).
Hyland (2005:3) even proposes that metadiscourse involves the personalities, attitudes, and assumptions of speakers (or writers). In addition, Crismore et al. (1993) define metadiscourse as linguistic material in texts, which does not add propositional
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meanings to the content, but organizes texts coherently and convincingly, and helps listeners (or readers) organize, interpret, and evaluate the given information.
A variety of metadiscourse taxonomies have been proposed (Vande Kopple, 1985; Crismore et al, 1993; Hyland, 2005). Vande Kopple (1985) introduces two main categories of metadiscourse—textual and interpersonal. Textual metadiscourse is composed of text connectives, code glosses, illocution markers, and narrators, while interpersonal metadiscourse contains validity markers, attitude markers, and commentaries. Crismore et al. (1993), following the same line, keep the two major categories of textual and interpersonal. Further, according to them, the textual metadiscourse is divided into two categories, textual markers and interpretive markers to differentiate organizational function from evaluative function. According to Crismore et al., textual markers include those features that help organize the discourse,
and interpretive markers are those features used to help readers to interpret and understand the writer’s meaning better.
Hyland (2005) divides metadiscourse into two categories, interactive and interactional. Interactive metadiscourse is concerned with the writers’ awareness of
their receivers and making the argument satisfactory for them; whereas interactional metadiscourse is related to the writers’ intention to make their views explicit and to
engage the readers by anticipating responses to the text. The interactional elements of
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metadiscourse are subcategorized, according to their specific functions, into hedgers, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, and engagement markers—which,
following Halliday’s (1994) concept of metafunctions, serve ideational, interpersonal,
and textual functions. Halliday believes that when people use language, they usually fulfill these three functions. The ideational function of language use is to represent experiences and ideas, which equals the notion of propositional content; the interpersonal function to encode interaction, allowing interlocutors to engage with others; and the textual function to organize the text, coherently relating what is said to the readers.
In Dafouz’s (2008) study, the persuasive function of metadiscourse has been widely discussed and carried out to analyze how metadiscourse markers attain persuasion and how such persuasion is metadiscursively articulated. Fuertes-Olivera et al. (2001) discuss metadiscourse in advertising English, especially slogans and headlines. Interlocutors, on the bases of the shared knowledge and common frame of reference, obtain the meanings of each other’s verbal expressions. As a result, it is found that there is solidarity between the writer and the reader. In order to achieve solidarity of this kind, metadiscourse is crucial in organizing the words as a coherent text and in conveying the writer’s intention and personality. In advertisements, these words are presented as texts that function between informing and manipulating
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(Fuertes-Olivera et al., 2001). In order to find out the functions of netadiscourse, some linguistic devices, hedgers and boosters in particular, are examined in this study.
2.3.1.1 Hedgers
Hyland (2005) defines hedgers as a linguistic device to indicate the writer’s decision to present propositional information tentatively, so it withholds complete commitment to a proposition. Hedgers (such as might, probably and seem) not only signal a tentative assessment of referential information, but also serve as markers of interpersonal metadiscourse. The functions of them are to tone down the force of the
messages, to introduce some degree of uncertainty, and to assure the hearers that the speakers do not intend to interfere with the hearers’ freedom to act (Fuertes-Olivera et
al., 2001). In other words, through the use of hedgers, speakers can avoid imposition on their interlocutors. With similar thought, hedgers may help the speakers avoid or alleviate the force of their disagreement with the hearers.
2.3.1.2 Boosters
Boosters are another category of markers of interpersonal metadiscourse. As Hyland (1998: 368) suggests, “Boosters are then rhetorical, persuasive strategies which function to mark, or rhetorically manipulate, consensual understandings based on shared community membership.” Holmes (1982) uses boosters to refer to lexical items that the writer uses to create an impression of certainty and assurance for a
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statement. They strengthen the utterance’s illocutionary force. Boosters, like clearly,
obviously and of course, allow writers to express conviction, to show their confidence
in the truth of a particular proposition, and to mark their involvement and solidarity with their audiences (Hyland, 1998). In other words, boosters offer writers a medium to engage with their readers to create interpersonal solidarity. In advertising, boosters are used as persuasion devices. Although the consumer may not believe the content of an advertisement, they still rely on it to make decision to purchase the products advertised. In other words, the consumer is trapped in between. Therefore, boosters, by giving strength and conviction to the consumer, can persuade the consumer, and lead them to make up their mind to buy the product.
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Chapter 3 Methodology
Based on the theories Chapter Two reviews, this chapter introduces research design, which includes data sources and quantity, criteria for analyses, essential functions, and measurements.
3.1 Data Collection
3.1.1 Data from magazines
The data to be used in the thesis are from two women’s fashion magazines, namely, Beauty and Elle, the world’s best-selling fashion magazines, from January to December in 2011, focusing on fashion, beauty, health, and entertainment. The potential readers of these two magazines are aged from 18 to 35.
In total, 200 pieces of advertisements were collected. These data are equally distributed to two types of beauty products: cosmetic products and skin-care products.
3.1.2 Data from interviews
The data from the interview are qualitative analyses, and the gap between the advertiser and the consumer is to be examined. Since it is impossible for the interviewees to evaluate all of the 200 pieces of advertisements, only four of them were used to test on the subjects’ reaction on certain data which include felicity
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conditions, Cooperative Principle, and Politeness Principle adopted in these advertisements. Among these four pieces of advertisements, two are cosmetic ads, and the other two are skin-care ads.
For qualitative analyses in this thesis, twelve women, as potential consumers, were interviewed. All of those subjects use cosmetic products and skin-care products, and they are equally distributed to two age groups (with the older age group ranging from 35 to 45 years old, and the younger group ranging from 20 to 30 years old), and two education levels (with the higher education group consisting of those who have received or are taking formal schooling of college education, and the lower education group containing those who did not receive college education).
The subjects were asked to rate the strength of the persuasiveness of each element contained in the four selected advertisements (as given below) on a 5-point Likert scale, with point-5 being strongly persuasive and point-1 being strongly unpersuasive. The whole procedure of each interview lasted for about 20 minutes.
The four selected advertisements are as follows:
a. 從早到晚，不泛油光不黯沉！讓底妝更加持久的救星！(蜜粉餅) b. 2011 春迷，加勒比海春妝，浪漫呈現 (眼影)
c. 全效亮眼按摩精華，消除疲憊浮腫雙眼，溫和不刺激的清涼對策 (眼部精華) d. 清新的薄荷&茶種香氣與舒爽的使用感，愉悅身心 (乳液)
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3.2 Criteria for Analyses
In quantitative analyses as well as in qualitative analyses, the data were analyzed according to the ways of persuasion, the felicity conditions, the maxims of Cooperative Principle, and the maxims of Politeness Principle adopted in the data.
3.2.1 Ways to persuade
Two ways of persuasion—hard-sell approach and soft-sell approach—the former makes a direct appeal to the customer to purchase the product and the characteristics of the product, and the latter resorts to emotions and the closeness between the advertiser and the consumer. It was predicted that the two different kinds of beauty products—cosmetics and skin-care products—have different preferences to
Two ways of persuasion—hard-sell approach and soft-sell approach—the former makes a direct appeal to the customer to purchase the product and the characteristics of the product, and the latter resorts to emotions and the closeness between the advertiser and the consumer. It was predicted that the two different kinds of beauty products—cosmetics and skin-care products—have different preferences to