Multimodal narrativity in TV ads

PROCEEDINGS OF THE MALAYSIAN ASSOCIATION OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS ASIA PACIFIC CONFERENCE 2022 (MAAL APC 2022), 2023

TV commercials are interactive in nature and communicate social meanings through narratives, deploying verbal and visual semiotic modes. It has been established that the interpersonal metafunction of language, under the theory of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics demonstrates an interaction between the addressee and the addresser in verbal communication. Similarly, Kress and van Leeuwen’s interactive domain of Visual Grammar deals with meaning making processes materialized by an interaction between the represented participant and the viewer in visual communication. This qualitative study is set in a Pakistani socio-cultural context and employs a socio-semiotic multimodal approach with the lens of narratology to analyze the interactive functions in the narrative of a Pakistani TV advertisement, Shan Thematic 2020’s #MoreThanJustACook. In this regard, a threefold analytical framework: Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006, 2020), socio-semiotic Visual Grammar, Ryan’s (2006) Narrativity Conditions and Fog et al.’s (2010) Storytelling Elements has been deployed. The findings of the study unfold the gender roles and strong family ties that are reflected in the narrative of the TV advertisement. The representation of social relationships has been realized through the social distance and contact between the represented participants and the viewers in an interactive set up of the visual landscape. The results suggest that the indirect eye contact and frontal angle in the visual narrative induce the viewer to purchase the product and cherish family time. This study offers a methodological contribution towards the application of narratology, multimodal narrativity and socio-semiotic multimodal theories that can be highly effective for future research in the field of visual communication.

Handbook of Research on Narrative Advertising, 2019

The aim of this chapter is to describe narrative components such as narration, focalization, narrative situations, narrative time, tenses, moods, proposition, fictional space, chronotopes, characters, and discourse-and their reflection in advertising-to frame an analytical plane on how they can be used in advertising researches. In this context, the fundamental concepts of narratology are defined in separate headings and related concepts are shown. In addition, how those concepts are reflected in ads is shown and the study tries to explain what points the researchers can focus on. In the conclusion of the study, some points about the future of advertising and narrative in the digital age are mentioned.

2013

This paper lays out the steps involved in the process of analyzing the rhetorical structure of TV ads with the employment of the content analytic software Atlas.ti 7. By drawing on a corpus of 87 TV commercials from brands that make up the world’s most valuable brands according to WPP’s BrandZ 2012 report and a resulting pool of 561 ad filmic segments, it will be shown (i) how TV ads may be segmented, (ii) how individual segments may be coded with one or more verbo-visual rhetorical figures in the light of three distinctive levels of analysis (on an intra-segment level, between two succeeding segments, against the background of an ad film’s “global semantic structure”) and (iii) how statistical output pertaining to the rhetorical structure of TV ads may be produced. This technically oriented analysis, which is part of ongoing research in the field of multimodal advertising rhetoric (cf. Rossolatos 2013a, 2013b, 2013c), is intended to contribute to scholarly research about the benefits that stem from combining an interpretive approach to the analysis of ads’ rhetorical configuration that is edified on film semiotics, with a quantitative approach, enabled by the employment of the content analytic software Atlas.ti 7.

This chapter presents Congruity Theory as a valuable tool to enhance the understanding of multimodal discourse. We focus on the rhetorical organization of a product advertisement that performs the action of persuading somebody to buy something (the action in view of which text elements and semiotic resources are orchestrated in ads). After establishing an exhaustive inventory of text units independently of their semiotic mode (following recent research highlighting the need of overcoming pre-structured interpretations of multimodal texts), we employ Congruity Theory to function-pragmatically define the subordinate actions of text units in relation to the superordinate pragmatic function of the text.

Handbook of Research on Narrative Advertising, 2019

In this chapter, the use of the types of focusing in the narrative discourse that direct the perception of the narrative in ads is discussed. In the context of Gerard Genette's focus theory, the study focuses on what are the elements that are prominent in advertisements and which give a perspective to the target audience. The aim of the study is to determine the types of focus used in advertising and the elements that strengthen the advertising narrative. Ads are trying to attract the consumer's attention and are consciously prepared as a form of communication of the contents of the mind that leads to purchase behavior. Therefore, this study to focus on advertising is important to reveal a topic in the advertising literature and to help cover the gap here. The narrative focus in advertising is based on the classification of Genette.

KnE Social Sciences, 2018

TV advertisement is one of the various kinds of mass media advertisement which inevitably surrounds people's life today. It is a multimodal discourse in which the text comprising it consists of complex resources of meanings. The complexity of meanings is due to the message delivered in advertisement which is not only used the verbal language but the visual image as well that work together as a unit of meaning. This study observes TV advertisement featuring Dettol (protecting children version) manifests verbal and visual elements. Under the guidance of Linguistic Functional Grammar and visual grammar, this study attempts to look at any multimodal elements which comprise the advertisement and how these elements express meanings that strengthen the message intended by the producer. The analysis is conducted by following Linguistic Functional Systemic proposed by Halliday (2004). Furthermore, the multimodal discourse analysis is conducted by combining multimodal theory from Anstey and Bull (2010) and Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), while to determine the generic structure of advertisement, this study follows Cheong's formulation (2004). This study follows the procedures of analyzing multimodal discourse which include verbal and visual elements proposed by Hermawan (2013). The findings suggest that theoretical framework based on functional grammar and visual grammar is adaptive for multimodal discourse of TV advertisement. By virtue of linguistic and non-linguistic analysis provide the clearer meaning from the message delivered in TV advertisement.

Hermes Vol.50, 2013

The use of rhetoric in advertising research has been steadily gaining momentum since the 1980's. Coupled with an increased interest in multimodality and the multiple interactions among verbal, pictorial and auditory registers, as structural components of an ad fi lmic text, the hermeneutic tools furnished by traditional rhetoric have been expanded and elaborated. This paper addresses the fundamental question of how ad fi lmic texts assume signifi cation from a multimodal rhetorical point of view, by engaging in a fruitful dialogue with various research streams within the wider semiotic discipline and consumer research. By critically addressing the context of analysis of a multimodal ad text in the course of the argumentation deployed by different approaches, such as Social Semiotics (Kress/relative merits of a structuralist approach that prioritizes the distinction between local and general degree zero, as put forward by Groupe μ (1992), are highlighted. Furthermore, the modes whereby rhetorical transformations are enacted are outlined, with view to deepening the conceptual tackling of degree zero of signifi cation, while addressing its applicability to branding discourse and multimodal ad texts.

This project aims at offering a sociosemiotic account of how a brand’s discursive universe is reflected in user-generated advertising, by analyzing and interpreting the multi-stratal differences and similarities between brand-originating TV advertising (BOTA) and user-generated advertising films (UGAF). User-generated content has been burgeoning over the recent years, “as companies have ceded some degree of control over their content in hopes of building a new relationship with their consumers” (Jenkins 2014: 38). The proposed project has a multi-disciplinary orientation, spanning transmedia, new media and participatory cultural research (from a media studies perspective), branding, advertising effectiveness and integrated marketing communications (from a marketing research point of view) and multimodal/rhetorical/semiotic resources analysis (from sociosemiotic and rhetorical studies points of view). The conceptual backdrop and the research design are informed by all four disciplines.

2017

The study, as an attempt, considered narrative as a good resource of advertising in the Nigerian environment. In other words, advertisers perceive narrative as a strategy that can stimulate consumers to patronize advertised goods and services. Four adverts of FBN®, MTN®, Orijin® and FIRS® have been chosen to propagate the course appeared on the frameworks. Beside the application of the Labovian schema on narrative, the Halliday's transitivity system plays an analytical role by assigning semiotic slots to the textual devices. The study reveals that advertising copies a similar pattern of narrative in the society. Apart from the texts serving as relays to the images, the construction of the message is in the resolution sequential string. This provides an opportunity for advertisers to present to the public the gains and benefits of taking decision parallel to the messages of the adverts. Advertisers capitalize on the efforts of past leaders, the challenges of the present and the f...

Anuari de Filologia: Llengües i Literatures Modernes, 2022

This study examined the interplay of pictorial and written modes that position advertising as a multimodal genre, explainable through a social semiotic perspective. Eight advertisements of the financial, telecommunications, and beverage products functioned as devices of analysis. Nevertheless, multimodal communicative acts served as the processing tool, elucidating the meaning potentials of the advertising configurations. Having deployed a system of multimodal interacts, tables and graphs assisted in accounting for the frequency of the semiotic resources of the written modes. The analysis indicated large and highlighted fonts (Celebrating the world's no. 1 fixer), repetitions (Guinness, Maltina, real deal), and deviant constructs (EazyLoans, GTWorld) as elements of propagating intended messages. The deployment of codes (*966*11#, 737) and fragmented clauses (Over N100 million worth of airtime) played some roles in the meaning-making operations. Of significance is the Guinness' conceptual "digits" of 17:59, contextualising the year, time, and channel of promotional benefits. Though questions (Have you called mum today?), offer (It can be), and minor clauses (Welcome to Guinness time) were parts of the communicative systems, statements (Terms and condition apply) and commands (Enjoy the complete richness of Maltina) dominated the entire dialogues. One might suggest that communicators should endeavour to deploy apt constructions and create eye-lines between participants as means of sensitising readers into consumption.