VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----------o0o---------- VŨ THỊ HIỀN A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISING SLOGANS FOR LIFE INSURANCE Phân tích khẩu hiệu quảng cáo bảo hiểm nhân thọ theo quan điểm Ngôn ngữ học chức năng hệ thống M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220204 HANOI – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ----------o0o---------- VŨ THỊ HIỀN A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISING SLOGANS FOR LIFE INSURANCE Phân tích khẩu hiệu quảng cáo bảo hiểm nhân thọ theo quan điểm Ngôn ngữ học chức năng hệ thống M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220204 Supervisor: Assoc. Lâm Quang Đông HANOI – 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and have been generated by me as the result of my own original research.
This work was done wholly while I am in candidature for a Master degree at this University; 2. This thesis has never been submitted partially or wholly for a degree or any other qualification at this University or any other institution; 3. Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed; 4. Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given.
With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work; 5. I have acknowledged all main sources of help; 6. Where the thesis is based on work done by myself jointly with others, I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself. I am fully aware that should this declaration be found to be false, disciplinary action could be taken and penalties imposed in accordance with University policy and rules.
Hanoi, 2017 V Th Hi n i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would have never been able to finish my thesis without the guidance of my supervisor, help from friends and support from my family. Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Assoc. Lam Quang Dong for his continuous support enthusiasm, invaluable constructive criticism and friendly advice during the project work. His enthusiastic and meaningful assistance greatly contributes to the fulfillment of my thesis.
My appreciation also goes to all lecturers of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies for their ideas and useful lessons from which I benefited a lot for the accomplishment of this thesis. Furthermore, I am greatly indebted to different linguists whose books and pieces of research have been very useful materials for my writing of this paper. Their notable ideas inspired me much during the process of study and writing. I especially thank all of my friends and my parents for their love, support and encouragement which help me complete this thesis ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT The language of advertising is a very special one, with its own characteristics that make it different from other languages.
As a result, an investigation into linguistic features of advertising slogans can be of great value. This qualitative research is conducted on a total of 78 life insurance slogans chosen from each company‟s official website. The study aims at giving readers a brief description and analysis of advertising slogans and their accompanying images. The analysis was based on a combined framework of Halliday‟s SFL and Kress and Leeuwen‟s Multimodality theory.
The study firstly tries to investigate transitivity to clarify six main types of processes: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal and existential processes. Secondly, image-text relations were expounded based on Systemic Functional theory across semiotic modes. The findings indicated that advertisement designers employed various linguistic devices to attract customers. In these slogans, material, relational and mental processes are the most frequently applied.
The paper also figures out that images help extend or add new meaning to the verbal texft. Thus, the language use and images in advertising slogans consist of different distinctive features to enable advertisers to communicate with customers. The paper hopefully will entail useful implications for the use of language and other modes of communication. iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE CONTENT DECLARATION .iiii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES.
vi PART A: INTRODUCTION. Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Organization of the thesis.
5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Systemic Functional Linguistics. The background to SFL. Traditional grammar vs.
systemic functional grammar. The keys elements of SFL. An overview of advertisement and slogans. Review of previous research.
11 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES. 13 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics .2 Kress and van Leeuwen’s Multimodal theory. Method of Analysis. 18 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION.
Summary of linguistic aspects. Analysis based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. Analysis based on Multimodality theory. Limitation and suggestions for future research .I APPENDIX 1: 78 life insurance slogans collected from 7 countries .I APPENDIX 2: 12 printed advertisements.
V v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 1: Introduction to Functional Grammar, Halliday (2004: 219) _______________ 14 Figure 2: The percentages of 6 different processes ______________________________ 21 Table 1: Types of relational process _________________________________________ 15 Table 2: The frequency of occurrence of all the techniques _______________________ 20 Table 3: Illustration of Material Process ______________________________________ 21 Table 4: Illustration of Mental Process _______________________________________ 24 Table 5: Illustration of Relational – attribute Processes __________________________ 25 Table 6: Illustration of Relational- identifying Processes _________________________ 26 Table 7: Illustration of Verbal processes ______________________________________ 27 Table 8: Illustration of Existential processes ___________________________________ 27 Table 9: Illustration of Behavioral processes __________________________________ 28 Table 11: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Representational meaning _____________ 31 Table 12: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Interactive meaning __________________ 34 Table 13: Illustration of 12 pictures based on Interactive meaning __________________ 38 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale In accordance with dramatic shifts in society, language has performed more and more important roles and assumed more significant functions in life. What are those functions? How can people perceive the organization of language, and how this organization gives an account of such functions? – These have been questions of concern to linguists. According to Halliday, language is “a resource for making meaning” or a "meaning potential".
Furthermore, he defines linguistics as the study of "how people exchange meanings by „languaging‟ – (Halliday, 1985). For Halliday, language, “in relation to our ecological and social environment”, consists of two main functions: making sense of our experience, and acting out our social relationships”. Language is made up of more-or-less closed “systems” of words and grammatical structures. From these systems speakers make selections in order to simultaneously construct “wordings” and “meanings”.
The systems of wordings and meanings then help speakers reflect the social and cultural context of the language. Halliday also argued for three metafunctions of language: interpersonal metafunction – the interaction between speaker and addressee; ideational metafunction – concerning „ideation” – grammatical resources for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us; and textual metafunction – the creation of text. Considering this topic, a great number of studies were conducted in the light of SFL theory. SFL – Systemic Functional Linguistics was developed by Michael Halliday in the 1990s as a new approach to language and language- related issues.
It enables us to better present language features under a specific type of cultural and situational context, to show how language functions in certain circumstances and to demonstrate what role language may assume in different aspects of social life (Halliday, 2008). Among these aspects, language in the field of advertising has drawn considerable attention since “A man who stops advertising to save money, is like a 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com man who stops a clock to save time” (Henry Ford, 2008) and “Advertising takes many forms, but in most of them language is of crucial importance” (Vestergaard & Schroder, 1985). Advertising is the best way to communicate the products‟ values to all customers, including the young and the old. Advertising helps inform customers about quality brands in the market and promote sales for companies, so advertising should be fascinating, exciting, and creative.
Slogans are considered the heart of an advertisement. Hence, it is undeniable that language of advertising slogans is pervasive, influential, and ubiquitous. It can be catchy phrases or short sentences which help corporations or businesses tell the world what makes their products or services different. Indeed, creating a successful slogan is real art of language use.
As a result, an investigation into linguistic features of advertising slogans can be of great value. Significant amount of research has been conducted on advertising slogans, but advertising slogans on life insurance remain almost untouched. Life insurance slogans reflect people‟s beliefs in the value of life. Clients are at different ages, have different backgrounds and religions, so careful choices of language are crucial.
These reasons provide a source of inspiration to the author to conduct a research into advertising slogans for life insurance. Research questions This study is carried out with the aim to describe and analyze characteristics of language used in advertising slogans for life insurance from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective. Then, images accompanying these slogans are also investigated to figure out their meanings and functions based on multimodal analysis. In order to achieve these aims, the following questions are addressed: 1.
What are the characteristics of language used in advertising slogans for life insurance from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective? 2. What are the meanings and functions of the images included in such slogans based on multimodal analysis? 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the study In this study, the author aims to concentrate on verbal advertisements – 78 written slogans of famous life insurance companies from different countries all over the world (collected in three-month period from September to November in 2016). Due to the limitation of time and the limited scope of a minor M.
thesis, this study does not make an analysis of all aspects of language use. Rather, the author mainly focuses on analyzing these slogans‟ language in terms of transitivity system and the images based on multimodality theory. The thesis is conducted for academic purposes only, i. without any commercial intent.
Significance of the study This minor M. thesis is believed to have the following contributions: (i) Its account of linguistic features of life insurance advertising slogans from SFL perspective provides better understanding of advertising language; (ii) Its analysis of images in these advertisements contributes to improved awareness of the meanings, functions of images as well as the linkage between verbal and visual modes of communication; (iii) These two contributions will naturally entail useful implications for the use of language and other modes of communication by language learners, language teachers, advertising and business communities alike. Organization of the thesis This thesis consists of three parts: Part A: Introduction aims to give the background of the study, including the rationale, the aims of the study, research questions, scope, significance and organization of the thesis. Part B: Development, the main part and also the focus of the study consists of three chapters: Chapter 1: Literature review presents a review of previous research, including the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) of M.K Halliday and multimodal discourse analysis by Kress and Van Leeuwen.
Next, this chapter will 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com present the concepts, types and functions of an advertisement as well as the language used in it, the definition of slogan and how to evaluate a slogan, and a review of previous research as well.