A tentative analysis of a public service advertising discourse

陳玉琴

Abstract：Advertisements play a significant role in peoples life. Public service advertising， serving as an essential part of ads， mainly spreads ideas or information. This paper intends to do discourse analysis with a piece of public service advertising so as to show the characteristics that make it special to the public. Thanks to these features， companies or organizations who willing to create or promote their public images or spread their ideas are high on public service advertising.

Key words： public service advertising; context; genre; lexicon prominence

1. Introduction

Veatergaard.T. and K. Schroder， in their book The Language of Advertising （1985）， divide advertising into commercial advertising and public service advertising. This paper chooses a piece of advertising —IF Live Curious— from National Geographic Channels （hereinafter referred as NGC） （2010）， and is going to analyze this piece of discourse from the aspect of functional linguistics.

2. Context

Context refers to non-linguistic factors relating to discourse. And there are two types of context： context of culture and context of situation.

According to Halliday， context of situation involves field， tenor and mode of discourse， and context of situation is realization of context of culture. Live Curious， a public service advertising published by NGC about life philosophy， is calling on the audience to stay curious; if only they are alive， they are supposed to find something， to learn something， to know something.

3. Register

According to Halliday， register refers to functional variety of language resulting from the changes of context of situation， the direct situation of language activity. He concluded the situational factors relevant to discourse as three variables： field， tenor and mode. Combining together， the three factors form situational configuration of discourse， which determines the meaning the text expressing （zhang delu， 2005）. The register of this ad is opened register， for it has a relatively high degree of freedom to create its language.

3.1 Field of discourse. The field of discourse refers to the situational factors such as subject matter and setting. The subject matter can be technical or non-technical ones. And the field restricts the choice of words. The subject matter of this ad is non-technique; therefore the words in the ad are usual ones. In return， it is more likely to predict the subject from these words like “ask”， “think”， “search”， and “doubt”.

3.2Tenor of discourse. Tenor of discourse means social relations of two parts of the communication. Tenor of advertising discourse reflects the relationship between the producer of advertising and the receiver of the advertising. And tenor of this discourse can be described as： NGC and all the audience; the audience dominating and NGC persuading; social distance reaching the maximum.

In the second person perspective discourse， the organizations or companies seem to be independent to the advertising products when advertise， but in fact they are the producer of advertising （Huang guowen， 2001）. In the discourse， “you” is the audience; the other side （the first person opposite perspective） is NGC.

3.3Mode of discourse. Mode of discourse is the medium or the channel the discourse using， such as oral and written language. Although the advertising is post on TV outputting by voice， the wording is formal and of beauty.

4. Prominence of lexicon

4.1Repetition in this discourse. Ding Tingsen asserts that repetition in poetry is the most widely used technique in the creation of English poetry （Ding Tingsen， 2005）. He emphasizes the relation between poetic repetition and foregrounding and points out that repetition in English poetry is deviation from the standard language and an important means of foregrounding. And there are phonemic repetition， lexical repetition and structural repetition.

4.2Ellipsis in the discourse. Generally speaking， ellipsis occurs when omit certain language element supposed to show up again. However， in the very beginning of this discourse， there is ellipsis—“if you are， you breathe.” Without the later phrase “you breathe”， its impossible to know “what” you really are. By doing this， the ad catch audiences eye immediately， and they want to figure out “you are….”

Another point worthy of noticing is that the beginning and the ending make up an circle through repetition and ellipsis， which symbolizes the process of life —life is a circle， whatever you do， you do it for living， and if you are alive， be curious.

4.3Climax of the lexicon. The form of ranking the lexica from top to bottom based on their importance， degree of intensity and interests etc. is called climax. See the order of these words， “talk

Conclusion

Advertising is in the life of everyone in everywhere， especially the public service advertising. This paper selected Live Curious as the object of discourse analysis because its beauty and value. It breaks up traditional form of advertising by borrowing the generic structure of poetry， which creates a peculiar type of advertising. In the advertising， ellipsis and repetition occurs from the beginning to the end; climax of lexica strengthen the emotion; simple and short sentences create not only visual beauty but beautiful rhythm. However， it can be discussed in depth the genre and the phonetic analysis.

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