Manipulative language use in advertisement.

Advertising… to draw you in to particular products or services through announcement's paid for by an individual or a group wishing to inform or influence a particular audience.

 

How do they manage this? Through the clever and concealed use of manipulative language I would say.

 

Just the organisation of sentences purposely uses grammatical patterning (marked themes, end focus and passive voice) to rearrange the elements of a sentence in order to draw attention to key information, allowing the advertisers to control the order in which we perceive information. In turn, this allows them to alter and affect the way in which the reader would perceive the information in the advertisement and this possibly helps to control what we would feel when reading or hearing this.

 

The grammar of advertisements is also similar to informal spoken language, the informality builds a rapport with the audience/reader, this will improve the chances of the advertisement meeting the purpose as the audience can understand and relate to the advertisement. The pronouns, I, you, me, and we etc... Help create a personal relationship with the costumers, the directivity gives the illusion of making them feel special.

 

The slogans of advertisements are crucial as they sell the advert; aiming to stick into people's minds. A good strategy is to use sayings or situations that are already well known – the tone is often very tongue-in-cheek, a good example is the RAC's slogan 'Your knight in shining viscose' taking a twist of the extremely typical phrase 'Your knight in shining armour'.

 

The lexis of advertisements are critical to make an effect on the advertisement as a whole. For instants, neologisms are commonly used in advertisements as the invented words or phrases can make an advert memorable because it manipulates the use of language.

 

Let's take charity advertisements for example, their aim is collecting funds, attracting support, raising awareness and voluntary helpers. These advertisements purposely use emotive language, shocking statistics and strong adjectives, making the audience feel emotional about the subject, guilty or giving them a reason that they should be helping. When we see or watch these advertisements you don't realise that what is being said or shown was used purposely to persuade you to do something.

 

Clever and well hidden, right?

 

Sarah Hennebry

Law contracts, confusing eh?

Harry Wood
Everyone, even me at one point until I started to study law, sees legal language as a type of writing that can be very hard to de-code to find its true meaning. There are many common words used in law as seen in this link http://www.celan.droit.univ-cezanne.fr/anglais/vocab/  , Someone who hasn't studied the basics of law will be stuck! For example would you know and understand the meaning of the term mens rea and actus reas? These are used every day in law to determine cases in a court room, so the importance of these words are huge and the ambiguous meaning to them could easily cause confusion.
But we all need to understand this language, because these complex words are involved in everyone's everyday life. How many contracts have you signed? Whether it is for your phone or your mortgage legal language appears frequently and if you cannot interpret it, how do you expect to know if the contract is secure and valid?
There can be so much that is piled into these contracts! Even though you probably don't read all the terms and conditions, I know I don't. They use precise technical terms that usually originate from Latin or French due to their in-depth meaning. They tend to structure these contracts with conjured phrases for example using words such as "or" and  "and," however have you noticed how they tend to avoid using impersonal structures such as "I" or "you," they never want to directly address you, which doesn't surprise me! It probably gives them a sense of security that they haven't mentioned your name.
All these big corporate companies hire these top lawyers to try and exclude any loop holes in the contacts. Have you noticed the complexity of the sentences used, I don't think I've ever seen a simple sentence when proof reading the terms and conditions of a contract. The law is kept extremely formal and the fact that they deliberately use obscure words tells me that they are trying to confuse you.
This takes me on to why we actually need lawyers in the first place. Firstly without them how could we find any of these companies breaking the law with a less than fair contract, the fact that these lawyers can interpret the writing and actually make sure the contract is fair and precise to ensure that the general public just isn't being taken advantage of. But then I ask myself, do we actually need these lawyers? Because basically they are paid to draw up these un-interpretable contracts, only then to be paid to find a loop hole. So without these lawyers don't you think the contracts would be a lot easier and fair to understand? 
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ - this is a link to the plain English campaign, which tries to give the view that we shouldn't use specialist jargon to confuse the general public. http://denning.law.ox.ac.uk/lrsp/overview/legislation.php - here are some examples of legislations that are still in place today; you can see how confusing they actually get. It's impossible at times!           

Children's Politeness Strategies

Children's Politeness Strategies
By Summer Nicholls

Don't talk to your father like that?
Don't talk with your mouth full!
What's the magic word?

Have you ever been offended by a young child and thought badly of their parents?
Well maybe it's not always to blame on how they're being brought up and purely because they aren't old enough yet to understand politeness strategies in a more complex way.

At a young age children are constantly reminded by their parents on how to behave in a polite manner using 'Please, thank you and excuse me'. Not until they are a few years older do they become less direct and develop more feelings for strangers or people they know but are not as familiar with. For example imagine a mother whose out with her four year old toddler who spots something about a person they don't like. This child could immediately be direct towards this and shout out something an older person would not as they'd know its offensive and they'd understand the rudeness of this. It's also interesting how an adult would interact with a young child and naturally include a simple question 'What's the magic word?' to help them develop a polite attitude towards others. However these are only the main words they'd include (please, thank you and excuse) and this is why they perhaps don't understand politeness in more of a developed way.
David Crystal reminds us of the importance of using politeness in everyday life and how people speaking to someone they're not as familiar with would be a lot more polite compared to their mates who I think people can tend to be the least polite with, especially males. I think this because males use more taboo language in a joking situation towards friend's who'd then find it amusing. Females wouldn't tend to do this as much as their more emotional and could take some jokes to heart as they wouldn't find this humour amusing. Maybe this is the same with young children as their parents are the ones always reminding to use these 'magic' words towards them but as they don't know strangers they are not yet aware that these magic words should apply to everyone. This comes back to one of Crystal's points 'It's very important to make sure your language is appropriate to the situation you find yourself in, otherwise you might find yourself being criticised'. If you have ever been offended by a young child or seen this happen to someone else, the person it's being aimed at could be offended but as it's a child they'd use this as an exception rather than it being a situation of two adults who might have an argument over it as they would be aware of their rudeness.
 

The Internet Vs The English Language

By Maddy Lloyd

As an internet user, you may have become aware of the diverse range of new language spurting from social networking site such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. Commonly used nouns like 'hashtag' or 'Youtuber' may have more or less been accepted into our everyday lexicon by most people, however, some areas of this new usage have been slated by those who deem themselves protectors of English as a language.  

Creative sentence structures like 'I can't even' or non-standard spelling for effect like 'teh' and 'halp' are used frequently by Tumblr users to emphasise one point or another and are generally well understood and useful for those in the know. But while a well-placed 'aslajkghsdl;' (Internet for 'I'm too overwhelmed for words so I will just smash my face to the keys') can provide additional emotion and hilarity to devoted internet users, many people are lamenting the loss of 'decent' spelling and blaming new technology for the downfall of literacy. 

Claims that the youth of today are losing the ability to construct accurate sentences or convey formality during exams are fuelled by tales of despairing teachers telling of that time when Johnny from Year 11 wrote his entire Romeo and Juliet essay exclusively in txt spk. David Crystal, on the other hand, dismisses these patronising shouts with calm logic and a backlog of studies.  As one of the most prominent linguists of the moment, he has made multiple appearances fighting for our corner – take a look at this one, where he likens the internet to the printing press. 

His argument is that in the grand scheme of things, where our language consists of millions of separate words, a few hundred more won't make much difference. The exuberant, over the top writing style favoured by the fangirls on Tumblr or the snarky, concise tweets from the millions of twitter users are just that: styles no different than the one you use to write the history essay due next week, or whatever evaluation your son's forgotten to do for fifth lesson tomorrow.  Crystal claims that technology usage is actually improving language skills in teenagers because they're constantly reading and writing, even if in non-standard ways. There has also been no significant increase in woeful accounts of txt spk exam scripts, despite what you may hear down the grapevine.  Teenagers today are just as capable as ever of identifying the time and place for a sneaky 'I can't even omg halp aslkafngeslk' and when their years of essay writing should be employed. 

But what do you think? Is the English language now doomed forever after the invasion of internet neologisms? Or is it just a new way to use words that we have yet to adapt to? 

The Lexicon of Legal Professions - Confusing eh?

By Edward Gwynne

 

Legal language can be  very confusing  for someone who hasn't had any education in the field of law. Even someone with an advanced knowledge of English language will  be unable to de-code what certain legislations mean. This is how lawyers and other legal professionals earn their money. Lawyers are paid to exploit the laws they research into for a client. This is to find a loophole. A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a certain system. Loopholes are used to avoid the intent of the law, whether directly stated or vaguely implied. An example of a loophole is when in the mid 1990s, the company Walmart wanted to open a store, the county in which they wanted to open it had a law stating that no shop could be bigger than 75,000 square feet. Therefore, Walmart planned to build two stores next to each other. They soon withdrew that plan, as it caused a lot of controversy. Loopholes have resulted in such major problems that the government has even employed people in specific jobs to prevent this from happening, such as Drafters, who compose more than one draft of a Bill - a pre-confirmed law - to make sure the law means what is says.

 

Laws aim to prevent this by using many factors. Laws are written with specialist lexis, directly related to the field of legal language. Lexis that is hard for a non-law student to understand. Such as Acquittal, and Affirmation. Also, normal English words are used, but the meaning of them is changed significantly, causing greater confusion to a normal citizen with no training. An example of this would be 'consideration'. In English language, consideration means to carefully give something thought, whereas in Legal language it means to give something of value in exchange for something else.

 

Legal language has changed through the centuries, with legal professions beginning by speaking in Latin. By the 13th century everything had changed to Old French. Eventually English was created. With the choice of three languages, the legal professions chose to use all three, hence why the use of Latinate and Old French lexis is common in legal language. Some mixtures of the words are still used in Modern English, especially common in doublets. Such as 'Fit and proper', a mixture of Old French and English, and also 'Will and testament', combining English and Latin. This in time resulted in normal Englishmen not being able to understand legislations and courtroom language.

 

Before I began studying law, I never appreciated the sheer amount of knowledge that was required to cover only a small topic of law. In order to be successful in what you do you need to know your area inside and out. No wonder why having a legal career is such a highly esteemed path.

Can Siri understand you?

Bethany Gooding

Half of the UK population now owns a smartphone, with 18.5% of those being iPhones (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/31/half-uk-population-owns-smartphone). This means a large number of people use Siri on a daily basis to construct texts, make phone calls, conduct Google searches and carry out other simple tasks. With the world's population becoming increasingly lazy, speech recognition software is being used a greater amount, making the accuracy of it a necessity.

To understand fully the meaning of language presented to it, Siri must have domain knowledge, discourse knowledge and world knowledge (Stanford Natural Language Processing), making it unsurprising that errors are sometimes made in analysis. Apple's Siri, according to MacWorld, is almost never wrong as it uses Natural Language Processing to analyse the syntactical structure of speech, extracting nouns, adjectives, verbs and intonation.

However, Rene Butler in their report 'Improving Speech Recognition through Linguistic Knowledge' argues that speech recognisers are inaccurate as they pay no attention to the linguistic structure of speech. One such model for speech analysis, the N-gram model only looks at a few proceeding words, which makes interpretation inaccurate. We as social animals are able to understand language as we have prior knowledge of syntax and semantics and we are also able to use exophoric clues in our situation. However, Siri is unaware of the situation and so must base its understanding purely on the linguistic features of speech.

To communicate with speech recognition software, we must adopt a controlled natural language which has a precisely defined syntax (Controlled natural language in speech recognition based user interfaces-Kaarel Kaljurand and Tanel Alumäe.) Language is largely ambiguous, making this controlled natural language different from written input due to linguistic features such as homophones, abbreviations and punctuation making spoken input sometimes difficult to distinguish and understand. To improve this understanding, when communicating with, for example Siri, we must allow for synonymous grammar which avoids ambiguity such as distinguishing between Hailsham town and Hailsham road.

As well as the theory of language being necessary for Siri to understand us, the software must also be able to understand different accents. Pronunciation of phonemes and morphemes varies according to the region the speaker originates from, sex and speaking style. This increases the knowledge Siri must have to turn the phonemes in a speech signal to a textual representation of the language.

With technology becoming a larger part of people's lives each day and individuals relying on this an increasing amount, speech recognition may soon be the way that people control not just their phones but many other household objects. Therefore, these devices must integrate linguistic models into their analysis of speech to make this as accurate as possible. Are you able to use Siri for all that you need on your phone? What errors do language models need to improve?

How do Teenagers talk to the Elderly?

 "I don't know no Jean's." "What do you mean you don't know any Jean's? Jean from over the road? Jean Baker? You went to school with her mother?" "Oh yes, is she called Jean?"

-Catherine Tate's "Nan"

It is no secret that teenagers tend to talk to the elderly differently from the way that they talk to their own age group.  Teenagers will talk differently due to convergence and divergence; Convergence being when speech styles of two or more speakers moving closer together during conversation, and divergence being when the speech styles move further apart during conversation. When teenagers talk to the elderly, they often display both convergence and divergence.

In 1986, researcher, Ryan et al, created a typology of four young to elderly language strategies. In his research he discovered that there is a clear reduction in meaningful communication between young and old people as the elderly are negatively evaluated in many situations. He also discovered that the elderly are often vulnerable to the social and psychological circumstances of isolation, neglect and negative stereotyping. However, he does state that these specific problems are not one sided, as both parties are often culprits responsible for this miscommunication.

The first language strategy that he discovered was that of over accommodation due to physical or sensory handicaps, in which a teenager would speak to handicapped recipients (usually with a hearing impediment) and adapt their speech beyond a 'normal' level. The second strategy was labelled by Ryan et al as dependency-related over accommodation where the younger person tries to control the relationship and induce the elderly into becoming dependent on them. This is referred to as 'overbearing, excessively directive and disciplinary' speech. The third strategy is age-related divergence. This is where teenagers emphasise the distinctiveness of their own age group by deliberately acting differently to the stereotype of the elderly person they are addressing. This divergence strategy is used as teenagers will try and differentiate themselves from the stereotype of older speakers (seen in physical or mental decline, slowing down with age and unable to keep up with modern social norms), and younger speakers will talk faster, use slang and share far more 'modern' ideas. The final strategy is called intergroup over accommodation and it is one of the most widespread young to elderly language strategies. The simple perception of a person's social category as being 'old' that also shows evidence of dependency is sufficient enough to provide teenagers with negative physical, social and psychological stereotypes.

This misunderstanding between generations happen due to younger people perhaps not wanting to sound like the older generation, as well as the older generations, not being particularly well educated on the social norms of today. Changes could be made, but despite this, the communication between the young and the elderly will always have issues due to ongoing troubles in learning about each other's language.

Megan Stratford

How much do children's storybooks use Child-Directed-Speech (CDS) to make it easier for a child to read and learn?

Emily Sweetman

 

Word Count: 508

 

I have fond memories of reading children's storybooks as a child. This gave me the idea to expand this existing theory CDS of Jerome Bruner, changing the mode from spoken interaction to written storybooks that I enjoyed as a child.

 

Didn't your mother often use Motherese narrative anyway?

'The speech mothers use in first few months of life, noted they commented on everyday events in a remarkably narrative way, imputing motives and emotions and the rudiments of a plot.'

(Snow 1977)

And books can improve the child's skills greatly:

Storybook reading may enhance written language skills, vocabulary awareness and syntax. (Senchal et al 1998)

In a journalistic article it amazingly promoted children reading storybooks:

"Parents need to know the importance of providing linguistic nutrition and exercise to their young children," Fernald said.

CDS breaks language down into understandable/simplified chunks:

• Repeated sentence frames and expansion

• Embedded in here and now (Concrete nouns/present tense not past/future tense, this is hypothetical and imaginary)

• Restricted range of sentences

• Simple sentences

 

 CDS varies depending on age (Bellinger 1980).

 

I looked at how each storybook uses

CDS.

Firstly 'I Can Read More' by Dick Bruna is a concept book, teaching things familiar to the child's everyday life usually for toddlers aged 1-3. There are simple sentences or complex sentences of only two simple clauses connected by a comma, expectedly showing a restricted range of sentences. Present tense shows it's embedded in here and now. Furthermore mostly common-concrete nouns shows more predictable concepts that are found in the child's immediate world.

Secondly, 'Green Eggs and Ham' by Dr. Seuss is more for older ages 4-8 with an interesting plot and two characters of which one has an issue of being a fussy eater an issue of parents with their young children being addressed here.

There are clear questions 'Would you, could you on a train?' and negative structures 'I do not like green eggs and ham' repeatedly to reinforce them. Contrastingly at the end there is a positive structures like 'I do so like green eggs and ham!' This shows repetition and expansion to show how to form a positive structure without 'not.'

Literally all simple sentences makes it a lot clearer for the children. Additionally very simplified meaning with mostly common-concrete nouns like 'house' and 'mouse,' 'box' and 'fox' and 'goat' and 'boat.' The rhyming pairs are catchy and easier for them to remember.

Hang on, does this mean there is no examples of lack of child-directed speech in these storybooks?

 

Yes! I'm afraid to say there are in fact some examples of lack of child-directed speech. In 'I can read more' it is embedded in here and now in present tense. Unfortunately, in 'Green eggs and ham,' there is future tense 'will' and past tense 'would' and 'could' showing it is not embedded in here and now, this is clearly not a feature of child-directed speech.

                             

 

Gender differences in advertising

Gender differences in Advertising

Introduction- Have you ever noticed the differences of words used when selling a product to men and women, when actually it's exactly the same product? Take the infamous Dove adverts, selling both male and female antiperspirant.  When recently watching the female advert and the male advert I noticed instant differences in the way they are advertised. For a start there was a serious amount more talking in the female advert than the male! As I took a quick note of the adjectives used in both adverts from 2012, lasting 20 seconds each, I saw a clear difference with 4 adjectives within the male and 20 within the female… clearly there is a difference in language used when appealing to a different gender.

 

Nouns- Looking at specifics, nouns believe it or not have more involvement in one genders advertisement than the other. It has been researched and found from an article written by Jie yang from the Kristianstad University that more nouns are found within female advertisements. Although it was stated that the involvement of nouns did not account to a major difference, it would still suggest that the way in which nouns are used are different between genders. Females would appear to need more 'nouns' within advertisements, to make them more appealing. Maybe guys just don't need much encourage spending their money on beauty products…

 

Adjectives- Looking further at adjectives, the same pattern occurs and has been found from the same piece of research as mentioned from above, supporting what I found within the dove adverts.  It was found that there were a much larger proportion of adjectives used in their sample of advertisements when male and female adverts were compared. What was interesting to see however, when looking at adjectives specifically, there are many more non-neutral adjectives used within male advertisements rather than a neutral adjective that could be used for either a male or female. What that means is that if men's advertisements use adjectives, they're more focused on boosting their ego, rather than the product itself.

 

These pieces of research and the theory themselves definitely increase the reliability of falling back on the idea of Lackoff and gender differences in language. Although her general research was about Gendered language in the work place, it still shows that the way we behave is governed by the language around us. It is clear to see that differences in advertising defiantly have an impact on sales, depending on how guys and girls are approached. Maybe men and women differ a lot more than we think…. When men are being sold a product 'man language' is defiantly the way forward, whilst women may have a more open minded and softer approach to what they want to buy.

 

 

By Phoebe Pedersen

 

Are people aware of the sexist language they use?

Can the language we use today imply that it's not normal for females to have professional, highly paid jobs? Is it really seen as un-natural for a man to become a nurse? The connotations of the words we use can suggest this, and personally I think it's time we start preventing this from happening, so children aren't influenced to use this kind of sexist language as language can represent our thoughts. An article on Sexism in language  explores how we're able to prevent this matter and to change the language we use so we're not seen as sexist. This isn't the only extract which has tried to find alternatives to prevent sexism. Some people argue that the term 'mankind' is always used as a generic term; this has been criticized because it implies that men are more important. Is this necessarily the case?

 

Some theories of sexist languages are old fashioned. For example the grammarians from previous centuries came up with the rule of placing the male word first in the phrase to suggest they're higher status and they saw it as 'natural' to put the male first, although not many people may still stick to this rule. Recently gender-specific terms such as 'policemen', 'firemen' and 'headmaster' have been replaced by neutral terms such as 'police officer' and 'fire fighter'. 'Person' has replaced man in many compounds to make the terms sound more neutral. An interesting article on Feminist Philosophy of Language explores what feminists think of this matter.

 

In addition to this due to the male dominated society we live in, women are victims of being addressed with names which can been seen as patronising. Have you ever been to a shop or got on a bus and a male has addressed you as 'love' or 'babe' or 'dear'? Some people may think they're just being nice and polite while others may feel highly offended and patronised. Maybe some individuals should take into account that some women do not want to be called this. I don't know about other women but when I get addressed like this I suddenly feel like I've shrunk to the size of a pea. Not pleasant.

 

Why is it that there are so many insulting words for women and not that many for men? Most of the insulting names which women get called are animals such as 'cow' and 'dog' and other insulting names have got sexual associations such as 'slut' and 'slag'. However words denoting sexual promiscuity in males tend to be more positive such as 'stud' and 'lad'. This just shows how unfairly women can be treated just through language; this again needs to change.

 

However, some radical changes have not been generally accepted. These words are 'womyn' instead of woman and 'herstory' replacing history. Do you think this is a bit too far? Or do you think it's fair? Changing language to gain equality isn't as easy as that. This change might make a statement to reduce sexism but is it really practical?  

 

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