Analysis of Doublespeak in Nescafe Advertisements.

(1)

ABSTRACT

Tugas akhir ini saya susun berdasarkan teori yang saya ambil dari buku William Lutz, ”DOUBLESPEAK; From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to

Deceive You.”, yang kemudian saya terapkan untuk menganalisis adanya

penggunaan doublespeak dalam dunia iklan pada iklan Nescafé.

Secara garis besar berdasarkan teori Lutz, doublespeak adalah gaya bahasa

yang merupakan bagian dari ilmu Pragmatik. Doublespeak cenderung seperti

menyampaikan sesuatu atau pesan di dalamnya, akan tetapi maknanya masih belum jelas atau tidak seperti yang disampaikan. Doublespeak dalam bahasa

periklanan menurut William Lutz dibagi menjadi empat kategori, yaitu parity

claim, weasel words, unfinished words dan up to claim. Saya menemukan banyak

penggunaan doublespeak dalam kalimat-kalimat pada iklan Nescafé yang

dimaksudkan untuk memperkenalkan produk kopi Nescafé. Salah satu temuan yang saya peroleh adalah bahwa jenis doublespeak yang paling sering digunakan

adalah weasel words. Hal ini dilakukan untuk menarik minat para pembacanya

(2)

APPENDIX

Data 1:

The taglines:

1. “Mmm-BOY! NewNescafé IS GOOD COFFEE!”

2. “There’s no other coffee today as good as new Nescafé. Its flavor beats

ground.”

3. “100%PURECOFFEE.”

4. “First instant coffee to guarantee you’ll get better flavor, cup after cup,

than with ground coffee.”

(4)

Data 2:

The taglines:

1. “tastier coffee! NewNescafé.”

2. “the modern coffee made especially to give you consistently better flavor

than ground coffee!”

(5)

Data 3:

The tagline: “more coffee enjoyment than ever before.”

Data 4:

The tagline: “Nescafé-the coffee with life in it!” and “After a hard day’s work

-have a stimulatingcup of Nescafé.”

(6)

The tagline: “THE NEW NESCAFÉ IS WHITE!”

(7)

The taglines:

1. “Drink Nescafé instant coffee it stays fresh!”

2. “Nescafé’s Own “Flavor-Seal” Process Keeps Nescafé Fresh to the

Bottom of the jar!”

3. “Every cup of Nescafé you make –right down to the bottom of the jar- tastes just as fresh, delicious and full of flavoras the first!”

4. “An exclusive Nescafé process does it. Extraamounts of Nescafé own

“Flavor-Seal” are added, to protect the rich flavor of every granule of pure

coffee.”

5. “Toseal in all the coffee freshness and flavor at its very peak.”

6. “When you make Nescafé in your cup, or in your coffee server, you

actually unlock that flavor for the first time! That’s why you drink fresh

coffee every time you drink Nescafé. That’s why all the flavor is in your

cup.”

7. “Change today to Nescafé . . . and enjoy really fresh coffee, right to the

bottom of the jar.”

8. “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground coffee by drinking Nescafé

(8)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

An advertisement is particularly made in order to promote a product that the advertiser makes to the public. Very often, the advertisement uses language that shows the practice of doublespeak, which according to Lutz is “language that pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable.” (1)

(9)

In his book, Lutz (70) mentions that we may sometimes find that the whole world is not only filled by advertising, but dominated by it. This also means that people will see or find advertisements every time and everywhere. Furthermore, he mentions again that people must be aware that advertising is filled with doublespeak.

Furthermore, Lutz states the reason why people need to pay attention to the doublespeak of advertising. The reason is because advertising has strongly penetrated our society and been very significant as a part of our society. Companies or brand holders would not spend billions of dollars on advertising if it did not work well or if it could not influence the customers to buy what they want the customers to buy, whether it is a product or an idea or a set of values. What is more, if the customers want to examine the doublespeak of advertising, they have to pay more attention to the size, power and influence of the advertising and the advertisers so that people can realize how important it is to understand as much as possible the doublespeak of advertising (Lutz 70).

There are at least four kinds of doublespeak in advertising: parity, weasel words, up to claim and unfinished words (Lutz 83). “Parity products are simply products in which most if not all the brands in a class or category are pretty much the same.” (83) Thus, parity claim is the claim used by the advertiser to state a product as the best product while actually the product is just as good as any other product in the same category. Next, there are weasel words, which are words that say one thing or appear to give promises when actually they say the opposite or even nothing at all (Lutz 85). Besides, there is up to claim, which is a “claim that

(10)

fact the language of advertising is anything but” (Lutz 94). The last kind of doublespeak in advertising is unfinished words. Lutz mentioned in his book that “unfinished words are a kind of comparison as a type of “up to” claim in

advertising.” (95)

One of the brands that I found contain a lot of doublespeak in the advertisement taglines is Nescafé, one of the famous coffee drink brands. Nescafé is a coffee drink product produced by Nestlé and originated in Brazil in the 1930s. Having developed a way to make a quality cup of coffee simply by adding boiling water, Nescafé coffee was launched in Switzerland in 1938. It was soon exported to France, the UK and the USA. In 1965 Nescafé brand extended its innovation by offering freeze-dried soluble coffee with the launch of Gold Blend. (Nestle)

I would like touse doublespeak theory from the book DOUBLESPEAK:

From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”, How Government,

Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You formulated by

William Lutz to analyze the use of doublespeak in advertisementand to find the real intention in Nescafé advertisements. I choose Lutz’s theory as the main source because it is reliable and applicable for analyzing doublespeak in advertisement in my thesis.

Furthermore, the words or phrases that are selected to be the data that I analyze in this thesis are those which are categorized as doublespeak and which have something to do with coffee.

(11)

would like people to know that there is usually a certain intention behind the utterances or taglines of the advertisement, which is mainly to mislead the potential customers. I also hope this thesis can be of any use for other students who are interested in studying doublespeak in advertisement.

Word count: 820 words

Statement of the Problem

The statements of the problem in this thesis are formulated as follows:

1. Which words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements contain doublespeak?

2. What kind of doublespeak do they belong to?

3. How does the use of doublespeak in advertisements’ taglines and utterances mislead the readers?

Purpose of the Study

Based on the Statement of the Problem, this study is conducted with the purpose of:

1. Finding out the words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements that contain doublespeak.

2. Showing what kind of doublespeak they belong to.

(12)

Method of Research

After choosing a particular topic, I started my study by learning the theories and finding references related to the subject in this thesis, browsing some websites in the internet and gathering the data. All the knowledge and information I had acquired were used to analyze the data. After the analysis was conducted, finally I wrote this thesis.

Organization of the Thesis

(13)

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I would like to put all the findings in the chapter of analysis as the conclusion. This conclusion is arranged based on doublespeak theory by William Lutz applied into Nescafé advertisements. The advertisements are made in order to promote the coffee drink product from Nescafé. Nescafé is known as one of the famous coffee products all over the world. In the advertisements that I put in Chapter Three, I find the use of doublespeak in the taglines and utterances.

(14)

On the other hand, if the customers pay more attention on the weasel words which are used to make the claim and examine it, they will find that actually the claim of the weasel words does not really give the results or effects of the products as it is said.

Furthermore, it can also be inferred that the use of the weasel words appears when the manufacturers tend to show the quality of the product. It looks like the manufacturer of Nescafé wants to give things which other competitors do not have in their product. In these advertisements of Nescafé, I see the tendency of the advertiser to show that the good quality of the coffee drink belongs to Nescafé. Here, it is expected by the advertisers that the customers will believe the claim made by the advertiser.

One of the weasel words which appears more than once in the taglines is the word new. The other weasel word is fresh. These two weasel words are used

to build a trust of good taste and quality from Nescafé products.

(15)

advertisement since there are so many coffee drink products such as Kapal Api, Indocafé, Starbucks and many others. I believe that the other coffee manufacturers want to be the top of all. It is also not as easy as using the weasel words because parity claim has to sound or seem true. The parity claims used in the advertisement are the finest and only.

Next, the second least frequently used doublespeak is the unfinished words. In my opinion, the unfinished words are used by the advertisers when they tend to compare their product with others and show that their product has more value (the goodness of the coffee) than other products. It is also used in order to raise the readers’ curiosity on the product by putting the unfinished comparison word, which I think is not easy. Unless the advertisement is supported by an attractive image, I think it is still not as easy as using the weasel words to attract the customers. Besides, it still depends on the customers to finish the comparison if they realize the doublespeak and examine it. The unfinished word used in the advertisement is the word tastier.

The other kind of doublespeak in the advertisement is up to claim. In my opinion, the advertiser uses up to claim when they want to show more quantity or a better deal by buying their products. Furthermore, the utterance which uses up to

claim in one of the advertisement is “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground

coffee. . .” In selling the product it is certain that they want to gain profit.

(16)

product in the package. That is why the use of up to claim is less frequently found in the advertisements of Nescafé.

Furthermore, the doublespeak mostly found in the advertisement, which are weasel words, usually refers to taste or smell or form. It makes the readers or customers think that Nescafé can satisfy the customers’ appetite of drinking

coffee. It stimulates the customers or readers to try to buy and drink it.

What is more, I think the use of doublespeak can also be applied to other coffee drink products such as Indocafé, Good Day, Top Coffee, Kapal Api or Torabika to find out the analysis of the advertisement would be more or less the same or whether the kind of the doublespeak would also be the same. Finally, I also hope that this analysis can help other students in examining and doing analysis of the same field.

(17)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Text:

1953 Nescafé Coffee – Jackie Gleason. Advertisement. Web. 7 September 2012. 1954 Nescafé Instant Coffee. Advertisement. Web. 8 September 2012.

Nescafé coffee, butter, chocolate, chappal, toothpaste at the edge. Advertisement.Web. 7 September 2012.

Nescafé advertising poster 'The coffee with life in it', India, 1970. Flickr - Photo

Sharing(2012). Web. 8 September 2012.

Nescafe – 1952. Advertisement. JonWilliamson (2008-2010). Web. 10 October

2012.

Nescafé advertisement. Campaign Asia (2010). Blog. 10 October 2012.

References:

Hornby, A.S., Cowie A.P., Gimson A.C., Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

of Current English. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1974. Print.

Lutz, William D. Doublespeak: From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language

(18)

Mihas, Elena. “Non-Literal Language in Political Discourse.” University 0f

Analysis of Doublespeak in Nescafe Advertisements.

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

APPENDIX

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY