The Application of Speech Acts in The Advertisement Slogans of Women's Products.

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ABSTRAK

Tugas akhir ini ditulis untuk memenuhi salah satu syarat kelulusan program sarjana di jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Kristen Maranatha.

Penulis menganalisis penggunaan fungsi tindak tuturan pada beberapa slogan iklan produk wanita. Ranah linguistik yang digunakan dalam menganalisis iklan tersebut adalah Pragmatik.

Dari pembahasan pragmatik, penulis menganalisis bahasa periklanan dengan menggunakan teori tindak tutur. Tindak tutur terdiri dari lima kategori, yaitu deklaratif, representative, ekspresif, direktif, dan komisif.

Dalam periklanan, acap kali kita kurang mengerti dengan maksud iklan itu, tetapi dengan menggunakan teori tindak tutur, kita dapat lebih memahami pesan yang ingin disampaikan oleh slogan produk iklan tersebut.

Dalam slogan iklan produk wanita tersebut, saya mendapati bahwa satu slogan iklan dapat mengandung lebih dari satu teori tindak tutur yang diungkapkan oleh John Searle.

Tipe tindak tutur yang paling sering digunakan dalam periklanan adalah komisif, yang memberikan janji mengenai suatu produk yang diberikan pada pembeli untuk lebih tertarik dalam menggunakan produk tersebut.

Maranatha Christian University

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TABLE OF DATA

SPEECH ACTS

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10 Remember. No other tampon opens as

easily.

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31

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

In daily lives, we always deal with language to communicate with one

another. Without language, we cannot get acquainted with the others because we

cannot express our ideas and a lot of misunderstandings and misinterpretations are

likely to occur. Therefore, language is very useful in our life in order to

understand one another. There are a lot of media that use language to express

ideas. One of them is advertisement. We need advertisement to give us

information about the product that we need. Advertisement and language are

closely related to each other. Without language, an advertisement will not be

complete because language is needed to help people understand the message of

advertisements more clearly.

In advertisements, advertisers usually use all efforts in order to achieve

their goals in selling their products. The words that they use are made very

attractive and sometimes are exaggerated. In fact, the product that is promoted

mostly is not as good as the slogans. The advertisers are very creative in using

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consumers to buy their product. Some advertisers use words that are popular in

the society to promote their product. The reason why they use those words is to

make it easier for the consumers to remember their products. They also try to

make the consumers trust their product. In the advertisement slogans, the

advertisers have to be creative in making slogans in order to gain more consumers

to buy their product.

According to Ding Xiaosong, a slogan is a form of verbal logo. A slogan

sums up what one stands for, one’s specialty, the benefit, and one’s marketing

position, and one’s commitment. It is especially useful to reinforce one’s identity.

<http://www.adslogan.com/>

I also use theory of advertising by Sutherland and Sylvester, to make my

analysis more accurate. Max Sutherland is a former chairman and creative of

NFO market mind, brands of NFO world wide. He is a professor of marketing

subject at Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology in

Australia and also as a guest professor at Santa Clara University in California

America. Alice K. Sylvester is an advertisement researcher veteran biro of

America. She is a former chairman Board of the Advertising Research Foundation

and member of editorial review Board Journal of Advertising Research. The

theories of advertising are:

• The slogans of the advertisements sometimes have an implicit

meaning to direct people.

• The slogans of the advertisements need emotions which we can say as

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• The slogans of the advertisements must be attractive, get attention, and

must also be able to make the reader feel comfortable.

• New information in advertisements usually uses promising sentences

to attract people and make them believe with the product.

• The slogans of the advertisements stand a better chance to move the

customer to action. They would use imperative sentences to make a

slogan the most direct way.

(Sutherland and Sylvester 107)

Sutherland and Sylvester claim that advertisement is one of the influences

on people in making a decision to buy a product. Through advertisement, a

product will be popular and well-known. Therefore it is not surprising that some

brands become superior and they will catch the attention of the people soon after

those brands are advertised. The purpose of advertisement is to expose product,

brands and package to be recognized easily and to strengthen its influence over

any other brands that do not advertise their products.(Sutherland and Sylvester 31)

Advertisement can be analyzed through the use of symbol, color, and

imagery but it can also be analyzed through language. The choice of language to

convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is vitally

important. Picture and design in advertising have a very great impact on the

reader, but it is the language that helps people to identify a product and remember

it.

In advertisements, slogans are very important because the words of the

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sometimes indicate that the product has different target consumers and also have

some different purposes. In this thesis, I want to analyze how different types of

John Searle’s speech acts are used in some slogans. Specifically, I would like to

analyze advertisement slogans of women’s products. The differences of speech

acts give more specific information for which the product is intended and what the

advertiser wants the consumers to do when they read the slogans of

advertisement.

Concerning the language, there is one approach in linguistics which can be

used to analyze women’s advertisement slogans. I use pragmatics as my approach

for the simple reason that in analyzing advertisements slogan, I deal with the

advertiser’s intentions. And pragmatics is very helpful in analyzing advertisement

slogans because pragmatics, according to Aitchison, is ‘How speakers use

language in ways which cannot be predicted from linguistic knowledge alone.’

(Aitchison 9)

In Pragmatics, when one uses language to achieve some effect, it is called

‘Speech Act’. Jean Aitchison describes, speech act as follows “When a person

utters a sequence of words, the speaker is often trying to achieve some effect with

those words, an effect which might in some cases have been accomplished by an

alternative action.” (Aitchison 99)

The topic of my thesis is the Application of Speech Acts in the

advertisement slogans of women’s products. It is about the advertiser’s intended

meanings. Therefore, it belongs to pragmatics. Using pragmatics as an approach

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some facts which I find in the books, Pragmatics is very helpful in interpreting an

advertisement slogan when the advertiser conveys his/her purpose.

Statement of the Problem

In this thesis, I would like to discuss:

1. Into what types of speech act can the slogan be categorized?

2. What are the purposes that the advertiser has of using a certain type of

speech act?

Purpose of the Study

In this thesis, I want to analyze:

1. The type of speech acts in the slogans of women’s produces.

2. The purposes the advertiser has of using a certain type of speech act.

Methods of Research

First, I browse the Internet and the library to search for the theory of

speech act and to collect some data of advertisements. I also search from some

books which can support my analysis in university’s library. Second, I search for

some magazines from which I can add my data. Third, I classify the slogans into

the types of speech act. Fourth, I analyze the data based on the type of speech by

applying the theory.

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The thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One is the Introduction,

which contains the Background of the Study, Statement of the Problem, Purpose

of the Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the Thesis. In Chapter

Two, the theoretical framework of the study is presented. The data analysis and

the discussion are put forward in Chapter Three. The following chapter, Chapter

Four, states the Conclusion, in which what has been analyzed and discussed in the

previous chapter is concluded. At the end of the thesis there are the References

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I would like to draw some conclusions based on my findings after discussing the speech act in women’s advertisements.

I find out that the type of John Searle’s speech act mostly used in women’s advertisement is Commisives. There are twelve commisive types found in the fourteen advertisements that I analyze. This type makes advertisements more attractive and interesting. By using Commisives, advertisements give more extra things from the product. As we all know, people like the products that can give an extra things of the products such as a promise of something and another advantages like bonus.

After I analyze Commisives, I find that the advertisers are very clever at giving a promise so it is easier for the consumers to remember the product. Usually people always remember a slogan that gives something extra like a bonus or an advantage of the product such as in the slogan With Oriflame you get both. This slogan is considered to suggest Commisives because the slogan gives a promise to the consumers that they can get both benefits by buying the Oriflame product. On the other hand, this slogan also gives information that the products have both of the advantages. Those are a good quality and a reasonable price.

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I find out there are four Representatives found in fourteen advertisements that I have analyzed. I assume that Representatives is very often used because it is quite difficult to make the consumers believe with the slogan. On other hand, there is an advertisement that is successful with the slogan by using representative because the slogan uses the belief that has already become an issue in the world at present. For example: the slogan Some people love quality products. Some prefer affordable prices. This slogan is a popular issue right now.

Aside from Commisives that becomes the commonly-found type of speech act in the advertisements that I analyze, I find that Directive is quite often found. In those fourteen advertisements, I find eleven advertisements which have Directive types. Directive is needed to make people curious of the product. From the slogan here’s a tip from Tampax … , It urges us to make an action, that is, to try a tip from Tampax. From this slogan I also assume that Directives does not always give the message explicitly but also implicitly.

Directives are very useful not only to increase our initiative to buy the product but also to resurrect out interest because simply giving information is not enough. Sometimes we have to initially be directed to try something that we have not tried before. When we are introduced to a new product, which people are not familiar with the product, the advertisers try to attract people to initially try the product in order to know about the product itself.

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declarative form which sounds more polite than imperative one. I assume that by using this form, people who read the advertisement will feel closer with the product. It is because the advertisement try to make slogans that can make the consumers feel comfortable in an informal way. Furthermore, the use of Directives states the advertisements in a straightforward way in order to make the advertisements clearer, more convincing and simple to understand.

I also find there is one Expressive. This type makes advertisements interesting. This type is necessary because it creates a feeling of the consumers who has tried the product. I notice that usually the advertisements that using this type are food products. It is because the advertisers try to introduce the taste of the product itself. By using Expressives, the consumers will know in an explicitly way about the taste of product.

I also notice that not only food products use Expressives, often the products has a taste like the slogan … flavorous yum… the product is a lip balm product, but this product uses Expressives because the slogan tries to tell to the consumers that the product has a good taste.

After analyzing the types of speech act in some advertisements, I do not find any Declarative because it takes someone who has a special authority to make something declarative. This kind of authority is not found out that in women’s advertisement slogans.

I also notice that at one advertisement slogan, the advertiser uses more than one type of speech acts. I conclude that the advertiser tries to use their best effort to attract people to buy the product. By using more than one type, the advertiser hopes that the consumers will be attract to buy the product.

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After analyzing the language in some advertisements, I assume that an advertisement slogan should give a precise language which is easy to understand and a promise so that the consumers will understand what the advertisement is trying to say immediately and also the consumers will be attracted because of the promise.

In my opinion, the advertisement will be more attractive and convincing if there is new information in presenting the advertisement. New information is needed to make the advertisement easy to understand. By using a promise, the slogan can attract the consumers because a promise can make the consumers be interested to buy the products.

Furthermore, the picture is also needed to advertise the product to support the message that advertisement wants to convey such as in LOOK WHO WE’VE GOT OUR HANES ON NOW that use Jennifer Love Hewitt, but still the choice of language in the advertisement in the magazine is the most important aspect in the women’s advertisement slogans.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aitchison, Jean. General Linguistics. England: Coventry, 1972.

Searle, John. Speech Acts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Sutherland, Max and Alice K. Sylvester. Advertising and The Mind of the Consumer. Jakarta: Ikapi, 2005.

Yule, George. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Primary Texts:

Archie, September 1997 Cosmopolitan, January 2005 Cosmopolitan, December 2005

Cosmopolitan, January 2006 Cosmopolitan, August 2006

Seventeen, November 1999 Internet/Website: