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ABSTRACT
Dalam tugas akhir ini, saya membahas doublespeak dalam tagline
makanan dan minuman karena makanan dan minuman adalah kebutuhan pokok dari setiap orang dan saya menemukan banyak iklan makanan dan minuman yang menggunakan doublespeak. Iklan makanan dan minuman yang dipasarkan melalui majalah biasanya disertai gambar dengan tujuan agar pembaca atau konsumen tertarik untuk membeli produk tersebut. Di setiap iklan, kita akan menemukan slogan dan tagline yang tanpa kita sadari terdapat kata-kata yang mengandung
doublespeak.
Dalam penulisan tugas akhir ini, saya menggunakan teori Doublespeak
dari William Lutz yang terdiri atas the rule of parity, weasel word, “up to” claim, dan unfinished word.
Saya mengambil 15 iklan makanan dan minuman dari berbagai majalah seperti Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, The Singapore Women’s Weekly,Country Living dan Better Homes sebagai data. Saya menemukan penggunaan empat jenis
doublespeak seperti the rule of parity, weasel word, “up to” claim, dan unfinished
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Organization of the Thesis.………..4
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK…...…...6
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF DOUBLESPEAK IN THE TAGLINES OF FOOD AND DRINK ADVERTISEMENTS...….12
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ………27
BIBLIOGRAPHY ………..31
32
APPENDICES
Table 1 : The findings of the analysis
No Product Taglines Doublespeak
Expression
33
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The definition of advertisement according to Collins Cobuild Dictionary is “an announcement in a newspaper, on television, or on poster about something such
as a product, event or job” (21). In Britain and Japan, advertisements have become a
very popular research topic and they are studied among others in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and linguistics (Tanaka 1). The process of making an advertisement is called advertising, which aims at attracting consumers or buyers to buy the advertised product (Rossiter and Percy 4). Therefore, the language style of advertisements is persuasive because the purpose of advertising is to persuade people to buy the product.
2 Maranatha Christian Universtity is not only be found food and drink products, women’s products or in the cover of movies, but be can found in the speech like a president’s speech.
In this thesis, I would like to analyze the doublespeak in the taglines of some food and drink advertisements because food and drinks are such prominent necessity. I realize that the advertisements of food and drink are potential to present doublespeak because the language which is used in that advertisement is to make consumer interested or attracted to buy the product by promising something. The advertisers can use many words to make their advertisement more interesting and use a famous actress or actor to promote their products in television or magazines.
There are many kinds of food and drink products including food and drinks for people on diet, organic fruit and vegetables, food and drink for pets, and many more. Mostly, food and drink advertisements can be found in women magazines because women tend to be interested in them. Moreover, women who are housewives commonly will shop a lot of food and drink products. The food and drink products advertised in the magazines are frequently presented with pictures. The advertisers present the pictures of the products in the advertisements in many colours to make people interested enough to buy them.
In addition, almost every advertisement has a tagline, which is sometimes confused with a slogan, “a short phrase that is easy to remember” (Collins Cobuild Dictionary 1363). For example: the slogan of Coca Cola company is “it’s the real thing coke”. The definition of tagline in Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged
3 Maranatha Christian Universtity An example of a tagline can be seen in a coca cola zero product in the magazine with the words “coca cola with zero calories”. The words said the tagline of the product. In
practice, taglines tend to use doublespeak.
According to Lutz, doublespeak is the use of words that pretend to types. There are the rule of parity, weasel word, “Up to” claim and unfinished word
(Lutz 83-95). In this thesis, the theory of doublespeak will be discussed thoroughly in Chapter Two.
4 Maranatha Christian Universtity STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Based on the background of the study, the problems are formulated as follows : 1) What expressions in the taglines are identified as doublespeak?
2) What types of doublespeak do the expressions in the taglines belong to? 3) Why is it doublespeak?
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
1) To identify the expressions that are considered to be doublespeak in the taglines.
2) To classify the identified doublespeak expressions into different types. 3) To explain the reason why it is doublespeak.
METHOD OF THE RESEARCH
I do this study in four steps. The first step is collecting food and drink advertisements from some magazines and investigating the taglines to observe if they contain doublespeak. The next step is selecting the taglines that contain doublespeak and classifying the doublespeak expressions into several types. Finally, I explain why each of the selected taglines is said to contain doublespeak.
ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
This chapter presents the conclusion from the analysis of the use of doublespeak in the taglines of food and drink advertisements. In analyzing fifteen data, I use the theory of doublespeak by William Lutz.
From the data analysis, I found four types of doublespeak used in the advertisements. I found two data which use “Up To” claim, eleven data that use
weasel word, three data which use the rule of parity, and two data that use unfinished word. Weasel word is mostly used by the advertisers because I think it is used to trick the consumers so they will be interested to buy the products as Lutz states weasel word appears to promise one thing when in fact they promise the opposite or nothing at all (85). In my data, I found the words thick, rich, great, help, and many more. These words are only used to make the consumers interested, whereas in fact, these words can not proved.
27 Maranatha Christian University the sentence by themselves. As it can be seen in Lutz’s theory, unfinished words
are more powerful words used in advertisement taglines to make significant promises about a product’s effectiveness but the advertisements present no clear
evidence (Lutz 95). In my data, I found the use of the word easier and more. I conclude that these products claim that they are easier and more than the others, whereas in fact, they present no clear evidence and they are the same like the other products.
“Up to” claim are the least used in my data. The advertisers rarely use
“Up to” claim in food and drink products because these products must be sold in
fresh condition, like vegetables, meat, milk, and many more. So the consumer can consume the fresh vegetables, meat, milk and many more as soon as they buy product and want to buy it because they think this product can make their eyelash stronger than before.
28 Maranatha Christian University however, in my data, I found the word better, very best and the only orange juice proven to help reduce cholesterol. the word better, best and only are to show that the product of egg, bacon and orange juice are the best among the other products, whereas in fact, these products are the same as the others. They have similar taste and quality. In my opinion, the advertisers add doublespeak in their products to trick the consumers so they will be interested to purchase their products. Sometimes the consumers feel cheated with the products because they do not understand doublespeak. For example: in a shop where you see the phrase “DISCOUNT UP TO 50%”, you will assume that all items in this shop will be
discounted 50%, whereas generally only few items that get 50% discount.
The effect of each type of doublespeak to the consumers can be different. It depends on the consumer’s interpretation. For example, the rule of parity from
data six is to claim the egg product is better, data ten is to claim that the very best bacon and data eleven is to claim only orange juice that can reduce cholesterol, but in fact, their qualities are the same as the other products. As consumers, they might assume that these products are different from the other products: however, they can find other products with similar quality.
29 Maranatha Christian University “Up to” claim can be found in data twelve and thirteen. The products state
that they can burn up to 100 calories, or lose up to 6 lb’s, but in fact, these
products can burn 50 calories or lose only two or three pounds. In my opinion, the effect of up to claim on the consumers is to make they assume that these products can help them lose weight or burn their calories maximally, so they will consume these product everyday until they reach what they want.
Unfinished word can be found in data, twelve, and thirteen. In my opinion, the effect of unfinished word on the consumers is they can use their interpretation to finish the tagline so they can answer which products that better than, faster than and longer than because in this type, the advertiser try to compare their products with the other products.
Finally, I conclude doublespeak in the taglines can make people confused. So the consumer should read the tagline carefully because they might be cheated by the words in the tagline since I think all advertisements are made to persuade the consumer to buy the products.
My suggestion for other researchers who want to take this topic for their thesis is they can take other advertisements like medicine advertisements, men’s
products or animal’s food that contain doublespeak as their data because I think
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
References:
Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. Britain: HarperCollins Publisher, 1987.
Keiko, T. Advertising Language. London: McGraw-Hill, inc., 1994. Lutz, W. Doublespeak. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.
Rossiter, John, R., and Larry Percy. Advertising and Promotion Management. Singapore: Routledge, 1987.
Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridge Dictionary of the English Language. New York:
Dilithium Press, 1989.
Yule, G. Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Data Sources:
Better Homes and Garden. March. 2006. Cosmopolitan. June. 2005.
31 Maranatha Christian University Country Living. July. 2009.
The Singapore Women’s Weekly. December. 2003.
Women’s health. February. 2009.
Women’s Health. January/February. 2010.
Internet Sources:
Chen, Will. “The Protein Water Scam: Kellog’s Special K2O Can Do Anything.” Killer Aces Media 14 Januari 2007: 1. Wisebread. 2010.
<http://www.wisebread.com/the-protein-water-scam-kell>
Galden, Naomi Rockler. “Advertising and Persuasive Strategies.” Suite101 9 September 2008: 1-2. Suite101. 2008.
<http://advertisinginfluence.suite101.com/article.cfm/advertising_persua sion_techniques>
Kleinberg, Jason. “Van Gogh Vodka Pineapple.” Van Gogh Vodka 2002: 1-2. Van goghvodka. 14 April 2010.
<www.vangoghvodka.com/van-gogh-our-vodkas/pineapple-flavored-vodka>
Manohar, Uttara. “Different Types of Advertising.” Buzzle 4 October 2008: 1-3.
Buzzle. 2009.
<http://www.buzzle.com/articles/different-types-of advertising.html>
The Health& Wellness Instute, PC. “A Vegetable Juice For Antioxidant Support.”
Juice Plus+® Health News 07 September 2009: 1-2. Juice Plus+®. 19 April 2010.
