Presents specific features of advertisement in general and corporate advertisements in particular

PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study The Vietnamese government and people have a more and more positive point of view the role of trading activities in which the value of corporate advertisement has been highly appreciated after Vietnam operated the open-door policy as well as officially joined the biggest trade organization “WTO”. In order to create good images of a company or an organization, it is essential to build an informative and eligible advertising. The purveyors might market their branches of business, operational policies, and organization and so on through their skills of textual and lexical manipulation. The corporate introduction is normally written by the owner of the company in his/her mother-tongue language and has it translated into target language or by the copywriter. Thus, sometimes the terminology and terms used to render the text might be different from the original meanings. Besides the sentences and grammatical cohesive devices, the lexical cohesive devices are also essential to make a text to be a coherent message. To a writer of corporate advertisings, knowledge of linguistics, culture in general and discourse analysis is really important for a coherent text. Corporate advertising is a means of introducing company or organization name, operation methods, potentials, services, production, staff and so on. I recognize some challenges in dealing with an interesting but demanding text of corporate advertising. These might be solved by writers if they have a thorough comprehension of and ability to use coherence and cohesive devices in the discourse. In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation with coherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in reading, writing. They are features related to elements that produce cohesive and coherent texts. Thus, I make decision to study the use of lexical cohesion in the English and Vietnamese corporate advertisings as well as the frequency of occurrence. Aims of the study This thesis aims to: give a systematic and comprehensive description of lexical cohesion features in English figure out how these devices are used in texts make comparative analysis of lexical cohesion between English and Vietnamese corporate advertisements to help copywriters and readers surmount difficulties in using and understanding the lexical cohesive devices. Scope of the study Within the framework of a minor M. A thesis, we only study on lexical cohesion in the corporate advertisement texts in English and Vietnamese taken from the only sources of websites that introduce companies or organizations. The sample includes 3 texts in English and 3 texts in Vietnamese used as written discourses. Methods of the study The methods of description, analysis and statistic in linguistics are used in this study. The data are collected by pointing out the frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices used in the written discourse of corporate advertisements. The investigation will lead to the implication of better methods of writing corporate advertisements using lexical cohesive devices. Design of the study This minor thesis consists of three parts as follows: Part A: Introduction Part B: Development There are three chapters in this part Chapter 1 deals with theoretical background of the research with three main sections like: discourse and discourse analysis, cohesion & coherence and lexical cohesion Chapter 2 presents specific features of advertisement in general and corporate advertisements in particular Chapter 3 gives comparison of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese corporate advertisements Part C: Conclusion In this part, the author summarizes the findings and giving suggestions for further development in writing corporate advertisements. PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND This chapter aims at dealing with theoretical framework of investigation such as concepts of discourse, cohesion and coherence, cohesive devices, register and genre in discourse analysis which are relevant to the purpose of this study, as well as the definition and properties of advertisement in general and corporate advertisement in particular. 1. Discourse and discourse analysis The concepts of discourse There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Halliday (1985) defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process”. According to Crystal (1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative”. Cook (1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive”. In other words, as Brown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, in actual uses by speakers (and writters) of the language. Text and Discourse It is still in vagueness to define whether or not discourse and text are of two separate entities and some linguists are trying to set them apart. According to Widdowson (1979) text is sentences in combination whereas discourse is the use of sentence for communication. For some linguists, discourse is different from text. According to Cook (1989:158) text is “ a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context”. However, Brown and Yule (1983:6) argue that text is the representation of discourse and the verbal record of a communicative act. Actually, it is not easy to make a clear-cut distinction between “text” and “discourse”. The concepts of discourse and text defined by Halliday (1985: 290) maybe the most comprehensive. He states that “discourse” itself is a process and the term “text” is usually taken as referring to the product. And obviously, cohesion and coherence are typical of text as a language unit. Spoken and written discourse Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics meanings. As stated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contribution”. While written discourse comprises complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via adjectives and adverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences. Although spoken and written discourses share the communicative functions, they serve various functions. The former is concerned with interact ional use and the latter with the transactional use (Brown and Yule, 1983: 13) By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure. The writer has time to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make necessary correction which is primarily concerned with the transactional use. Spoken language, as stated by Brown and Yule (1983), is the kind of language which is produced under some temporal, spatial pressure with the speaker’s monitoring of what it is that he has just said, determining his current phrase and simultaneously planning his next utterance and which is primarily concerned with the interactional use. There are three prominent features that can apply to distinguish written and spoken discourse. Density: the density is the information volume presented. Evidently, written language is dense while spoken language is sparse. Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important, but information. For written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences. Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather few different verbs, whereas spoken language uses more verbs. These above characteristics are inherent in spoken and written language in whatever types of discourse. Written texts can be read out and heard such as letters, stories, novels, contracts, reports, speeches. Moreover, spoken discourse such as lectures, lessons, interviews, conversations and so on can also be reserved in the form of writing. Context in discourse analysis 2.1. The notion of context As premise, we should take a short excursion into the history of the notion of context. Halliday and Hasan draw their concept of context from Bronislaw Malinowski's principle of describing the environment and culture along with the text to analyze. Malinowski, himself being an anthropologist in the 1920s, added various information to his reports on the language of the Trobriand islanders, which included as much cultural background as possible (context of culture), and the immediate environment in which the text was produced (context of situation). He encountered basic difficulties when translating pragmatic conversations of the Trobrianders into English, but later on realized that even so called "civilized" language, mostly used for abstraction, could not be separated from its cultural and immediate surroundings if it had to be understood and rendered intelligibly. Based on this early framework of context, more and more features determining the production and reception of texts were defined and added, from Firth's 'nonverbal actions', 'effects', and 'objects and events' surrounding the text, to Hymes' 'intent', 'key', 'medium' and 'genre', and normative principles of the text. According to Halliday then, all these features are indebted to the complexity of modern society and communication itself, but they enable us to predict what is going to happen within "the framework of something that we knew was going to happen". The success of every act of communication thus is based on our predatory interpretation of the cultural and situational context. The situational context of our text could be characterized as well organized and highly predictable. In general, there are two main types of context. 2.2. Context of situation Context of situation is an integral concept of discourse analysis. According to Eggins (1994:30), context of situation is usually discussed under three variables: what is talked about, what the relationship between the communicators is; what role the language plays. Other linguists have the same opinion that in order to understand thoroughly what someone says or writes. It is necessary to know the context of situation like Nunan (1983). 2.3. Context of culture Besides the language and context of situation we need to pay attention to the context of culture. As stated by Malinowski (1923) “if you are not a member of the culture, you cannot understand what is meant”. To recognize the text as meaningful, the readers or hearers need to refer the text to a cultural context. It is important to know the culture of the given language in interpreting and understanding the given messages. 3. Cohesion & Coherence 3.1. Cohesion vs. Coherence The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that defines it as a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse dependent on that of another. Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear. Halliday and Hasan (1986) identify five main cohesive devices in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. E.g. American Life Inc. pays the mortgage on each property from its own funds until the mortgage is paid in full. The Company’s principals have made personal guarantees covering all debt and no debt is cross-collateralized among the properties and partnerships. Reading this example, we can understand that there is a link between ‘American Life Inc.’ and ‘the Company’’. Coherence, on the other hand, is defined as the relationships of various ideas in a text that are linked together to create a meaningful discourse. According to Nunan (1993) coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seems to hang together and make sense. In short, coherence means the relationships that link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text. These links may be based on the speakers’ shared knowledge. E.g. The aviation business includes handling aircrafts and passengers, offering security check, services of security guard, fire fighting and other ground services. In the above example, there is a conceptual relationship among the aviation business and other terms in the text. Though cohesion and coherence, in essence, is different from each other, they are closely linked together. They represent the very essential elements that make a text or discourse coherent and that make coherent text or discourse different from random sentences or utterances. Cohesion is mainly used to embody coherence by a system of cohesive devices. Accordingly, cohesion and coherence help consolidate the text as a complete and unified linguistics unit beyond the largest syntactic unit of sentence. 3.2. Main principles of cohesion Halliday & Hasan (1976) as well as other linguists assume that cohesion is expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary. These cohesive devices are closely connected to create a coherent text. Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion Reference Reiteration Exophoric reference Repetition Endophoric reference Synonym/near-synonym Substitution Antonym Nominal substitution Super-ordinate Verbal substitution General words Clausal substitution Collocation Ellipsis Adjective + noun Nominal ellipsis Quantifier + noun Verbal ellipsis Verb + noun Clausal ellipsis Noun + verb Conjunction Noun + noun Additive Preposition + noun Adversative Noun + preposition Clausal Adverb + verb Temporal Verb + verb Others Verb + preposition Verb + adverb Adverb + adjective Adjective + preposition 3.2.1. Grammatical Cohesion We can see that a coherent text is a sequence of sentences or utterances which seem “to be linked” together containing words or phrases that enable the writer or speaker to establish boundaries across sentence or utterance and help sentences to be tied together. They are considered as cohesive devices. Structure in text is provided by grammar therefore cohesion is considered to be outside of the structure. Cohesion refers to the “non-structural text-forming relations” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 7). The concept of cohesion in text is related to semantic ties or “relations of meanings that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” (ibid: 4). within text, if a previously mentioned item is referred to again and is dependent upon another element, it is considered a tie. Without semantic ties, sentences or utterances would seem to lack any type of relationship to each other and might not be considered text. Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 4) refer to this interstitial link as “the presupposing” and “the presupposed”. Using the authors’ example, “Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them into a reproof dish.” The word “them” presupposes “apples” and provides a semantic tie between the two sentences, thus creating cohesion. Cohesion creates interdependency in text. a. Referencing Referencing functions to retrieve presupposed information in text and must be identifiable for it to be considered as cohesive. In written text, referencing indicates how the writer introduces participants and keeps track of them throughout the text. (Eggins 1994: 95) There are three general types of referencing: homophonic referencing, which refers to shared information through the context of culture, exophoric referencing, which refers to information from the immediate context of situation, and endophoric referencing, which refers to information that can be “retrieved” from within the text. It is this endophoric referencing which is the focus of cohesion theory. Endophoric referencing can be divided into three areas: anaphoric, cataphoric, and esphoric. Anaphoric refers to any reference that “points backwards” to previously mentioned information in text. Cataphoric refers to any reference that “points forward” to information that will be presented later in the text. Esphoric refers to any reference within the same nominal group or phrase which follows the presupposed item. For cohesion purposes, anaphoric referencing is the most relevant as it “provides a link with a preceding portion of the text” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 51); hence its most common usage. Functionally speaking, there are three main types of cohesive references: personal, demonstrative, and comparative. Personal reference keeps track of function through the speech situation using noun pronouns like “he, him, she, her”, etc. and possessive determiners like “mine, yours, his, hers”, etc. Demonstrative reference keeps track of information through location using proximity references like “this, these, that, those, here, there, then, and the”. Comparative reference keeps track of identity and similarity through indirect references using adjectives like “same, equal, similar, and different, else, better, more”, etc. and adverbs like “so, such, similarly, otherwise, so, more”, etc. (ibid: 37–39). b. Substitution and Ellipsis While referencing functions to link semantic meanings within text, substitution and ellipsis differ in that they operate as linguistic links at the lexico-grammatical level. In Bloor and Bloor (1995: 96), substitution and ellipsis are used when “a speaker or writer wishes to avoid the repetition of a lexical item and is able to draw on one of the grammatical resources of the language to replace the item”. The three types of classification for substitution and ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal, reflect its grammatical function. When something in text is being substituted, it follows that the substituted item maintains the same structural function as the presupposed item. In nominal substitution, the most typical substitution words are “one and ones” that substitute nouns. In verbal substitution, the most common substitute is the verb “do” and is sometimes used in conjunction with “so” as in “do so” and substitute verb and verb phrases. Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 125–126) point out that “do” often operates with the reference items “it” and “that” but still have the main function as a verbal substitute because of its grammatical role. In clausal substitution, an entire clause is substituted and though it may seem to be similar to either nominal or verbal substitution, the difference is the presupposed anaphoric reference. Though substitution and ellipsis are similar in their functions as the linguistic links for cohesion, ellipsis differs in that it is “substitution by zero”. (ibid: 142). Ellipsis refers to a presupposed anaphoric item although the reference is not through a “place-marker” like in substitution. The presupposed item is understood through its structural link. As it is a structural link, ellipsis operates through nominal, verbal and clausal levels. Halliday and Hasan further classify ellipsis in systemic linguistic terminology as deictic, numerative, epithet, classifier, and qualifier. c. Conjunction Conjunction, as described by Bloor and Bloor (1995: 98) acts as a “cohesive tie between clauses or sections of text in such a way as to demonstrate a meaningful pattern between them”, though Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 227) indicate that “conjunctive relations are not tied to any particular sequence in the expression”. Therefore, amongst the cohesion-forming devices within text, conjunction is the least directly identifiable relation. Conjunction acts as a semantic cohesive tie within text in four categories: additive, adversa