Lesson Ten
Multimodal
Texts:
advertising
Adverts over the years
1. Ivory Soap (slides 3-4)
2. “If it isn’t an Eastman, it isn’t a
Kodak” (slide 5)
3. Heinz “57 Varieties” (slide 6)
4. Eg. Nike (ad. has no obvious
connection with product) (slide 7)
Ivory Soap (1882 ) cf. 2000
The ‘IVORY’ is a laundry soap, with all the fine
qualities of a choice toilet soap, and is 99 44/100
per cent pure.
Ladies will find this soap especially adapted for
washing laces, infants’ clothing, silk hose, cleaning
gloves and all articles of fine texture and delicate
colour, and for the varied uses about the house
that daily arise, requiring the use of soap that is
above the ordinary in quality.
For the Bath, Toilet or Nursery it is preferred to
most of the soaps sold for toilet use, being purer
and much more pleasant and effective and
possessing all the desirable properties of the finest
unadulterated White Castile Soap. The Ivory Soap
will ‘float’.
Original names
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If it isn’t an Eastman, it isn’t a
Kodak
Mercedes Benz
Surf
Things go better with Coca Cola
Kaa
Heinz 57 varieties
Disregard for truth or for accuracy
(initially there were fewer than 57
varieties, now there are many
more)
Cf. ‘Probably the best beer in the
world’.
Ads with no obvious or
immediate relation to the product
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Nike
Guinness
Marlboro man
are all examples of multimodal
texts that do not mention the
product, or show it only at the end
of a seemingly irrelevant video.
Lombardo
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The type of product, the target audience
and the context in which the
advertisement appears will influence its
style to some extent, but in today’s world
where many products are far from
necessary and where there is a plethora
of brands of the same type of product,
advertising tends to operate at the level
of desirabiltiy and fantasy rather than
that of informativity and rationality.
The grammar of advertising:
some typical features
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Imperatives: (‘BUY X;’ ‘Don’t be left
behind!’)
Minor clauses: (‘connecting people’;
‘purissima, lievissima,…’
Monosyllabics: (new, good, get, try)
adjective strings: (“smooth, mellow,
tasty”)
generic terms: (some, all, every)
Deictics: (you, we)
etc. (see Lombardo, in ‘Massed Medias’)
Spoken language features
Low grammatical cohesion short
sentences, no subordination
(eg. ‘Have a break, have a Kit Kat’)
High lexical cohesion
Eg. ‘The clean, cool taste of….’
Exclamations: Fresh! New!
Interrogatives
Eg. ‘Do you suffer from
headaches?’etc.
Interpersonal language
“The spoken language written”
Vodafone website
Tutto intorno a te.
Tutti i tuoi amici
In esclusiva per te
Scegli anche tu
Ti chiamano sul tuo cellulare
Al tuo partner e ai tuoi amici
Slogans
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Beanz Meanz Heinz
A Mars a day helps you work, rest
and play
Snap, crackle and pop
Boom, boom,boom,boom - Esso
Blue
Mcleans white teeeth mean
healthy teeth
Probably the best beer in the world
BEANZ MEANZ HEINZ
ALLITERATION
CREATIVITY
MONOSYLLABICS
(ISOCHRONICITY)
RHYME
Immense success over more than
fifty years
A Mars a day helps you work,
rest and play
RHYME
RHYTHM
MONOSYLLABIC
but with a total disregard for the truth,
cf. HEINZ 57 VARIETIES
Snap, Crackle and Pop
Rice Krispies (itself a play on words
and spelling)
ONOMAETOPEIC
MNEMONIC
Boom boom boom boom
Esso Blue
A JINGLE
highly mnemonic
Associated with a cartoon character
– ‘the Esso Blue Dealer’
Mcleans white teeth are
healthy teeth
APPEAL TO HYGEINE
REPETITION
KEY WORDS – white, healthy
REPEATED IN SUCCESSION OF
ADS.
Probably the best beer in the
world
Competitive advertising at the limit.
Modern trend of merely hinting at the
Product
Cf. Guiness, Nike, modern car ads,
cigarette advertising.
Creativity
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metaphor ‘Say it with flowers’
(Interflora)
visual metaphor ‘Marlboro’
word play ‘Metal Deflector’
(toothpaste)
associations ‘Go to work on an
egg’
invention ‘Ricicles are twicicles as
nicicles’
What is a multimodal text?
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Several semiotic modalities
 dialogue
 pictures/design
 background
noise
 gesture
 music
 colour
& light
“Multimodal texts are texts which
combine and integrate the meaningmaking resources of more than one
semiotic modality – for example,
language, gesture, movement,
visual images, sound, and so on – in
order to produce a text specific
meaning.”
Thibault 2000)
ANALYSIS OF AN AD. (link)
Linguistic Analysis
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Theme and Rheme
Information Structure
Cohesion
Analysis of an ad.
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Analysis of an advertisement
There are a number of
approaches to analysing any text;
(a) The ‘Mitsubishi’ text is
analysed both in terms of its
written text and its non-verbal
features:
Analysis of a ad.
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The grammar of visual design:
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in this case the superimposed verbal text blends
in with the background;
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the four lines add to the sense of perspective, the
punchline being foregrounded – semantic hierarchy;
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the (interested) reader gets the impression of being
in the vehicle;
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the promise – “get away from it all” with the letters
of ‘So here I am’ of an exaggerated size;
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a semiotic construct - the background is surreal
(and therefore tempting) while the product is real (and
therefore attainable);
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two unequal halves – the picture and product are
salient;
sharp division of two parts of text – promise/information
(two different kinds of meaning)
Analysis of an ad.
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So this ‘ad’ is a semiotic unit, structured, not
linguistically, but by principles of visual
composition... verbal text becomes just one of
the elements integrated by the codes of
information value, salience and framing...
reading is not necessarily linear, wholly or in part,
but may go from centre to margin, or in circular
fashion, or vertically,... (p 185)
Insert video Citroen
Time
VISUAL FRAME
VI + kinesic action
SOUNDTRACK SUBTITLE
1
CP: stationary
HP: frontal
VP: median
D: close-up
VC: black
background
VS man with naked
shoulders
CO: dark
atmosphere
Eyes lowered
Ba dum
Ba dum
2
idem
Head moving
sideways.
Hair wet from
exertion.
Concentration.
idem
(Could be a …)
3
CP: stationary
HP: direct
VP: median
D: MC
VC: Sparse boxer’s
training room. Light
visible in centre.
VS Boxer: full back
view.
Knees flexing in
typical boxer style
Wind-like sound
– a little eerie
4
Idem
Drumming
begins
Hidden light source
showing centrally
5
CP: stationary
HP: direct
VP: median
D: C
VC: idem
VS Boxer: half back
view. Muscles.
We glimpse a
television.
Multimodal transcription
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analyse the various semiotic
modalities
presentation in table form
assess how each modality works
to give meaning and how they
work together
(see next lesson for detailed
explanation)
Practical applications
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analysis of advertisements to
check most effective modalities
use in deciding translation
strategies for subtitling film, if
(some of) the meaning is provided
by the other semiotic modalities.