Discourse of Advertising: linguistic/ semiotic discourse structures in Bangladeshi educational advertisements

Abstract

It is virtually impossible to get away from advertising, yet we know so little about it. The discourse of advertising is a complex phenomenon to comprehend. In order to understand the mechanics of advertising, we need to comprehend how the visual (pictorial) and verbal (textual) elements in advertisements mesh to send the appropriate message to the target audience. Furthermore, we need to comprehend the ethical/unethical divide; in other words the subtle distinction between persuasion and manipulation. In Bangladesh, it seems that private universities use specific discourse structures in their admission ads, comprising linguistic and semiotic elements to advertise to their target audience. Furthermore, the concept of ‘selling’ education seems to be quite apparent in the private university admission ads in Bangladesh.The data was collected over a period of three years, from four national daily newspapers, two Bangla (Prothom Alo and The Daily Ittefaq) and two English (The Daily Star and New Age). Furthermore, 100 personnel from 41 advertising agencies were interviewed from Dhaka (78), Chittagong (13) and Sylhet (09). The data was analyzed using a three-pronged discursive model (TDM) to explain how the linguistic/semiotic discourse structures are employed to achieve communicative goals, and raise questions regarding the truthfulness of the claims made by the concerned universities.Based on the finding, the linguistic and semiotic discourse structure through which communicative goal may be attained looks like the following: Verbal + textual + layout + hook + comparative reference = Communicative goal. Very few of the collected admission ads employ the entire combination. Most of the (admission) ads usually use visual and textual attention seeking devices to attain communicative goal. The analysis of the admission ads suggests that various attention-seeking devices are used to not only attract the attention of the potential target audience, but also to convince and influence them into taking admission into the respective private universities. However, in order to convince and influence the target audience, sometimes the advertisers tend to resort to particular choices of linguistic and semiotic discourse structures that may at one level be to attain communicative goal by providing necessary information, but upon critical analysis, at another level may be to attain communicative goal through manipulative means. The findings from the interviews and the discourse-ideological and consumer-oriented practices, along with the notion of ‘seeing is believing’, all seem to support the notion of manipulation. The socio-ethical implications in the choice of linguistic and semiotic discourse structures may be based on a number of factors: the lack of awareness of the manipulative consumer-culture practices of the advertisers; the lack of general and/or specific ‘Advertising Code of Ethics; the lack of implementation of policies on behalf of the Governmental bodies as well as the UGC; and the lack of initiatives taken by the very weak Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) to protect the rights of the common consumer.It is through a research of this nature that scholars can contribute in amassing a volume of critical and analytical communicative research that may serve the interest of the research community.