A Critical Discourse Analysis of Commercial Advertisements in Ethiopian FM Radios: Focus on Advertisements of Educational Institutions from 2010-2019
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Date
2020-06
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AAU
Abstract
The study was intended to determine how linguistic and non-linguistic elements construct particular forms of reality, social identities and social relations as used by advertisers in advertisements of educational institutions in Ethiopian FM radios. It also aimed to determine the ideological values utilized by advertisers to sway intended recipients through beliefs and ideas that people have about themselves and others as well as the world surrounding them in ads of educational institutions in the said medium. The study involved forty-six sample advertisements of educational institutions advertised in Ethiopian FM radios in the time periods from 2010–2019. The samples were gathered through purposive sampling technique by recording commercials when they were on air and from the libraries of three selected FM radio stations found in Addis Ababa. After data had been gathered, it was transcribed in Amharic, and then the transcribed data was translated into English. Next, the data was analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) developed by Fairclough (1995, 2001, 2003, 1992/2006), Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) constructed by Halliday (1994), Speech Act Theory developed by Austin (1962) and Sereale (1976), Intertextuality Theory employed by Bazerman (2004) and Fairclough (1992/2006), and Advertising Discourse Analysis entertained by Cook (2001) and Frith (1997). On the basis of the analysis of the data using the framework, the results showed that linguistic elements employed by advertisers to reach their target audience are dominantly foreign names of educational instiituitons; evaluative but positive adjectives, the exclusive first-person plural pronoun ‘we’ to mark advertisers’ superiority over recipients and the second person plural pronoun ‘you’ to show recipients’ respect as a strategy to attract them. Metaphors of food, water, money and movement (path) which represent basic needs (the target audience in a developing country is assumed to lack) were emphasised. Verbs that require recipients to act towards the stated propostions and that express the gerosity of the advertisers about their claims, that express prestige for the advertisers’ claims of knowledge or material properties, and that express storng feelings and desire. Similarly, claims of advertisers were made by using mainly unmodalized, or categorical, assertions than modalized ones for sake of gaining trust on the part of recipients of messages. Also, illocutionary speech acts of assertives and directives, which make claims and give someone advice respectively, were used by advertisers to claim that they have to be trusted for specialist knowledge they possess. Long and/or complex sentence structures were mainly employed in the sample advertisemnts for the sake of formality and with an intention of giving details about the institutions under advertisement. In
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relation to the non-linguistic elements, advertisers generally used instrumental music as an opening hook and a means of avoiding the bleakness of an advertisement. The result also showed that advertisers were employing positive values (e.g. quality, achievement, technology, tradition, etc.) which enhance the identities of social actors and negative values (e.g., giving foreign names to institutions, promoting that foreign professionals are part of the institution, promising that scholarship abroad is available, etc.) that do not accord to self-respect, but rather which attend to the worship and idolization of the west and their ideas. The result also indicated that recipients of advertisements were represented as worshippers of foreignness, individuals who are serf-serving, and submissive while advertisers were depicted as know-it-all and powerful and dynamic using shared values that would help them exercise power over their prospective recipients.
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The study was intended to determine how linguistic