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On Ideologies in English Public Service Advertising Discuourses

Author: ZhangTao
Tutor: GaoLiXin
School: Northeastern University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: Ideology modality transitivity intertextuality
CLC: H315
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2009
Downloads: 186
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Abstract

Public service advertising discourse, with its emphasis on public interest, seldom arouses discussion on its ideology. It is generally thought to be neutrally instrument conveying information and delivering expectancy. However, any discourse is ideologically invested, and public service advertising discourse is no exception.This paper aims to provide a critical perspective to observe the seemingly unbiased and apolitical public service advertising discourses, reveal the implicit ideology hidden in the discourses, and hence raise people’s awareness of ideological hegemony in mass media discourses.In order to achieve this, a comprehensive analysis of English PSA discourses is conducted with the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis. CDA, as a newly born approach to discourse analysis, mainly deals with the relationships among discourse, power and ideology. As Fairclough (1989) states, ideologies are common-sense assumptions which are implicit in the conventions according to which people interact linguistically, and of which people are generally not consciously aware. Simultaneously, the exercise of power, in modern society, is increasingly achieved through ideology, and more particularly through the ideological working of language (Van Dijk,1998:372). Thus the discourse, power and ideology are inseparable from one another, with ideology and power both inherently residing in discourse, but with ideology being the most fundamental element that constrains the existence and change of power.Ideology is pervasively present in language, but not every language use is of equivalent ideological effects. Therefore, the ideological analysis of English public service advertising discourses in this paper is processed on three different levels:lexical, clausal, and textual, which are corresponding to different linguistic and social analysis systems:modality, transitivity and intertextuality. On each level, Fairclough’s three-dimension analysis framework is applied, i.e. the analysis is processed in sequence of description, interpretation and explanation. Meanwhile, in the analyzing process, the author incorporates text analysis, context analysis and social analysis to examine how text reflects social ideologies through the use of language.By the gradually deepening analysis of different ideological representations in the sample ads, this paper finds that each system represents its own implicit meanings or connotations, which serve the power relations between the participants in public service advertising discourse, and further reflects the hegemonic struggles and changes in ideologies. The analyzing tools are employed to approach sample ads from different perspectives, such as the power relation between the addresser and the addressee, the power switch between human and objective world, humanism, globalization, and so forth.With the emergence of globalization and information age, English learners are largely exposed to those ideologically-invested western mass media such as newspapers, magazines, broadcasts, TVs, etc. Faced with the seemingly unbiased public service advertising discourses, learners should be aware of these implicit ideologies, so that they are able to tell the good from the bad, to make their own judgment rationally and to express their own views critically, absorbing favorable ideologies and resisting unhealthy ideologies. Moreover, in a society of great diversity and multiple temptations, a critical perspective to observe the world is indispensable for every human being to make choices.

On Ideologies in English Public Service Advertising Discuourses

Abstract

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