Redefining the Concept of Advertising in Romanian: Between Need and Reality

Simona Șimon

doi:10.47577/tssj.v13i1.2004

Abstract

Advertising is an undisputed reality of the contemporary world, being a form of communication present both in and beyond mass media. With the evolution of the society, new means of expression have emerged and determined an expansion of the range of advertising products offered for information, persuasion and, why not, for enjoyment. However, as advertising expanded its scope, the meanings attributed to the concept began to change and broaden at the same time. In the Romanian cultural space, this evolution of the concept, as well as the increasing presence of English in all instances of communication have led to a dynamisation of the process of defining advertising, especially due to the new meanings revealed by the definition of the concept in English. In this context, the present article aims to highlight the existence of some discrepancies between the definition of the concept and the terminology already established in Romanian, on the one hand, and to offer solutions that smooth the way to a better equivalence of the meanings assigned to the concept in the process of translating it from Romanian into English, on the other hand. Considering the problem statement, our own observations and the data collected from the online survey carried out among the students pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the Faculty of Communication Sciences, two definitions of the Romanian concepts of publicitate and reclamă are put forth in order to bridge the conceptual gap existing in the Romanian cultural space.

Highlights

At the crossroads between several fields such as communication sciences, marketing, sociology, psychology, linguistics, to name but a few, advertising is a source of information and persuasion, and of delight and admiration for the way in which it uses human creativity to achieve its goals
Redefining the Romanian concepts of ‘publicitate’ and ‘reclamă’ Since the specialised literature keeps on signalling the existence of a conceptual void in the Romanian language, as discussed above, and since the television and radio broadcasting companies operating in Romania use the term publicitate to announce the commercial breaks, which contain both commercial and non-commercial messages, i.e. both advertising and publicity messages, we have considered it necessary to clarify the conceptual delimitations
The only multiple-choice question aimed at finding out whether the Romanian concept of publicitate is associated with tools that are typical of marketing and public relations, of advertising such as direct mail advertising, telephone advertising, advertising materials, press releases, interviews taken with the company's image persons or decision makers, commercial information submitted for inclusion in mass-media articles, information on anniversary events of products or companies transmitted to the media, image advertising, advertising on a certain topic, advertising that does not promote a particular product, point-of-sale advertising, promotions, fairs, exhibitions and sponsorships

Summary

Introduction

At the crossroads between several fields such as communication sciences, marketing, sociology, psychology, linguistics, to name but a few, advertising is a source of information and persuasion, and of delight and admiration for the way in which it uses human creativity to achieve its goals. The Romanian concept of ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com publicitate may be defined as any type of informative message about a product, service, company, organisation, or person transmitted, free of charge, through the mass media, and through other channels of communication.

Results

Conclusion