Abstract
This article explores the way in which text worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic choices and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge. The argument is that a text world model is particularly adequate for the description of the way in which advertising discourse is processed in an active, dynamic, context-dependent way. In this process, addressees reconstruct the world projected in the discourse according to their own cultural and personal knowledge from the linguistic and visual clues provided in the advertisement.
Highlights
The creative potentiality of advertising as a discourse type which plays with the evocation of imaginative situations has been pointed out recently by several authors
Some authors have observed the similarities between certain types of advertising and literary writing, in that both discourse types créate fictional worlds in order to pursue a communicative purpose; this must be partly due to the fact that many present-day advertisements are less concerned with the listing of "objective properties of things", than in linking "the product to some other entity, effect or person..., creating a fusión which will imbue the characterless product with desirable properties" (Cook, 1992: 105)
Tbis article explores how fictional worlds are created in advertising discourse by analysing linguistic cholees and features of context which are crucial in the determination of specific relations between sender(s) and target audience(s), in particular, deixis and frame knowledge
Summary
The creative potentiality of advertising as a discourse type which plays with the evocation of imaginative situations has been pointed out recently by several authors (see, for example, Cárter and Nash, 1990, Cook, 1992,1994, Semino, 1997). The notion of linguistic choice is crucial in functional linguistics (see, for example, Halliday, 1973, 1994): choices made in discourse at the different linguistic levéis (lexis, morphology, syntax, phonology) are significant and determine the creation of different meanings These different meanings are processed contextually and the adequacy of a given message will depend on the relation between the linguistic choices made and the features of context; a standard definition of context includes the following information: CONTEXT - the immediate situational context: the physical context the knowledge brought in by the participants in the interaction the language itself - the socio-cultural context. A crucial aspect of context is the kind of relationship that is established between the participants in an interaction, a relationship that is determined by features such as age, social status, personal relations, background knowledge, etc These features are always present in the creation of situations in advertisements, to what happens in other discourse types, and they are exploited for specific purposes. The choice of (1) a. or (1) b. will be determined by the contextual íactors mentioned above (relation between participante in situation, socio-cultural context) and their adequacy wül depend on the situation in which they are uttered
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