Using Message Form to Stimulate Conversations: The Case of Tropes

Abstract

The use of tropes (e.g., metaphors, ellipsis) in messages from health mass media campaigns may spark conversations. Tropes require additional cognitive elaboration to arrive at the intended interpretation, thereby providing the audience with ‘‘the pleasure of text.’’ This characteristic makes them useful for conversations in which ads are used to demonstrate one’s interpretation abilities or to strengthen group identity through a shared appreciation of ads. Tropes can thus stimulate people to think and talk about information they might otherwise ignore. As a result, this information is primed, increasing the chance that it will influence relevant behavior. At the same time, the use of tropes may have undesirable side effects, such as yielding incomprehension or misunderstanding of the message’s meaning. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.01332.x Since 1999, an organization called loveLife has been running large-scale campaigns in South Africa aiming to reduce the rate of HIV infection among adolescents. The campaign’s tagline, ‘‘talk about it,’’ refers to the campaign’s goal to stimulate conversations among teenagers on issues pertaining to sexual health. A prominent part of the campaign is constituted by billboards that are used all over the country, displaying slogans such as ‘‘No until we know’’ and ‘‘If it’s not just me, you’re not for me.’’ These slogans present beliefs that the target audience is already familiar with, respectively, ‘‘sexual partners should know each other’s HIV status’’ and ‘‘polygamy increases the chances of HIV infection,’’ in a nonobvious way. One of loveLife’s campaign managers explained this strategy of using elliptical messages by stating that ‘‘we want people to think about our posters’’ and ‘‘we will get people to wonder. This creates conversation between parents and children, dialogue between peers. That is exactly what we want to achieve, that people talk about HIV/AIDS and sex’’ (Hollemans, 2005). Apparently, the