Del reconocimiento pluricultural a la plurinacionalidad

4 2 6 2 2 5 2 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 you we I

Personal pronouns

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Advertising language is meant to be playful, innovative and full of surprising expressions that would attract the attention of consumers. Slogans, as probably the shortest advertising message, are meant to be a real attention seeking device. Which of the fast food companies that were part of the research used the most of the interesting features of language, in terms of semantics and discourse, shall be mentioned in the following part of thesis. We cannot be certain about how the message was created and whether any of the following semantics features were used intentionally or if it is just matter of deeper exploration of the slogans. However, several very interesting features were found, additionally, some of these slogans had an effect on the future development of English language itself, particularly on its slang and colloquial language.

Most of the semantic features were found in Burger King slogans. KFC had the lowest number of slogans in the research but we still were able to find a significant number of the features in their slogans, in six out of ten slogans. Wendy’s would be in the third place in terms of using semantic features, McDonald’s seemed not to use them as often as the competitors.

Next, the most interesting slogans will be mentioned and their semantics features will be explained into greater details. Slogans will be mentioned in the same order as the analyzed data in the part 7.2. It starts with McDonald’s slogans, followed by Burger King, KFC and Wendy’s.

One Two Three Four…Big Mac Burger! Counting is associated with children rhyming

and nursery songs. It might be the intention as it has been known that McDonald’s primary targeted audience is very often children.

Put a Smile On. It was mentioned above that this is a fragment of idiomatic phrase put a smile on someone’s face which means to please someone or make someone happy (Spears,

“Essential American Idioms Dictionary” 162).

I'm lovin' it. This slogan is very well known among English teachers. At first it seems to

be grammatically incorrect use of the stative verb love in the progressive tense. We learned that in progressive tense we are allowed to use only dynamics verbs as they involve some kind of action or process which is happening over some period of time. However, we are also familiar with verbs that are stative and dynamic at the same time. Although the latter is not the case of the verb to love, the use of love in progressive tense lovin’ can be considered as idiomatic use of stative verb. Language is in the constant process of development, it is dynamic and still changing process. We may hear native speakers of English language more often to use the stative verbs in progressive tense. Native speakers would probably never say I am loving my mother, but they can

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say I am loving your new dress. We should probably still be referring to grammar and say we do not use stative verbs in progressive tense, however, we may hear native speakers to use it when they think it is appropriate. It has become a colloquialism, especially among young people in the United States.

Gimme Back that Filet-O-Fish. It is a part of the commercial jingle which was aired in the

year 2009. Gimme is the informal contraction form of give me, it is usually used in spoken language; in written language it is rare and usually used in informal emails, chats or for the purpose of advertising. Filet-O-Fish is the brand name of the product; in some Non-English speaking countries the name was changed to McFish or FishMac in order to ease the pronunciation.

You want it, need it, you gotta have a taste of McDonald's burgers. Gotta is the informal

contraction of have got to which is the informal equivalent to have to. From the linguistic standpoint this slogan can be considered as a climax as verbs are arranged in order of increasing importance (urgency) that the copywriters try to pass on consumers. First is used the verb want, which can be understood as would like to. It is followed by need which means that something is essential, gotta means have to or must - something is necessary, something that should not be missed.

Sometimes, you gotta break the rules. In this slogan is used again the informal contracted form of have got to.

We do like you do it. In this slogan simile provides basis of comparison. The comparison

is at the very basic level – the two same meanings are compared to each other.

At Burger King, you not only get change, you get change. This advertisement went out in

the year 1989, it promotes 99c daily specials. The slogan advertised both change in the menu and introduction of the daily specials and change that person will receive when ordered these specials to their one dollar banknote. Therefore, change serves here as homograph – change as a verb that means to become different, to make something different, and change as a noun in terms of receiving coins back.

King Me! King can be considered as neologism by conversion a noun king to a verb. King me is also a slang used among checker players. Urban dictionary says King me also means to ask

for a shot of a crown royal6 (“King me”)

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Mo Beef, Betta Taste. This slogan can have several meaning. Mo can resemble

onomatopoeia of the sound of the cow – moo, which would correspond with the word beef. However, Mo Betta according to the urban dictionary means that something is “more better”, in the meaning of the best (“Mo Betta”). Betta is very informal form of the word better. The word

Mo itself is a slang which means a lot in an excessive amount (“Mo”).

Aren't You Hungry? Aren't you hungry for Burger King now? Here Burger King

represents metonymy. People’s hunger is usually associated with some kind of food; this slogan says to be hungry for the company, however, consumers are supposed to image products of the company that they should be hungry for.

Who has the best darn burgers? Darn is used in the reference of dissatisfaction or

annoyance. In this collocation it is used for exaggeration or hyperbole to emphasize the word the

best. Darn is believed to be euphemistic expression that should reduce the harsh term ‘damn’. The Burger King and I. The Burger King represents the personification as usually the

collocation someone (animate noun) and I/me is used rather than inanimate object and a person.

Bigger, Better, Burger King! Two comparatives are used for the purpose of hyperbole to

emphasize advantages or favorable factors of the company.

Eat like a king. Not a clown. This slogan is an example of advertising rule that is about

avoiding direct comparison of companies. King represents the Burger King company. Clown is supposed to refer to competitor the McDonald’s company that has the mascot of Ronald McDonald that looks like a clown. King and Clown represent metonymy in this slogan. Clown is also used as a euphemism in order to avoid the direct name of the competitive company which might be considered as a taboo word. Eat like is a part of the idiomatic phrase “eat like a bird or eat like a horse“ which means either to eat small amounts or large amounts of food (Spears, “Essential American Idioms Dictionary” 58).

You're no clown with the Crown. The same reference to competitors as in the above

mentioned slogan, clown represents the McDonald’s company while Crown represents the Burger King. Therefore we have again metonymy clown and crown. The slogan means that they can offer something better than competitors; they will not just provide consumers with the same under different brand name.

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Taste is King! This slogan is an example of tautology which is saying the same in terms

of repetition of words or ideas, statements that are fundamental truth. However, as King starts in capital letter, it represents shorter version of the whole brand name Burger King.

Home of the Whopper. Home in this slogan is an example of personification as home is

associated with human beings not inanimate objects such as food.

We fix Sunday dinner seven nights a week. An expression fix dinner means to prepare or

cook dinner. It is very common in the United States; in the United Kingdom the expression would be very rare. In Corpus of Contemporary American English7 is found 24 references to expression fix dinner, while in the British National Corpus8 there is none. Therefore, the expression fix dinner can be considered as being a colloquialism. Sunday dinner is, traditionally in English speaking countries, meant to be special or extra meal to celebrate Sunday were everybody meets at home to enjoy the meal.

Finger lickin’ good. The slogan happened to be an expression in everyday English for

something that is delicious or extremely tasty. The origin of this slogan is the reference to the fact that KFC meals are eaten without the aid of utensils, just with hands and fingers.

Nobody does chicken like KFC. Another example of simile which is a comparison of two

things that are not alike. It paints the picture that nobody is better than KFC when it comes to chicken. The slogan is understandable only for the audience with some background knowledge about the company as it is not clear what is done with chicken.

Buy a bucket of chicken and have barrel of fun. This slogan besides it is an example of

semantic parallelism of two synonyms bucket and barrel; it is also another example of climax as

bucket is smaller than barrel which indicates the increase of importance. This slogan also uses

the idiomatic expression barrel of fun which means “a tremendous amount of fun” (Spears, “Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs” 34).

There’s Fast Food, Then There’s KFC. This slogan is the example of implied contrast or

comparison that does not refer directly to any of the competitors but to competitors in general

7

Corpus of Contemporary American English is the largest available corpus of American English with free access to more than 450 million words of text. It was created at the Brigham Young University in Utah, USA by Mark Davies. (http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/)

8 _{British National Corpus is the counterpart to Corpus of Contemporary American English it collects more than 100}

million samples both of written and spoken language, however, it is focused on the British English from the later part of the 20th Century. (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/)

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which is different from aforementioned slogans that indirectly targeted their comparison towards one of their competitors.

Yes, Virginia, There really is a Colonel Sanders. This slogan was created by paraphrasing

a famous response Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause. The respond was printed in the New York Sun newspaper on 21st September, 1897 to a letter send by Virginia O’Hanlon that asked about existence of Santa Clause. Her father told her that if it is seen in the Sun, it is so. Therefore she wrote a letter and the New York Sun printed the answer. Since then, reading this question and respond is part of the Christmas tradition in the United States. KFC just took a part of this famous response and changed Santa Clause to Colonel Sanders (Stillwell).

Ain’t No Reason to Go Anyplace Else. We may see double negation used within this

slogan. In Standard English it would automatically create a positive outcome and it would mean there is a place to go somewhere else. However, use of ain’t indicates of African American Vernacular English sometimes also called Ebonics. Ain’t in this dialect is used to negate the verb in simple sentences, it is used for negation instead of have not or be not but also do not. In African American Vernacular English is allowed to use negation in more than one position within the sentence which is called double or multiple negations. It resembles other languages, such as French or other Romance languages from which African American Vernacular English developed. In these languages double negation emphasizes the negative meaning of the sentence (Sidnell). Therefore this slogan emphasizes that under any circumstances there is no reason to go anyplace else.

Parts is Parts. A part is a countable noun therefore from the grammatical view to use the

verb to be in the form of 3rd person singular of the present tense along with the noun part in plural parts is grammatically incorrect. However, this slogan refers to commercial hit in 1980’s when Wendy’s was making fun of McDonald’s and its chicken nuggets that were believed to made of processed parts of chicken while Wendy’s offered the whole chicken breast burgers.

Parts is parts is saying that processed parts of chicken will remain parts even when they are put

together in a shape of nugget.

Where’s the Beef? This slogan became a catchphrase in the United States. The phrase

came public also in the 1980’s as the previous one and it also was attacking the competitors and the quality of the meal they were offering. Where’s the Beef? is nowadays used as a question for “Where is the substance?; Where is the important content?” (Spears, “Dictionary of American

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Idioms and Phrasal Verbs” 753) which basically corresponds with the original intention of copywriters when they used the phrase in the commercial.

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9 CONCLUSION

Advertisements and advertising slogans are around us all the time. There is not a day when we would not come across at least one advertisement that would not be accompanied by a slogan. Slogans can help a brand to stand out. The best slogans are those that in the short catchphrase explain everything what the brand stands for and also help the brand to be distinguished from their competitors.

Despite the fact that fast food companies have a negative impact on health, fast food restaurants are still very popular. It might be due to the busy lives and demand to get something to eat in a short period of time. Fast Food restaurants have become a symbol of western society, preferably American. In most of the developing countries these brands are very valued and they represent wealth and prosperity.

The thesis analyzes slogans of fast food companies from the linguistic point of view. The theoretical part provides definition of advertising along with its history. It also describes different types of communication and how they are used in advertising. This part of the thesis also identifies the most frequent linguistic devices and explains them in relation to the advertising objectives. The practical part relies on the findings of the theoretical part and follows the same structure in order to analyze the advertising slogans.

The practical part focuses on advertising slogans in four fast food companies. First it aims to analyze and identify the language strategies used in their slogans. The analysis has been performed considering four layers of linguistic features: phonological, lexical, syntactical, and semantic and discourse respectively.

The thesis revealed very low occurrence of using researched phonological strategies, if any were identified, than it was mostly alliteration and assonance. It was proved that the vast majority of slogans used finite verb phrases in their simple present form and the most often adjectives were superlative and comparative adjectives best and better. The informative character of slogans was confirmed as most of the slogans were declarative sentence type in function of statements. Personal pronouns did not occur as often as expected; you was the most frequent personal pronoun.

Focusing on the second aim, which was to find differences and similarities in slogans of four analyzed companies, only very few differences were identified. Phonological strategies prevailed in Burger King slogans. McDonald’s and KFC seemed to have more equally divided lexical

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strategies in term of verb phrases, while Burger King and Wendy’s more rely on finite verb phrases in simple present form. Comparative and superlative adjectives better and best occurred especially in Wendy’s slogans. Sentence types and functions were almost the same across all companies. Wendy’s slogans seemed to use more often declarative sentence type in the function of statement than the other three companies, and Burger King used more often imperative in the function of command. The most prominent difference was the usage of personal pronouns in McDonald’s slogans that were used significantly more often than in the rest of the analyzed companies. The primary reason for having very few differences might be the targeted audience that is the same for all four companies. They try to differentiate by proclaiming that they are better than others because their product is bigger, it has better taste or that they use better ingredients. However, the targeted audience is still the same - children, young people and who are time-conscious.

Possible formation of slogans was another part of the analysis along with their further effect on everyday use of English language, mainly by native speakers. In the analyzed slogans were identified idiomatic phrases, informal contractions, euphemism, metonymy and many other semantic features. A part of everyday speech became two of the analyzed slogans: Finger lickin’

good is used to express that something is delicious or has very good taste, Where’s the beef? is

used to ask where the main deal is, where the importance is. The slogan I’m lovin’ it is believed to have spread the phenomenon of using some stative verbs, especially to love, in progressive tense and since then it has become to be used more often.

The corpus of the analyzed slogans is limited to four companies and slogans were chosen subjectively. Therefore, results of this analysis should not be generalized and applied to all slogans of all companies. It is only a sample of slogans from fast food industry. However, the