New Year's resolutions are by their nature supposed to be personal, individual, to pick out the reader out of the crowd. But as we read down the list, we build up a type -- a politically active yuppie, aware of the stereotypes around this role, but not defensive about them (keeping his or her filofax). Of course the ad is not just addressed to real people who do, or wish they did, all these things. But it suggests that these things can go together without inconsistency. Again, to say I is to say what can make a person individual.
Shared Knowledge: He and She
The pronouns I, we, and you remind us of the basic communicative situation of the speaker (what linguists call the first person) and the hearer (the second). We might think third person pronouns (he, she, it, they ) would be straightforward, because they don't involve either of the two parties to the communication. But they too can be used to set up positions. He and she typically refer to someone known to the reader, either known through the ad, as with the person in the picture, or known because taken for granted as part of the reader's life. An ad from the Department for Education, trying to win parents' support for the new national exams for all 7-year-old children, shows the chubby legs of a girl in a school uniform, with one knee sock fitting properly, labelled "English Technology Science," the other sliding down, labelled "Maths." The headline says
The sooner you can spot where she's falling down, the sooner you can lend a hand. The pronoun alone suggests a personal bond even more than "your child," because it assumes that the addresser and addressee must both be able to tell who is being referred to.
The old copy writing textbook I have been quoting gives this advice about he and she: Words that have masculine or feminine natural gender are personal. . . But common gender words like 'customer' and 'solicitor' are less appealing. (De Voe, p. 657).
This follows from what we saw with the pronoun I ; the textbook implies that when people are addressed in terms of their gender, they see the message as addressed personally to them, or to individuals, in a way it can't be without this gender marking. In this view, the marking of what is appropriate for each gender is not the advertiser's main aim; the ad does it in the course of making the message personal.
Where better to see the uses of pronouns to construct gender than in the magazine called simply: She:
Is he looking at your melting brown eyes, your silky smooth skin, or the spot just under your left nostril? (Valderma: Tough on Spots. Gentle on Skin. The picture is a close-up of a man's eyes).
She gave me a son and I gave her the stars. (Diamonds. The picture shows a ring against a black background)
Five minutes ago he was demolishing the house. (Farley's bedtimers. The picture shows a toddler asleep on a chair)
All three ads build familiarity by using a pronoun rather than, say, that man or my wife or our son. But in addition, the first he takes for granted that the male gaze defines the woman; the she of the diamonds ad assumes dynastic relations in patriarchy. Even the toddler ad would probably be different with she rather than he ; though girls can make just as big a mess (I know), it is boys who are considered comically destructive in the Dennis the Menace style. An ad for SHE itself stresses that the pronoun offers many roles, not one.
SHE is a woman and a lover SHE is a worker and a mother
SHE is the magazine for women who juggle their lives
The ad suggests that these are contradictory roles that can be reconciled in the mystical femininity suggested by the pronoun.
Sometimes there is a rhetorical reason for using he or she rather than you to refer to the audience, especially where the pitch implies something unfavourable about the person referred to. I mentioned in Chapter 4 Shirley Polyakoff's slogan for Clairol hair colour:
Does she or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.
If we take there to have been at least a mild taboo on dying one's hair, then the use of she for the user of hair colour, placing the reader as an observer, would make sense as displacing the possible threat. Another example is in sanpro ads. As we have seen, these ads have a problem -- they have a mass market product to sell, but can't talk about what it does. I seems to be too touchy even to mention directly that the woman reading the ad might have periods. The first company to breach the taboo on advertising, Kotex, made a bundle in the 1920s with indirect ads that showed successful women had confidence, and using indirect pitches of that sort.
8 out of 10 of the better class of women (1928) The same strategy was picked up by their competitors.
Socially alert women use Tampax (1941) And it continues today.
For inner peace, she uses Tampax (1992)
The aim is to create an image of a woman associated with the product, without directly addressing the reader. The picture is the key here -- it introduces a woman who can then be referred to as having desirable qualities. Ads warning of risks of AIDS are typically in third person (he rather than you or we) for similar reasons; there is such a strong taboo that to say you might be at risk could lead the reader to turn off. I will return to these ads in Chapter 12.
They is tricky in ads, just because it is not personal; it usually refers to the great
undistinguished mass that fails to use the product. But it can also define a new and as yet nameless class of people to which the consumer will want to belong. A Diet Coke television commercial has images of young people doing exciting activities or in exotic places, the camera swooping around them dramatically. Words drift across the screen independently, forming phrases that suggest the people pictured break with stereotypes.
Ministers who surf Surgeons who sculpt
Insurance agents who speed
Some people live life as an exclamation! They're tasting it all in one awesome calorie Taste it all
The images draw on stereotypes (ministers), break them (who surf), and set them up again in the new category of people who "live their lives as an exclamation." The spatial disorientation of the visuals is, I think, part of this message. We are not told that we are like these people, but the
movement of the camera identifies us with their point of view, perched on a cliff or zooming around the racetrack. By buying the product, we can step out of our assigned places, into this free-floating fulfilment.
Conclusion
The choice of pronouns carries significance in a wide range of texts that represent some sort of interaction. For instance, when I write comments on students' essays, it makes all the difference whether I say "you" or "this paper". (Generally I say "you" to heighten praise and "this paper" to soften criticism.) You will hear pronouns used strategically by all great orators (think of the Gettysburg Address, or one of Churchill's speeches), by university presidents and vice-chancellors, by parents, and by pop lyricists.
I have looked at pronouns to raise questions about the construction of audience. When I recognise myself in the you, I am stepping into a position and taking on the other assumptions that make the ad make sense to me, that make the parts fit together and make it purposeful. Many of the academic analyses of ads that I list in the "Further Reading" sections have focused on this process, and have asked how we can resist it. Earlier studies tended to try to make people sceptical of the sales pitch itself, so that we could resist the pressure to buy. But studies over the past twenty years or so have focused more on the other assumptions we take on when we interpret, on how we are positioned by the ad. Even if we don't buy the product, we may for a moment buy a view of the world.
Recent work has focused, not on the texts of the ads themselves, but on ways people play with the roles they are offered, stepping into and out of them. Let's return to the New Year's Resolution ad that I discussed at the end of the I section, to see how multiple readings remain possible. The last resolution on the list, the one that brings together all the others, is: