Local Wisdom and Social Change (Roland Barthes' Semiotic Analysis in Advertisement "The Light of Aceh")

This research focuses on answering how Acehnese local wisdom is represented and sees social changes in the community through advertising media. Using Roland Barthes' semiotic analysis to find the meaning of denotation, connotation, and myths in TV commercial "The Light of Aceh", this research employs the constructivism paradigm with qualitative methods. The denotation falls in several objects, such as a traditional house Rumoh Aceh as a place for Acehnese people to live, the customs to honor guests and eat together with them as a symbol of friendship between communities, and the Pacu Kude tradition. The connotation of the local wisdom object has been cultured and become the community's identity, then displayed in the advertisement as the result of the construction of the existing reality. This construction is interpreted as a myth that does not necessarily refer to mythology in the ordinary sense. It is traditional stories, legends, et cetera, but rather an explanation of messages with a connotative dimension. The myths found in the advertisements show the social changes taking place in Acehnese society. Fokus penelitian ini adalah menjawab bagaimana kearifan lokal Aceh direpresentasikan dan melihat perubahan sosial yang terjadi di masyarakat melalui media iklan. Dengan menggunakan analisis semiotik Roland Barthes untuk menemukan makna denotasi, konotasi, dan mitos dalam iklan TV “The Light of Aceh”, penelitian ini menggunakan paradigma konstruktivisme dengan metode kualitatif. Makna denotasi terdapat pada beberapa objek, seperti rumah adat Rumoh Aceh sebagai tempat tinggal masyarakat Aceh, adat istiadat untuk menghormati tamu dan makan bersama sebagai simbol persahabatan antar masyarakat, serta tradisi Pacu Kude. Objek kearifan local yang berkonotasi telah membudaya dan menjadi identitas masyarakat, kemudian ditampilkan dalam iklan tersebut sebagai hasil konstruksi dari realitas yang ada. Konstruksi ini dimaknai sebagai mitos yang tidak serta merta mengacu pada mitologi dalam pengertian biasa. Ini adalah cerita tradisional, legenda, dan sebagainya, tetapi lebih merupakan penjelasan tentang pesan dengan dimensi konotatif. Mitos yang ditemukan dalam iklan tersebut menunjukkan perubahan sosial yang terjadi pada masyarakat Aceh.

Russian TV advertising: influencing perception and manipulating consumer consciousness

The subject of this research is the peculiarities of Russian TV advertising, as well as the functions of advertising with regards to the goals of advertisers, developers of advertising content, and consumers of advertising products. The article explores the specifics of modern Russian TV advertising, and analyzes the existing traditions of selective perception marketing, as well as advances the original concept of divergence of public values by the Russian media. The research employs systematic and axiological approaches, observation, system analysis, case analysis and content analysis of TV commercials, structural-functional and socio-psychological methods, as well as conceptualization and generalization techniques. The study considers 150 TV commercials broadcasted on the central Russian channels over the period from 2017 to 2020. The author reveals the peculiarities of the Russian advertising content, as well as the trends that established thereof in recent decades. The scientific novelty lies in the conclusion that the Russian TV advertising features a unique (compared to Western advertising) transformative function aimed at changing the national value system as the framework of Russian culture and mentality and the pillar of the Russian system of social values. The author also notes that many TV commercial use the techniques of manipulating consumer perception and consciousness. The acquired results can be applied in the area of protecting consumer interests in the Russian Federation, as well as bringing into correlation the interests of advertisers and consumers of advertising content for more effective promotion of products and services in tune with the interests of customers.

Emotion Measurement in Tourism Destination Marketing: A Comparative Electroencephalographic and Behavioral Study

It is commonly assumed that TV commercials successfully influence affective tourism destination image by coupling positive emotions to a destination. In this study we record emotional responses to destination pictures before and after viewing a destination TV commercial from participants’ brains using electroencephalography (EEG). A control group of participants watched the same destination pictures, and an unrelated TV commercial. Emotion-related event-related potential (ERP) components, the P2 and LPP, were derived from the EEG. For the participants that watched the destination TV commercial, the P2 and the LPP were larger in response to destination pictures after compared to before having watched the TV commercial. This effect was not observed in the control group. In a behavioral version of the same experiment, we did not observe any effects in the self-report data. It is concluded that ERP methodology is a useful tool to complement the toolbox of tourism marketing researchers.

Cross-cultural interpretation of filmic metaphors: A think-aloud experiment

The purpose of this study is to investigate how viewers who speak different languages interpret cinematographic metaphors in a filmic advertisement. The study is organized in three parts: First, we offer a theoretical model that predicts the offline mental mechanisms that occur while people interpret filmic metaphors, based on an existing model of visual metaphor processing. Second, we evaluate the model in a think-aloud retrospective task. A TV-commercial is projected individually to 30 Spanish, 30 American, and 30 Persian participants, who are then asked to verbalize their thoughts. The commercial was previously segmented, analyzed using FILMIP (Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure), and marked for metaphoricity by two independent analysts. The collected data is then evaluated in two formal content analyses. In the first one, two independent coders classified all the clauses used by the 90 participants in relation to the steps outlined in the theoretical model. In the second analysis, those clauses in which the participants were constructing their metaphorical interpretation of the filmic advertisement were annotated for the type of metaphor they constructed. The general results show that: (1) some mental processes seem to be more prominent in some cultures and not in others, and (2) genre-related knowledge plays a crucial role in constructing filmic metaphors in certain cultures and not in others. With this study, we theoretically formalize and empirically test the types of operations reflected in the language that viewers use to describe how they interpret filmic metaphors, thus advancing the current theory and methods on filmic metaphor interpretation from cognitive, semiotic, and cross-cultural perspectives.

Going Up Is Always Good: A Multimodal Analysis of Metaphors in a TV Ad with FILMIP, the Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure

Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) suggested that we use metaphors to evaluate and communicate in our various environments. Although metaphors encompass a large variety of taxonomies, orientational metaphors are those that rely on spatial position to map concepts into other ones, referring to a relation of valence and verticality. Stated by Kövecses (2010) conceptual metaphors such orientational ones draw ‘upward’ and ‘downward’ spatial positions in which ‘upward’ is usually referred to as having positive connotations, whereby their opposites, ‘downwards’, are understood as negative. This paper seeks to unveil how the orientational metaphor good is up is employed in a filmic narrative of a language learning application for technological devices named Babbel. The present analysis is developed under the application of FILMIP (Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure, Bort-Mir 2019). In the analyzed narrative, the orientational metaphor good is up is represented in the Babbel TV commercial (2018) as a tool for persuading customers that the best way of escalating positions at work is by learning new languages. This analysis demonstrates how orientational metaphors in multimodal media emerge as a convenient device for marketing campaigns in the context of social status improvement.