4. Power Relation
Peirce 1886 states that power is built from the relation between message senders and message receivers. According to Petress in Triandjojo 2008, power
is the capability to persuade others to believe or to do something like what is wanted. Lill 1998 says that power works when people use ideology association
in the cultural action strategy. Triandjojo 2008 argues that an advertisement is an ideology reflection from a company. It can be a medium for companies to
communicate with consumers. The relation which is built by companies and consumers is called power relation. Power relation makes communication act
occur between companies as message senders and consumers as message receivers.
French and Raven 1959 divide the types of power relation into five types, namely legitimate power, reward power, referent power, expert power, and
coercive power.
a. Legitimate Power
French and Raven 1959 describe legitimate power as the power which is built when message senders are able to control message receivers. Message
senders have the right to posit themselves in the higher level than message receivers. That right refers to message sender
s‟ power to dictate message receivers. By using this power, message receivers are hoped to consider buying
the advertised products.
b. Reward Power
Message senders promise to give a reward to message receivers. Therefore, message receivers will be persuaded by a promised reward. Message
senders have an assumption of persuading message receivers through giving a bonus when they use or buy their products.
c. Referent Power
Based on French and Raven 1959, through this power, message senders use
people‟s popularity to reach what they want. It is functioned to attract message receivers to buy or use the products. It is also used to influence message
receivers ‟ life style to imitate famous people‟s life style which appear in message
senders ‟ message. For example, advertisers use some public figures in their
advertisements.
d. Expert Power
French and Raven 1959 state that expert power appears when message senders are positioned as the ones who understand the product. Therefore,
message receivers should follow their superiors to use the advertised products. Message senders tend to show their higher quality of knowledge or experience to
persuade message receivers to follow them.
e. Coercive Power
Loudon in Supriyono 2006 states that message senders can delete a promised reward if message receivers do not follow the suggestion in
advertisements. In the other words, message senders threaten message receivers to do their order. Therefore, message receivers feel threatened by message senders if
she or he does not obey message senders ‟ order.
B. Theoretical Framework
Based on the theoretical description, the researcher wraps up the appropriate theories to accomplish the objectives of this study. There are only
three major theories which are used to answer the formulated research questions. They are the language style of advertisements, the persuasion techniques, and the
power relation. To answer the first research question, related to the use of certain linguistic
features of advertisements, the researcher analyzes the language style of advertising
based on Grey‟s theory 2008. There are two parts of language style in advertisements. The first part is the lexical features that deal with the lexical
items or the use of words. They consist of hyperbole, neologism, weasel word, familiar language, simple vocabulary, repetition, euphemism, humor,
glamorization, and potency. The second part is the syntactic features which deal with the grammatical properties. They consist of short sentence, long
noun phrase, ambiguity, use of imperative, simple and colloquial language, present tense,
syntactic parallelism, association, ellipsis, and incomplete sentence. The researcher analyzes the utterances of Magnum advertisements and
then classifies them to the characteristics of advertisement linguistic features proposed by Grey
2008. The researcher chooses Grey‟s theory 2008 because there is specific description on the characteristics of advertisement language. Different from other
theories of the advertising language, the theory of Grey 2008 provides the classification of the lexical features and the syntactic features.
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