Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

In the beginning chapter of this study, the introduction of this thesis is presented. In the background of the study, as the opening part, it elaborates the importance of advertisements and its relation with society, a glance of the elements in advertisements, the types of analysis which are implemented and the classification of the study. This part is followed by the problem formulations comprised of the research questions which are explained further in the research objectives part. Eventually, this chapter ends with the significance of this research in some fields of study framed in the benefits of the study.

1.1 Background of the Study

For the past few years, many countries had been affected by the global monetary crisis which was also referred to as the Great Recession. Indonesia was one of several countries which managed to avoid the impact of the Great Recession. In spite of its status as a developing country, Indonesia was able to maintain its stable economic growth compared with many European countries which had been affected by the recession in a great extent. Indonesia managed to decrease the impact of the global economic crisis due to several reasons. The main contributor was consumption. Nasution in Kompas 12112012, the Governor of Bank Indonesia, stated that, although Indonesia did not reach the peak of the economic growth in the last few years, many considered it as having the most stable economic growth in the world. He explained that the main factor behind this positive condition was brought by the enormous consumption rate from both the household and the government sectors followed by the export and foreign investment sectors. This positive economic condition makes Indonesia one of the prominent marketing industries in the world. In line with the marketing notion, it has been widely known that in order to make the product purchased by the consumers in a great quantity and continuously, there must be a well-developed marketing strategy to realize it. One of the most common applications is the usage of advertising. With creative words and layouts suitable with the context, advertisements have an ability to penetrate the mind of society in accepting certain kind of messages which are implied in them. Hence, it is not an understatement that advertisements are considered as one of the most powerful devices in manipulating the subconscious realm of the audience. Simultaneously, advertisements grow considerably in intense amount recently in Indonesia. Advertisement is a well-known phenomenon in the global society. It is hardly possible to avoid this type of text. It appears every time and everywhere in everyday life. When someone rides motorcycle in the road, he or she will pass one or more billboards along the way. For someone who loves watching television, he or she will be exposed to an abundance of audio visual advertisements. Furthermore, it is common to find advertisements in every kind of newspapers and magazines read by all levels of social groups. In fact, the internet, which is regarded as the latest media that has just emerged from the last two decades, contains advertisements in such a way in every page available. Due to its main purpose, advertisements, namely commercial advertisement, ooze with the ideology of consumerism. This ideology is imbued in advertisements by exploiting the desires, feelings, and needs possessed by an individual Goatly, 2000. The copywriters utilize this exploitation by offering positive values of the products or services toward the readerships. In other words, they sell them by entrancing the readerships of the significant benefits they can gain in their daily life. In offering these benefits, advertisement uses different strategies deemed to be appropriate in the respectable context of the target market. Those strategies can be in the form of informative content, influencing approaches, emotive appeal, and brand exposure Armstrong, 2010. Thus, to fully grasp the situation and condition of the prospective buyers, the advertisers from transnational and international companies usually employ some market researchers to recognise or create fresh methods of consumption Goatly, 2000. Afterwards, the findings of the researches will be utilized to segment the market according to numerous specialised niches which are fragmented based on the income level, age, household type and locality. This strategy is able to guide the change of culture rapidly and enable the development of modern consumer capitalism encouraged by the powerful economic groups in the society. One of significant techniques employed in this era is the use of the lingua franca of advertisements which is English. It is not unusual to find English use in some parts or entire part of an advertisement, though Indonesia is not an English speaking country. Regarding the communicative aspect of advertising which is to inform and persuade consumers to buy a product Bhatia, 2006, it can be an impediment factor to relay the commercial messages to those who are not fluent or even literate in English. Such techniques should not be applied by the advertisers as it is very ineffective for the financial purpose. Nevertheless, the reality speaks otherwise. There is an underlying motive which drives the robust of the English exploitation in the domestic country. Bhatia 2006 argues that this seemingly counter-intuitive and counter-productive advertisement actually relies on unconscious planning by the national or international advertisers who assume that their readerships are bilingual in English. This assumption foregrounds a conceptualization of the global citizen reinforcing English as a prerequisite to be acknowledged as a global citizen. This particular phenomenon suggests that English enhances the values of the advertised pr oducts or services. The advertisers consider English as a ―cool‖ language which has miraculous power to render the audience identity to become ―international, modern, rational, objective, ethno-cultural stereotypes, etc.,‖ Bhatia, 2006. This identity-building propaganda is a formidable appeal of the product for it is typically inclined by the contemporary society nowadays. In turn, it can be concluded that language is in close affinity with identity construction shown by the implication that English facilitates the identity representation of the brands and products in advertisements. Thus, it guides to an assumption that there is a pattern which is traceable from the linguistic element blended with the commercial layout to represent the relation between the merchandise items and the consumers for realizing the act of identity transforming conducted by the advertisers and the advertising agencies. For that matter, advertisement is viewed as a discourse in this study as it expresses identity representation by means of specific sets of linguistic, visual and other semiotic resources Machin and van Leeuwen, 2007. The view is grounded by the concept of discourse in the way it perceives text as a tool that functions above the grammatical and lexical construction applications. Fairclough 1995 argues that texts comprise of two fundamental social practices, specifically cognition and representation of the reality, and social interaction. The linguistic configurations are constructed by the producers to present and describe the world based on their perspective to the others. This communication is motivated by certain idea or principle which is designed to penetrate the mind of society. This ‗conversion’ can also be used to strengthen their domination in the community. It is in line with the purpose of advertisement in this study which is to assert identity- building propaganda in the context of Indonesia intended by the large industries incorporated in the persuasive element for the benefit of monetary income. To figure out the pattern in this social practice, there are two types of method employed in this study. The first method is the application of Systemic Functional Grammar proposed by Halliday 2004. This method is considered appropriate because it sees the meaning mirrored by the functions of the structures and the constituents of linguistic elements in a particular context as the primary concern Lock, 1996. The communicative aspect of the text is emphasized simultaneously with the rules implemented in the formation of linguistic element. In this grammatical configuration, this study utilizes transitivity process. It is taken as the first tool of analysis because it deals with the choice of linguistic devices in representing the world and how they act and relate to each other Thompson, 2004. In other words, it analyses the grammatical and lexical features contained in a text and correlates them to reflect the idea, belief, opinion, notion, etc. in certain context which is in line with the purpose of this study. Therefore, the manner in which the English linguistic features configure the positive identity-building message can be traced in the persuasive element of the advertisements. The second method is closely related to the initial type. However, the major interest is dedicated to the participants involved in the social activity. It is embodied in the social actor representation introduced by van Leeuwen 2008. This method is regarded as an important enclosure in the analysis for it uncovers the systematic consideration on the way the main social actors are represented in relation with the identity construction by the powerful economic groups in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the source of data in this study is the English advertisement in Kompas newspaper. The primary reason behind this is due to its nature in employing static components to catch the readership interest at least for a short period of time toward the advertisement Paxon, 2010. Though print advertising is not as rich as other types of advertisement which is merely realized by employing two modes of communication, visual and verbal, the print advertising compensates it by elaborating further details on the product or services creatively in a single frame to achieve a great impact toward the target audience at first glance. However, the current printed advertisements can also capture the ‗movement’ aspect portrayed in the visual image by projecting an illusion of moving object, especially in car advertisements. Thus, it is very interesting to analyze the way the advertising agency creates a printed advertisement to persuade the readerships to buy the product or use the service presented in the newspaper advertisements in relation to the identity-building strategy.

1.2 Problem Formulation