Analysis of Doublespeak in Nescafe Advertisements.
ABSTRACT
Tugas akhir ini saya susun berdasarkan teori yang saya ambil dari buku
William Lutz, ”DOUBLESPEAK; From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal
Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to
Deceive You.”, yang kemudian saya terapkan untuk menganalisis adanya
penggunaan doublespeak dalam dunia iklan pada iklan Nescafé.
Secara garis besar berdasarkan teori Lutz, doublespeak adalah gaya bahasa
yang merupakan bagian dari ilmu Pragmatik. Doublespeak cenderung seperti
menyampaikan sesuatu atau pesan di dalamnya, akan tetapi maknanya masih
belum jelas atau tidak seperti yang disampaikan. Doublespeak dalam bahasa
periklanan menurut William Lutz dibagi menjadi empat kategori, yaitu parity
claim, weasel words, unfinished words dan up to claim. Saya menemukan banyak
penggunaan doublespeak dalam kalimat-kalimat pada iklan Nescafé yang
dimaksudkan untuk memperkenalkan produk kopi Nescafé. Salah satu temuan
yang saya peroleh adalah bahwa jenis doublespeak yang paling sering digunakan
adalah weasel words. Hal ini dilakukan untuk menarik minat para pembacanya
untuk membeli produk Nescafé tersebut.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................ i
TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study .................................................................................... 1
Statement of the Problem ................................................................................... 4
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................... 4
Method of Research ............................................................................................ 4
Organization of the Thesis .................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER TWO: THEORY OF DOUBLESPEAK .............................................. 6
Theory of doublespeak in advertising ................................................................ 7
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF DOUBLESPEAK IN NESCAFÉ
ADVERTISEMENTS .............................................................................................. 10
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 25
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 29
APPENDIX ............................................................................................................... 31
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APPENDIX
Data 1:
The taglines:
1. “Mmm-BOY! New Nescafé IS GOOD COFFEE!”
2. “There’s no other coffee today as good as new Nescafé. Its flavor beats
ground.”
3. “100% PURE COFFEE.”
4. “First instant coffee to guarantee you’ll get better flavor, cup after cup,
than with ground coffee.”
5. “Try the New Nescafé Today.”
31
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Data 2:
The taglines:
1.
“tastier coffee! New Nescafé.”
2. “the modern coffee made especially to give you consistently better flavor
than ground coffee!”
3. “100% PURE COFFEE.”
32
Maranatha Christian University
Data 3:
The tagline: “more coffee enjoyment than ever before.”
Data 4:
The tagline: “Nescafé-the coffee with life in it!” and “After a hard day’s workhave a stimulating cup of Nescafé.”
Data 5:
33
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The tagline: “THE NEW NESCAFÉ IS WHITE!”
Data 6
34
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The taglines:
1. “Drink Nescafé instant coffee it stays fresh!”
2. “Nescafé’s Own “Flavor-Seal” Process Keeps Nescafé Fresh to the
Bottom of the jar!”
3. “Every cup of Nescafé you make –right down to the bottom of the jartastes just as fresh, delicious and full of flavor as the first!”
4. “An exclusive Nescafé process does it. Extraamounts of Nescafé own
“Flavor-Seal” are added, to protect the rich flavor of every granule of pure
coffee.”
5. “Toseal in all the coffee freshness and flavor at its very peak.”
6. “When you make Nescafé in your cup, or in your coffee server, you
actually unlock that flavor for the first time! That’s why you drink fresh
coffee every time you drink Nescafé. That’s why all the flavor is in your
cup.”
7. “Change today to Nescafé . . . and enjoy really fresh coffee, right to the
bottom of the jar.”
8. “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground coffee by drinking Nescafé
Instant Coffee!
35
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
An advertisement is particularly made in order to promote a product that
the advertiser makes to the public. Very often, the advertisement uses language
that shows the practice of doublespeak, which according to Lutz is “language that
pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. It is language that makes the bad
seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at
least tolerable.” (1)
Generally, the products are promoted through advertisements to inform the
quality, the new packaging, the new taste, the new size, and many others. The
advertisement itself must appear as attractive and interesting as possible so that
the people are convinced to buy the products. Furthermore, there are many aspects
or elements shown in an advertisement that can convince the readers or customers
to buy the product being promoted. Those aspects are pictures, taglines or
utterances and colors. In this thesis, I would like to analyze the words in the
taglines or other utterances in the advertisement for most of the taglines appear to
contain doublespeak.
1
Maranatha Christian University
In his book, Lutz (70) mentions that we may sometimes find that the
whole world is not only filled by advertising, but dominated by it. This also means
that people will see or find advertisements every time and everywhere.
Furthermore, he mentions again that people must be aware that advertising is
filled with doublespeak.
Furthermore, Lutz states the reason why people need to pay attention to
the doublespeak of advertising. The reason is because advertising has strongly
penetrated our society and been very significant as a part of our society.
Companies or brand holders would not spend billions of dollars on advertising if
it did not work well or if it could not influence the customers to buy what they
want the customers to buy, whether it is a product or an idea or a set of values.
What is more, if the customers want to examine the doublespeak of advertising,
they have to pay more attention to the size, power and influence of the advertising
and the advertisers so that people can realize how important it is to understand as
much as possible the doublespeak of advertising (Lutz 70).
There are at least four kinds of doublespeak in advertising: parity, weasel
words, up to claim and unfinished words (Lutz 83). “Parity products are simply
products in which most if not all the brands in a class or category are pretty much
the same.” (83) Thus, parity claim is the claim used by the advertiser to state a
product as the best product while actually the product is just as good as any other
product in the same category. Next, there are weasel words, which are words that
say one thing or appear to give promises when actually they say the opposite or
even nothing at all (Lutz 85). Besides, there is up to claim, which is a “claim that
is made by the advertiser that sounds concrete, specific, and objective, when in
2
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fact the language of advertising is anything but” (Lutz 94). The last kind of
doublespeak in advertising is unfinished words. Lutz mentioned in his book that
“unfinished words are a kind of comparison as a type of “up to” claim in
advertising.” (95)
One of the brands that I found contain a lot of doublespeak in the
advertisement taglines is Nescafé, one of the famous coffee drink brands. Nescafé
is a coffee drink product produced by Nestlé and originated in Brazil in the 1930s.
Having developed a way to make a quality cup of coffee simply by adding boiling
water, Nescafé coffee was launched in Switzerland in 1938. It was soon exported
to France, the UK and the USA. In 1965 Nescafé brand extended its innovation by
offering freeze-dried soluble coffee with the launch of Gold Blend. (Nestle)
I would like touse doublespeak theory from the book DOUBLESPEAK:
From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”, How Government,
Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You formulated by
William Lutz to analyze the use of doublespeak in advertisementand to find the
real intention in Nescafé advertisements. I choose Lutz’s theory as the main
source because it is reliable and applicable for analyzing doublespeak in
advertisement in my thesis.
Furthermore, the words or phrases that are selected to be the data that I
analyze in this thesis are those which are categorized as doublespeak and which
have something to do with coffee.
This thesis is significant as people will be able to understand doublespeak
especially in advertisement, so that they understand not only the literal meaning of
English utterances, but also how English utterances may contain doublespeak. I
3
Maranatha Christian University
would like people to know that there is usually a certain intention behind the
utterances or taglines of the advertisement, which is mainly to mislead the
potential customers. I also hope this thesis can be of any use for other students
who are interested in studying doublespeak in advertisement.
Word count: 820 words
Statement of the Problem
The statements of the problem in this thesis are formulated as follows:
1. Which words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements contain
doublespeak?
2. What kind of doublespeak do they belong to?
3. How does the use of doublespeak in advertisements’ taglines and
utterances mislead the readers?
Purpose of the Study
Based on the Statement of the Problem, this study is conducted with the purpose
of:
1. Finding out the words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements that
contain doublespeak.
2. Showing what kind of doublespeak they belong to.
3. Showing how the use of doublespeak in advertisements misleads the
readers.
4
Maranatha Christian University
Method of Research
After choosing a particular topic, I started my study by learning the
theories and finding references related to the subject in this thesis, browsing some
websites in the internet and gathering the data. All the knowledge and information
I had acquired were used to analyze the data. After the analysis was conducted,
finally I wrote this thesis.
Organization of the Thesis
The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the
Introduction, which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the
Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the
Thesis. Chapter Two consists of the theoretical background, which is used as the
approach to analyze the data. Chapter Three presents the analysis of the
doublespeak in advertisement. The analysis will be concluded in Chapter Four in
which I give some personal comments and opinion of the findings. The thesis
ends with the Bibliography and the Appendix.
5
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CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I would like to put all the findings in the chapter of analysis
as the conclusion. This conclusion is arranged based on doublespeak theory by
William Lutz applied into Nescafé advertisements. The advertisements are made
in order to promote the coffee drink product from Nescafé. Nescafé is known as
one of the famous coffee products all over the world. In the advertisements that I
put in Chapter Three, I find the use of doublespeak in the taglines and utterances.
In my analysis, the type of doublespeak which is commonly found is
weasel words. It can be inferred that weasel words are used mostly in the
advertisement because it is easy to use weasel words in the advertisement since
weasel words appear very convincing for the advertisement readers. It looks like
weasel words have no boundaries and objective standards to interpret so that the
readers will think that the claim of the taglines or utterances is as true as it appears
or sounds. When the readers see the tagline which has weasel words in it, their
focus will be mostly on the words which tend to give promises and they tend to
believe them automatically.
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On the other hand, if the customers pay more attention on the weasel
words which are used to make the claim and examine it, they will find that
actually the claim of the weasel words does not really give the results or effects of
the products as it is said.
Furthermore, it can also be inferred that the use of the weasel words
appears when the manufacturers tend to show the quality of the product. It looks
like the manufacturer of Nescafé wants to give things which other competitors do
not have in their product. In these advertisements of Nescafé, I see the tendency of
the advertiser to show that the good quality of the coffee drink belongs to
Nescafé. Here, it is expected by the advertisers that the customers will believe the
claim made by the advertiser.
One of the weasel words which appears more than once in the taglines is
the word new. The other weasel word is fresh. These two weasel words are used
to build a trust of good taste and quality from Nescafé products.
Then, there are other types of doublespeak which are less frequently found
in the advertisements such as parity claim, unfinished words and up to-claim. In
my opinion, the parity claim is used when the advertiser wants to show the
elegance and exclusiveness of the product to the customers. Besides, the
advertiser does not use a lot of parity claim because in parity claim, the Nescafé
manufacturer is required to give a promise or a claim which shows that Nescafé is
the only coffee drink which is at the top position in every category of quality and
quantity among any other coffee drink and no other coffee drink can achieve such
quality that Nescafé has. It means Nescafé manufacturer must be convincing, and
in my opinion it is harder for Nescafé to do it by putting parity claim in the
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advertisement since there are so many coffee drink products such as Kapal Api,
Indocafé, Starbucks and many others. I believe that the other coffee manufacturers
want to be the top of all. It is also not as easy as using the weasel words because
parity claim has to sound or seem true. The parity claims used in the
advertisement are the finest and only.
Next, the second least frequently used doublespeak is the unfinished
words. In my opinion, the unfinished words are used by the advertisers when they
tend to compare their product with others and show that their product has more
value (the goodness of the coffee) than other products. It is also used in order to
raise the readers’ curiosity on the product by putting the unfinished comparison
word, which I think is not easy. Unless the advertisement is supported by an
attractive image, I think it is still not as easy as using the weasel words to attract
the customers. Besides, it still depends on the customers to finish the comparison
if they realize the doublespeak and examine it. The unfinished word used in the
advertisement is the word tastier.
The other kind of doublespeak in the advertisement is up to claim. In my
opinion, the advertiser uses up to claim when they want to show more quantity or
a better deal by buying their products. Furthermore, the utterance which uses up to
claim in one of the advertisement is “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground
coffee. . .” In selling the product it is certain that they want to gain profit.
However, by using up to claim, it means that they have to give a more interesting
offer, which, if given too often, will not be good for the company/manufacturer
because they may have to reduce the price or increase the amount of the coffee
27
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product in the package. That is why the use of up to claim is less frequently found
in the advertisements of Nescafé.
Furthermore, the doublespeak mostly found in the advertisement, which
are weasel words, usually refers to taste or smell or form. It makes the readers or
customers think that Nescafé can satisfy the customers’ appetite of drinking
coffee. It stimulates the customers or readers to try to buy and drink it.
What is more, I think the use of doublespeak can also be applied to other
coffee drink products such as Indocafé, Good Day, Top Coffee, Kapal Api or
Torabika to find out the analysis of the advertisement would be more or less the
same or whether the kind of the doublespeak would also be the same. Finally, I
also hope that this analysis can help other students in examining and doing
analysis of the same field.
Word count: 975 words
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Text:
1953 Nescafé Coffee – Jackie Gleason. Advertisement. Web. 7 September 2012.
1954 Nescafé Instant Coffee. Advertisement. Web. 8 September 2012.
Nescafé
coffee,
butter,
chocolate,
chappal,
toothpaste
at
the
edge.
Advertisement.Web. 7 September 2012.
Nescafé advertising poster 'The coffee with life in it', India, 1970. Flickr - Photo
Sharing(2012). Web. 8 September 2012.
Nescafe – 1952. Advertisement. JonWilliamson (2008-2010). Web. 10 October
2012.
Nescafé advertisement. Campaign Asia (2010). Blog. 10 October 2012.
References:
Hornby, A.S., Cowie A.P., Gimson A.C., Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
of Current English. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1974. Print.
Lutz, William D. Doublespeak: From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal
Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language
to Deceive You. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Print.
29
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Mihas, Elena. “Non-Literal Language in Political Discourse.” University 0f
Wisconsin – Milwaukee 2005. Web. 9 April 2012.
30
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Tugas akhir ini saya susun berdasarkan teori yang saya ambil dari buku
William Lutz, ”DOUBLESPEAK; From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal
Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to
Deceive You.”, yang kemudian saya terapkan untuk menganalisis adanya
penggunaan doublespeak dalam dunia iklan pada iklan Nescafé.
Secara garis besar berdasarkan teori Lutz, doublespeak adalah gaya bahasa
yang merupakan bagian dari ilmu Pragmatik. Doublespeak cenderung seperti
menyampaikan sesuatu atau pesan di dalamnya, akan tetapi maknanya masih
belum jelas atau tidak seperti yang disampaikan. Doublespeak dalam bahasa
periklanan menurut William Lutz dibagi menjadi empat kategori, yaitu parity
claim, weasel words, unfinished words dan up to claim. Saya menemukan banyak
penggunaan doublespeak dalam kalimat-kalimat pada iklan Nescafé yang
dimaksudkan untuk memperkenalkan produk kopi Nescafé. Salah satu temuan
yang saya peroleh adalah bahwa jenis doublespeak yang paling sering digunakan
adalah weasel words. Hal ini dilakukan untuk menarik minat para pembacanya
untuk membeli produk Nescafé tersebut.
iii
Maranatha Christian University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................ i
TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................... iii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study .................................................................................... 1
Statement of the Problem ................................................................................... 4
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................... 4
Method of Research ............................................................................................ 4
Organization of the Thesis .................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER TWO: THEORY OF DOUBLESPEAK .............................................. 6
Theory of doublespeak in advertising ................................................................ 7
CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF DOUBLESPEAK IN NESCAFÉ
ADVERTISEMENTS .............................................................................................. 10
CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 25
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 29
APPENDIX ............................................................................................................... 31
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APPENDIX
Data 1:
The taglines:
1. “Mmm-BOY! New Nescafé IS GOOD COFFEE!”
2. “There’s no other coffee today as good as new Nescafé. Its flavor beats
ground.”
3. “100% PURE COFFEE.”
4. “First instant coffee to guarantee you’ll get better flavor, cup after cup,
than with ground coffee.”
5. “Try the New Nescafé Today.”
31
Maranatha Christian University
Data 2:
The taglines:
1.
“tastier coffee! New Nescafé.”
2. “the modern coffee made especially to give you consistently better flavor
than ground coffee!”
3. “100% PURE COFFEE.”
32
Maranatha Christian University
Data 3:
The tagline: “more coffee enjoyment than ever before.”
Data 4:
The tagline: “Nescafé-the coffee with life in it!” and “After a hard day’s workhave a stimulating cup of Nescafé.”
Data 5:
33
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The tagline: “THE NEW NESCAFÉ IS WHITE!”
Data 6
34
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The taglines:
1. “Drink Nescafé instant coffee it stays fresh!”
2. “Nescafé’s Own “Flavor-Seal” Process Keeps Nescafé Fresh to the
Bottom of the jar!”
3. “Every cup of Nescafé you make –right down to the bottom of the jartastes just as fresh, delicious and full of flavor as the first!”
4. “An exclusive Nescafé process does it. Extraamounts of Nescafé own
“Flavor-Seal” are added, to protect the rich flavor of every granule of pure
coffee.”
5. “Toseal in all the coffee freshness and flavor at its very peak.”
6. “When you make Nescafé in your cup, or in your coffee server, you
actually unlock that flavor for the first time! That’s why you drink fresh
coffee every time you drink Nescafé. That’s why all the flavor is in your
cup.”
7. “Change today to Nescafé . . . and enjoy really fresh coffee, right to the
bottom of the jar.”
8. “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground coffee by drinking Nescafé
Instant Coffee!
35
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
An advertisement is particularly made in order to promote a product that
the advertiser makes to the public. Very often, the advertisement uses language
that shows the practice of doublespeak, which according to Lutz is “language that
pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. It is language that makes the bad
seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at
least tolerable.” (1)
Generally, the products are promoted through advertisements to inform the
quality, the new packaging, the new taste, the new size, and many others. The
advertisement itself must appear as attractive and interesting as possible so that
the people are convinced to buy the products. Furthermore, there are many aspects
or elements shown in an advertisement that can convince the readers or customers
to buy the product being promoted. Those aspects are pictures, taglines or
utterances and colors. In this thesis, I would like to analyze the words in the
taglines or other utterances in the advertisement for most of the taglines appear to
contain doublespeak.
1
Maranatha Christian University
In his book, Lutz (70) mentions that we may sometimes find that the
whole world is not only filled by advertising, but dominated by it. This also means
that people will see or find advertisements every time and everywhere.
Furthermore, he mentions again that people must be aware that advertising is
filled with doublespeak.
Furthermore, Lutz states the reason why people need to pay attention to
the doublespeak of advertising. The reason is because advertising has strongly
penetrated our society and been very significant as a part of our society.
Companies or brand holders would not spend billions of dollars on advertising if
it did not work well or if it could not influence the customers to buy what they
want the customers to buy, whether it is a product or an idea or a set of values.
What is more, if the customers want to examine the doublespeak of advertising,
they have to pay more attention to the size, power and influence of the advertising
and the advertisers so that people can realize how important it is to understand as
much as possible the doublespeak of advertising (Lutz 70).
There are at least four kinds of doublespeak in advertising: parity, weasel
words, up to claim and unfinished words (Lutz 83). “Parity products are simply
products in which most if not all the brands in a class or category are pretty much
the same.” (83) Thus, parity claim is the claim used by the advertiser to state a
product as the best product while actually the product is just as good as any other
product in the same category. Next, there are weasel words, which are words that
say one thing or appear to give promises when actually they say the opposite or
even nothing at all (Lutz 85). Besides, there is up to claim, which is a “claim that
is made by the advertiser that sounds concrete, specific, and objective, when in
2
Maranatha Christian University
fact the language of advertising is anything but” (Lutz 94). The last kind of
doublespeak in advertising is unfinished words. Lutz mentioned in his book that
“unfinished words are a kind of comparison as a type of “up to” claim in
advertising.” (95)
One of the brands that I found contain a lot of doublespeak in the
advertisement taglines is Nescafé, one of the famous coffee drink brands. Nescafé
is a coffee drink product produced by Nestlé and originated in Brazil in the 1930s.
Having developed a way to make a quality cup of coffee simply by adding boiling
water, Nescafé coffee was launched in Switzerland in 1938. It was soon exported
to France, the UK and the USA. In 1965 Nescafé brand extended its innovation by
offering freeze-dried soluble coffee with the launch of Gold Blend. (Nestle)
I would like touse doublespeak theory from the book DOUBLESPEAK:
From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living”, How Government,
Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language to Deceive You formulated by
William Lutz to analyze the use of doublespeak in advertisementand to find the
real intention in Nescafé advertisements. I choose Lutz’s theory as the main
source because it is reliable and applicable for analyzing doublespeak in
advertisement in my thesis.
Furthermore, the words or phrases that are selected to be the data that I
analyze in this thesis are those which are categorized as doublespeak and which
have something to do with coffee.
This thesis is significant as people will be able to understand doublespeak
especially in advertisement, so that they understand not only the literal meaning of
English utterances, but also how English utterances may contain doublespeak. I
3
Maranatha Christian University
would like people to know that there is usually a certain intention behind the
utterances or taglines of the advertisement, which is mainly to mislead the
potential customers. I also hope this thesis can be of any use for other students
who are interested in studying doublespeak in advertisement.
Word count: 820 words
Statement of the Problem
The statements of the problem in this thesis are formulated as follows:
1. Which words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements contain
doublespeak?
2. What kind of doublespeak do they belong to?
3. How does the use of doublespeak in advertisements’ taglines and
utterances mislead the readers?
Purpose of the Study
Based on the Statement of the Problem, this study is conducted with the purpose
of:
1. Finding out the words or phrases in the Nescafé advertisements that
contain doublespeak.
2. Showing what kind of doublespeak they belong to.
3. Showing how the use of doublespeak in advertisements misleads the
readers.
4
Maranatha Christian University
Method of Research
After choosing a particular topic, I started my study by learning the
theories and finding references related to the subject in this thesis, browsing some
websites in the internet and gathering the data. All the knowledge and information
I had acquired were used to analyze the data. After the analysis was conducted,
finally I wrote this thesis.
Organization of the Thesis
The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the
Introduction, which consists of the Background of the Study, Statement of the
Problem, Purpose of the Study, Method of Research, and Organization of the
Thesis. Chapter Two consists of the theoretical background, which is used as the
approach to analyze the data. Chapter Three presents the analysis of the
doublespeak in advertisement. The analysis will be concluded in Chapter Four in
which I give some personal comments and opinion of the findings. The thesis
ends with the Bibliography and the Appendix.
5
Maranatha Christian University
CHAPTER FOUR
CONCLUSION
In this chapter I would like to put all the findings in the chapter of analysis
as the conclusion. This conclusion is arranged based on doublespeak theory by
William Lutz applied into Nescafé advertisements. The advertisements are made
in order to promote the coffee drink product from Nescafé. Nescafé is known as
one of the famous coffee products all over the world. In the advertisements that I
put in Chapter Three, I find the use of doublespeak in the taglines and utterances.
In my analysis, the type of doublespeak which is commonly found is
weasel words. It can be inferred that weasel words are used mostly in the
advertisement because it is easy to use weasel words in the advertisement since
weasel words appear very convincing for the advertisement readers. It looks like
weasel words have no boundaries and objective standards to interpret so that the
readers will think that the claim of the taglines or utterances is as true as it appears
or sounds. When the readers see the tagline which has weasel words in it, their
focus will be mostly on the words which tend to give promises and they tend to
believe them automatically.
25
Maranatha Christian University
On the other hand, if the customers pay more attention on the weasel
words which are used to make the claim and examine it, they will find that
actually the claim of the weasel words does not really give the results or effects of
the products as it is said.
Furthermore, it can also be inferred that the use of the weasel words
appears when the manufacturers tend to show the quality of the product. It looks
like the manufacturer of Nescafé wants to give things which other competitors do
not have in their product. In these advertisements of Nescafé, I see the tendency of
the advertiser to show that the good quality of the coffee drink belongs to
Nescafé. Here, it is expected by the advertisers that the customers will believe the
claim made by the advertiser.
One of the weasel words which appears more than once in the taglines is
the word new. The other weasel word is fresh. These two weasel words are used
to build a trust of good taste and quality from Nescafé products.
Then, there are other types of doublespeak which are less frequently found
in the advertisements such as parity claim, unfinished words and up to-claim. In
my opinion, the parity claim is used when the advertiser wants to show the
elegance and exclusiveness of the product to the customers. Besides, the
advertiser does not use a lot of parity claim because in parity claim, the Nescafé
manufacturer is required to give a promise or a claim which shows that Nescafé is
the only coffee drink which is at the top position in every category of quality and
quantity among any other coffee drink and no other coffee drink can achieve such
quality that Nescafé has. It means Nescafé manufacturer must be convincing, and
in my opinion it is harder for Nescafé to do it by putting parity claim in the
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advertisement since there are so many coffee drink products such as Kapal Api,
Indocafé, Starbucks and many others. I believe that the other coffee manufacturers
want to be the top of all. It is also not as easy as using the weasel words because
parity claim has to sound or seem true. The parity claims used in the
advertisement are the finest and only.
Next, the second least frequently used doublespeak is the unfinished
words. In my opinion, the unfinished words are used by the advertisers when they
tend to compare their product with others and show that their product has more
value (the goodness of the coffee) than other products. It is also used in order to
raise the readers’ curiosity on the product by putting the unfinished comparison
word, which I think is not easy. Unless the advertisement is supported by an
attractive image, I think it is still not as easy as using the weasel words to attract
the customers. Besides, it still depends on the customers to finish the comparison
if they realize the doublespeak and examine it. The unfinished word used in the
advertisement is the word tastier.
The other kind of doublespeak in the advertisement is up to claim. In my
opinion, the advertiser uses up to claim when they want to show more quantity or
a better deal by buying their products. Furthermore, the utterance which uses up to
claim in one of the advertisement is “Save up to 25 cent a pound over ground
coffee. . .” In selling the product it is certain that they want to gain profit.
However, by using up to claim, it means that they have to give a more interesting
offer, which, if given too often, will not be good for the company/manufacturer
because they may have to reduce the price or increase the amount of the coffee
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product in the package. That is why the use of up to claim is less frequently found
in the advertisements of Nescafé.
Furthermore, the doublespeak mostly found in the advertisement, which
are weasel words, usually refers to taste or smell or form. It makes the readers or
customers think that Nescafé can satisfy the customers’ appetite of drinking
coffee. It stimulates the customers or readers to try to buy and drink it.
What is more, I think the use of doublespeak can also be applied to other
coffee drink products such as Indocafé, Good Day, Top Coffee, Kapal Api or
Torabika to find out the analysis of the advertisement would be more or less the
same or whether the kind of the doublespeak would also be the same. Finally, I
also hope that this analysis can help other students in examining and doing
analysis of the same field.
Word count: 975 words
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Text:
1953 Nescafé Coffee – Jackie Gleason. Advertisement. Web. 7 September 2012.
1954 Nescafé Instant Coffee. Advertisement. Web. 8 September 2012.
Nescafé
coffee,
butter,
chocolate,
chappal,
toothpaste
at
the
edge.
Advertisement.Web. 7 September 2012.
Nescafé advertising poster 'The coffee with life in it', India, 1970. Flickr - Photo
Sharing(2012). Web. 8 September 2012.
Nescafe – 1952. Advertisement. JonWilliamson (2008-2010). Web. 10 October
2012.
Nescafé advertisement. Campaign Asia (2010). Blog. 10 October 2012.
References:
Hornby, A.S., Cowie A.P., Gimson A.C., Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
of Current English. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1974. Print.
Lutz, William D. Doublespeak: From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal
Living”, How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use Language
to Deceive You. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Print.
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Mihas, Elena. “Non-Literal Language in Political Discourse.” University 0f
Wisconsin – Milwaukee 2005. Web. 9 April 2012.
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