students, the university gives a strong claim that the promising destiny of the high school fresh graduates lies at the palm of its hand.
The highest degree of the transformative clause shown in the chart indicates that improvement and continuous attitudes are salient in the identity strategy. They
are foregrounded by the concept of transformative clause stated by Halliday 2004. He remarks that transformative clause is the proposition to signal the change of some
elements caused by the process. Furthermore, it can be an expression to denote maintenance of the initial phase conditions of the process. It is important to notice
that this implication only happened in an already existing participant before the process is unfolded Halliday, 2004; Thompson, 2004.
4.2 The Social Actor Representation Analysis
The second method of analysis in this study is presented in the subtopics below. Although it correspondents with the previous method, the salient concern in
this discussion is shifted into the actors who enact the social actions embodied in the clauses which is significant in answering the second problem of the study. The
investigated actors are configured into four denominators comprised of the narratees, the brands, the products, and the endorsers. They are analysed based on three
categories of socio-semantic representations van Leeuwen, 2008: the exclusioninclusion, the activationpassivation, and personalizationimpersonalization
respectively.
4.2.1 The ExclusionInclusion Representations
In the exclusioninclusion representation, the focus is on the explicit and implicit presence of the four social actors in terms of specific socio-grammatical
action in the clauses. In the examined data, the result of inclusionexclusion pattern yielded some intriguing results. Similar to the previous results, the occurrence of the
patterns is concentrated at some domains in a great extent compared with the others. The contrasting patterns are summarized in Chart 4.4.
Chart 4.4 Inclusionexclusion representations in the data
At first glance, Chart 4.4 shows that the brand dominates the representation more often than the rests from the text at hand. The total occurrences of the actor in
the selected data is 219 42.2 in which 149 68.04 of them are backgrounded. The rest of them, 70 31.96, is included and none of them is suppressed in the
representations. Meanwhile, the goods andor the service offered by the brands are positioned
in the second place of the total representation. They occur in 160 30.83 representations and, as expected, none of them are suppressed. Similar to the brand,
the agencies represent the actor mostly in the backgrounding category which covers
5 10
15 20
25 30
Narratee Brand
Product Endorser
Suppressed Backgrounded
Included
108 67.5 representations, while 52 32.5 of them are included in the representations.
Despite the major implication of the narratees in the marketing strategy, they are less likely represented in the data compared with the merchandised entities. They
are employed in 135 26.01 representations. Most of them are backgrounded in 76 56.3 representations and included in 42 31.11 cases. In suppression category,
they reflect difference cases with the prior denominators. There are 17 12.59 cases of suppression in the data.
Meanwhile, the appearance of one social actor is nearly totally not exploited in the print advertising. Chart 4.4 marks the lowest frequency of representations for
the endorser social actors in the aspect of contributory appeal of advertisements. In the English clauses, there are limited cases of 5 0.96 representations of the
endorsers in which none of them are suppressed, 2 40 of them is backgrounded, and 3 60 of them is included. These numbers remarks the implication that the
celebrity endorser aspect is less emphasized in the image association of the brands andor the products of marketing strategy in the printed promoting discourse. Hence,
this actor is not analyzed further for its minimum appearance in the discourse. The results summarized in Chart 4.4 are actually highly expected because the
brand is the main entity in the advertisement. It is the foremost purpose of the advertisement to associate positive values with the promoted brand Myers, 2009.
Although the product is typically the thing that the discourse tries to sell, the label of the product must be placed either in the systems of linguistic or the visual symbols by
the advertising agency. Certainly, it is not just a label. A cluster of meanings have
been tightly attached to the label which construct a higher level of label significance widely known as the brand Myers, 2009. Therefore, the brands, such as
Nokia, Frank Fire, LG,
or
Periplus
, are the solid ingredients in the advertising recipe which can be detected in the layouts of the printed advertisements.
In representing this social actor, backgrounding is the most common manifestation in the strategy. It is caused by the purpose of the advertisement in
associating value with the brands, thus, they are usually backgrounded with the attachments of attractive characteristics and symbolization identities which have been
explained in the previous discussion. The close affinity between the brands and the products can also be another method of backgrounding for the products themselves
act as the references of the brand existence in the advertisements. 31
Hyundai | new possibilities
Ad8C29
32 Nature’s Plus |
the energy supplement
Ad12C44
33 exquisitely designed
ice cream sushi
Ad18C61
In 31 and 32, the brands are classified into the inclusion representation because
they are stated explicitly in the clauses. However, they can also be classified into the backgrounding category as they are abstracted indicated by the relational clause
configurations. In 31, the brand is symbolized as the fresh idea signifying modern and creative concepts of the car. Meanwhile, in 32, the brand is directly identified
as a vitamin accompanying with an exclusive identity construed by the definite article
the
. Interestingly, the noun group
the energy supplement
can also indicate the inclusion of the product for it denotes the type of goods manufactured by the
pharmacy company. Consequently, the product can background the existence of the brand. Thus, through the direct relationship configured in the identifying clause, the
brand represents itself with the assigning of its identity as the distinguished supplementary food manufacturer.
The brand’s backgrounding through the product representation is analogous with 33. In this clause, the product
ice cream sushi
is included in the representation. The pre-modifier
designed
, however, highlight the notion of creation made by a particular company. To uncover the possible ‗missing’ actor in the social
grammatical activity, van Leeuwen 2008 demonstrates that the post-modifying markers, such as
by
,
of
, and
from
are very helpful in retrieving it. Hence, the clause can be paraphrased into
exquisitely designed ice cream sushi by
Häagen-Dazs
. It guides to an interpretation that the excluded ice cream brand is represented by means of the product.
Therefore, though the products are the promoted merchandise in the discourse, their significance is not as high as their ‗badges’. An underlying
assumption for this unexpected number is that the products need a confirmation regarding the brands to be appropriately acknowledged as marketable merchandise. It
affects the numbers of the representation because when the products are mentioned in the selected data, they generally background the identity of the brands. However,
when the brands are mentioned in the selected data, it does not mean that they always background the identity of the advertised products. The occurrences of the brands in
the form of the logo found in the adve rtisements foreground this products’ badge
membership notion. This connection forms an inseparable bond in the marketing strategy, in particular for the products.
Though they show different results in the backgrounding and including categories, they reflect the same numbers in the suppression category. None of them
are suppressed shown in the print advertisements see Appendix 1. They can be manifested in the logos, the visual elements, and the verbal aspects, either
backgrounded or included. It is as expected because they are the entities which are being promoted in this commercial advertisement discourse. Without their presences,
the discourse is meaningless for they provide the things or the values which are needed to be consumed.
As it has been noticed, the above social actor representation data displayed in the chart and discussed in the previous parts highlight the foreground of the major
representations of the brand and the product. They compose the brand and product characteristics in systematic and creative configuration. However, these
characterizations are solely intended for the target market or the specific niche thought by the producers, labelled as the narratees. They are the particular group of
people for whom the brands are produced, purveyed, plied, and segmented into different social dichotomies.
The frequency reveals that the narratees are frequently dominated in the strategy even though they are the people for whom the brands and products are
marketed. They are overpowered by the presence of the company representations, particularly the brands. In fact, there are two advertisements which radically exclude
the presence of the narratees, namely the
Hotel Salak the Heritage
and
Periplus
advertisements see Fig. 51 and Fig. 59. In these promoting devices, they do not mention any representation of the narratees in the structural domains. Hence, it can be
categorized as the suppression for there is no direct reference contained in the texts van Leeuwen, 2008. It guides to interpretation that the advertisers and the agency
tend to express the identity-building strategy for the target consumers in the advertisements mainly through the brand and product images.
When they are included, the narratees are generally addressed as ―you‖ which has been remarked by some researchers Cook, 1992, Goddard, 1998, Myers, 2009.
In most instances, they are backgrounded through some kind of attribution that can stand alone or occur together with the inclusion addressee ―you‖,
34
The smartest phone designed for you
Ad2C3
35
Lenovo | for those who do
Ad7C22
36
Toshiba a reflection of you
Ad43C133
In 34, the narratees are included by their badge
you
. In 35, they are backgrounded in the use of an attribution, whereas in 36, they are included as well as
backgrounded with the employment of a noun phrase
a reflection
that denotes an attribution possessed by the narratees. It should be noted, though, that the presence of
the narratees is frequently accompanied by the product or brand representations, with a few exceptions when they are realized in the imperative grammatical construction.
On the contrary, the merchandise entities can be represented in the data without the involvement of the consumers, noted in 37 and 38. In both of these
instances, the involvement of the target consumers representations are absent in the brand symbolization 37 and identification 38. It suggests that the advertisements
intend to show that the narratees are the dependent entity of the consuming utilities that is a contradictory fact in the actual reality.
37
Hyundai | new thinking
Ad8C28
38
Zespri
|
New Zealand kiwifruit
Ad9C33
All in all, the inclusion and exclusion patterns of the four social actors imply that the brands and the products are the salient existence in the identity-building strategy of
the discourse. They embody an implication that they are the instant way to acquire the identities and lifestyles aspired by the narratees. Thus, the ‗inherent’ personalities
of the customers are being merchandised in the form of the brands andor the products.
4.2.2 The ActivePassive Representations
