Misleading Language
of English Advertising
Do advertisements sometimes distort the truth? Yes, some do. Every week
hundreds of thousands of advertisements appear for the very first time. Nearly
all of them play fair with the people they readdressed to. But a handful do
not. They misrepresent the products they are advertising. The job of
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is to make sure that these ads are
truthful. The ASA was not created by law and has no legal powers. Not
unnaturally some people are skeptical about its effectiveness. In fact the ASA
was set up by the advertising business to make sure the system of self control
worked in the public interest. For this to be credible, the ASA has to be
totally independent of the business. Neither the chairman nor the majority of
ASA council members is allowed to have any involvement in advertising. Though
administrative costs are met by a levy on the business, no advertiser has any
influence over ASA decisions.
The British Code of Advertising Practice with its 500 rules gives
advertisers precise practical guidance on what they can and cannot say. The
rules are also a gauge for media owners to assess the acceptability of any
advertising they are asked to publish. The Code covers magazines, newspapers,
cinema commercials, brochures, leaflets, posters, circulars posted to you, and
now commercials on video tapes. The ASA is not responsible for TV and radio
advertising.
If advertisers deceive the public, the first step is to ask them what
the ASA means or the public challenge to back up their claims with solid
evidence. If they cannot, or refuse to, their ads are amended or withdrawn
completely. Nearly all agree without any further argument. In any case the
publishers are informed about ads which contravene the Code. If the advertiser
refuses to withdraw the advertisement he will find it hard or impossible to
have it published.
There
are very strict rules about what can and can’t be said in advertising. Laws and
strict Codes of Practice mean that what you read is unlikely to be false. But
clever use of suggestion, music and photography make it quite easy to convey a
misleading impression. Advertising usually tells you only half of the story. An
advertisement for a food product might say that it is tasty and rich in
vitamins, without mentioning that it is also high in fat and sugars. The
language used in an advertisement is very important. Here are some examples of
phrases which are totally meaningless but can still be persuasive:
-
helps to combat grease and
dirt…
- this doesn’t say how effective the product is, how it must be used and
whether it is better than soap and water.
-
lasts up to three times longer… - the “up to”
here means there’s no guarantee that the product will last three times longer.
And it doesn’t tell you what it’s being compared with.
-
probably the best beer in the
world… this is just a matter of taste and opinion. A more informative
advertisement would say how it was made, packed and stored and why this made it
a better beer.
-
virtually no maintenance
required…another way of putting this might be “some maintenance is required”. The
double negative gives the misleading impression that the item is
maintenance-free.
-
scientifically tested: by whom? how?
-
farm-fresh eggs: this could still
mean eggs from battery-farmed chickens.
Connotations, bias and loaded language. The word “bias”
means “a slant”. So a biased word means “leaning to one side”. It is the
opposite of objective, balanced, neutral or impartial. The emotional (positive
or negative) associations that words can have are called connotations. Words
with bias are “loaded language” – “loaded” with connotations that can persuade
us to feel something or take one course of action rather than another. If words
(which are normally neutral) put in context, they can convey approval or
disapproval. For example:
|
Neutral |
Favorable connotation |
Unfavorable connotation |
|
smell |
perfume |
stench |
|
thin |
slender |
emaciated |
|
well-known |
famous |
notorious |
|
house |
home |
hovel |
|
solid |
well-built |
heavy |
|
small |
compact |
cramped |
|
outspoken |
assertive |
arrogant |
Real Estate advertisements: connotations and
misleading suggestions. Real estate advertisements are clever at turning
negative features into positive ones. They can cover up a harsh reality with a
positive word that “softens” the reality. For example, “small” becomes “cosy”,
“dark” becomes “intimate”. Such words or phrases are called euphemisms, such as
“collateral damage” which actually refers to “civilian deaths” in war. The
advertisement below contains many loaded words and positive connotations.
SEDUCIVE ALLURE OF
GLAMOUR & SOPHISTICATION
Unfolding like the pages of a fashionable interior
design magazine, this stunningly refurbished, single-level unit possesses all
the contemporary style and high-quality European features needed for a
life-style of sheer pleasure within close walking proximity to Lygon Street
shopping, Merri Creek parkland and city transport. 2 generous bedrooms with B/Rs, chic open-plan living and
dining, gourmet Blanco-appointed kitchen, private north-facing courtyard with
LU.
While
trying to persuade or present a point of view people use some common
techniques: contradiction, over-generalisation, stereotyping, bias and
prejudice, assumption, irrelevance, false cause and effect, begging the
question/ arguing in a circle.
Stereotypes. A stereotype (noun) is a view
of a group of people that reduces them all to a few simple, common
characteristics so that everyone in the group is believed to be the same. The
individual is ignored. To stereotype (verb) means to judge everyone in a group
as if they are the same and all share a few exaggerated features. No individual
really conforms totally to any group image. But advertisers often use
stereotypes.
Prejudice. Prejudice means having your
mind made up or making a judgement about things or people before you have the
facts or evidence.
Bias. Bias means favouring one side
unfairly (without good reason or evidence). Cultural bias means judging all
other things or other people from the point of your own culture. This often
occurs in the media and in advertising.
Generalisations. Advertisers can include
generalisations in their claims. A generalisation is a statement made about a
whole category. The bigger the generalisation the more likely it is to be
invalid as it’s harder to find enough evidence to cover all cases in the
category. Common generalisations in advertisements are statements like “always
works”, “for every boy and girl”, “no one understands money better than we do.”
“It worked for me and it’ll work for you!”
So, what makes an advertisement misleading? If a training course had turned a 7 stone weakling into Mr.
Universe the fact could be advertised because it had been proved. But a promise
to build “you” into a 15 stone he-man would have us flexing our muscles because
the promise could not always be kept.
“Make you look younger” might be a reasonable claim for a cosmetic. But
pledging to “take years off your life” would be an overclaim akin to a promise
of eternal youth.
A garden centre’s claim that its seedlings would produce a “riot of
colour in just a few days” might be quite contrary to the reality. Such flowery
prose would deserve to be pulled out by the roots.
If a brochure advertised a hotel as being “5 minutes walk to the beach”,
it must not require an Olympic athlete to do it in the time.
As for estate agents, if the phrase “overlooking the river”, translated
to “backing onto a ditch”, there would be nothing for it but to show their ad
the door.
Looking behind the
ad: implicit and explicit messages. Advertisements are
made to sell a product or service. For each product, for example, a diet soft
drink, there are so many competing brands out there, that it is difficult to
boost sales simply from a straightforward advertisement showing the soft drink
can. Modern advertisements must therefore sell more than just the product in
order to boost sales. An advertisement will often have an explicit message, “here is a great product, buy it!”, and
also an implicit message, “if you buy
this product, you will get closer to being as attractive as the people you can
see in this ad, and you will get closer to living the lifestyle that they have.”
Advertisers
sell an image, a lifestyle, a look as well as a product. They know that a
product will become popular if it is placed in the context of an attractive,
desirable or “cool” lifestyle. If consumers see an advertisement that portrays
behaviour, culture, attitudes and values that they admire, they will come to
associate the product with this implicit “lifestyle” or “image”.
Gender stereotypes in advertising. It’s often argued
that our society’s dominant view of gender is stereotyped and men do/are like “all girls and women do/are”… It’s all
too easy to view the two genders as contrasting categories, composed of binary
opposites “men are like this, but women
are like that”. In fact, a lot of our social development is based on ideas
about gender difference. Individuals often do conform to the stereotypes
because of social conditioning.
Since
advertisements make up a large part of our culture, they can contribute to how
we view men and women. They can reinforce the stereotypes and encourage us to
conform to them. Many modern advertisements target a younger age group by
challenging traditional gender stereotypes. Here is a list of words often used in
advertisements about body care and treatments: lean, hard, streamlined, light,
flowing, slender, clean, smooth, delicate, sleek, fluid, muscled, taut,
graceful, sinuous, sharp, curves, polished, rugged, silky, dynamic.
The
British Code of Advertising Practice is very important. Unfortunately some
advertisers are unaware of the code, and breach the rules unwittingly. Others
forget, bend or deliberately ignore the rules. That is why the ASA keeps a
continuous check on advertising. But because of the sheer volume, it cannot
monitor every advertiser all the time and that’s why they encourage the public
to help by telling them about any advertisements they think ought not to have
appeared.