Language and Narrative of the 20th Century
The Language of Advertising
The Advertising Language
Advertising: The technique of communication that can be presented in various media (press, radio, television). Propaganda is a concept very close to advertising. Propaganda’s purpose is to sell an ideology, while advertising’s purpose is to sell a commercial product.
AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Advertising Products:
- The Spot: It is a test of visual narrative and character, very poetic, subjective, that appeals to the receiver. It’s accompanied by a final slogan.
- The Advertising Story: Descriptive-expository visual text of considerable duration. It explains in detail the properties of the product.
Features of Advertising Language
- Color: Colors are very connotative, with hidden symbolism that is shared by all members of a cultural community.
- Rhetorical Figures: They have particular importance in this connotative language, seeking to draw the attention of the consumer.
The Structure of Advertising Language
- The Tagline: It is the phrase that sums up the advertising message. It must be short and contain a lot of information in a little time and space, easy to remember and attention-grabbing.
- Ad copy: It can focus in many ways. In principle, it could be an informational text about the characteristics of the product.
- Advertised Brand or Logo: Sometimes its lyrics and a well-studied graphic design identify the advertising brand.
Subliminal Advertising
- Camouflaged Messages: Associated more directly with subliminal advertising.
- Indirect Messages: Often used in advertising. For example, a character in the ad appears happy and satisfied.
Punctuation
Writing graphics are signs that delimit, identify, or characterize the texts and aspects of syntax.
Punctuation Marks
- Comma: This punctuation mark serves to mark short breaks in the discourse.
- Semicolon: Marks an intermediate pause, longer than the comma and shorter than the period.
- Period: Indicates a long break in the text, separating independent fragments.
- Ellipsis: Always three dots, written directly after the word they accompany.
- Colon: Indicates an average pause.
Language and Meaning
The Signifier and the Meaning
- Signifier: The string of sounds associated with a particular mindset. This string, issued phonetically or as an image, evokes a concept in those who share the same language.
- Meaning: The concept or image associated with a specific signifier. All speakers of our language associate the word “table” with the image of a table.
Denotative and Connotative Meanings
- Denotative: The dictionary meaning, objective and shared by all speakers of the language.
- Connotative: Refers to the socio-cultural, historical, ideological, and emotional significance of a word. It is related to the subjective ideas that each speaker has.
Social Change and Language
The social change that affects the individual depends on the socio-cultural level. We speak of diastratic variation when we refer to the language of speakers according to the social groups to which they belong.
Factors of Social Variation
- Age: The language of adults tends to be more traditional, with fixed and stereotyped structures. Young people have more pronounced linguistic variations due to age-appropriate characteristics.
- Residential Place: Rural language is usually more conservative, maintaining an older vocabulary and sentence structure. Urban language is more permeable to changes and innovations, slowly losing old structures and vocabulary.
- Sex: It should not be a factor, as we strive for equality between men and women.
- Social Class: Belonging to one social class or another is a factor of linguistic variation. The most marginalized social classes are characterized by using a lexically poorer language.
- Profession: Profession or employment is one of the factors that most affect social variation.
Non-discriminatory Language
- Sexist Language: Legislation indicates that although men and women are equal and have the same rights, reality sometimes shows different uses.
- Classist and Racist Language: Other realities that are often reflected in certain language expressions.
Narrative of the Twentieth Century
Europe was in a situation of great social and economic change. Realism and naturalism had begun to give way to modernism.
Modernist Fiction
Some artistic and literary expressions were of great importance for modernism, including the novel.
Symbolist Novel
Modernism sought new aesthetic models for its stories and found them in the symbolist novel.
Narrative of Other Trends
There were other literary movements such as narrative fiction and decadent customs.
Narrative of the 20s: Noucentisme
Noucentisme was a brake on the development of the novel, since its intentions were didactic. Noucentists preferred other genres, such as the short story.
Narrative of the War
- Psychological Novel: This narrative is characterized by neglecting the plot and focusing on the inner life of the characters.
- Realist Novel: Also known as social realism, it seeks to denounce the oppression suffered by the popular classes.
- Testimonial Novel: A type of realist novel that seeks to tell the author’s own experiences.
- Experimental Novel: Consists of creating texts with experimental techniques and new resources.
- Fantastic Fiction: These stories emerged in the 50s, influenced by cinema and painting, with a taste for fantastic themes and resources.
Narrative of the Present
From the 70s, cultural and literary improvements arose due to the fall of the Franco regime in Spain. European influences arrived with the cultural revolution of May 68 in Paris. Authors present a rebellious attitude. During the 80s, language, literature, and culture in general stabilized thanks to the normality that society experienced in all areas.