Abstract

The advertisement is basically the part of the daily lives of people. It is the type of social
process that connects the individuals. It influences the customer to purchase the product. It
grabs the attention of the consumer. This research studies the linguistic tools used by a
telecommunication company. Fairclough model is used as methodology and the findings
reveal that advertiser grabs people attention by adding different features and hide the inner
information. This study has a critical insight to understand the effect of advertisement on
society.

Introduction
The advertisement is the link between user and producer. It helps to get new information

about the product. It links between user and producer. Telecommunication industry works all

over the world through globalization. Mobile communication in Pakistan specifically

increased day by day due to unlimited offers are given by network. These network agencies

use advertising to attract customers. In this competitive market, they use different tools to

develop effective communication to grab the attention of the consumer. These agencies play

with a variety of linguistics agencies. (Islam, 2013) In most of the cases, agencies use

discourses to convince their consumers to take their services. The advertisement is not only

for promotion but also depict the social culture. These advertisements have a long-lasting

effect on our society and reflect about influential groups. The discourse of advertisement

reflects its power to charm the user and have control over them. This study focuses on how

different mobile telecommunication uses their discourses to promote their services, to

influence consumer and to grab customer attention and its effect on society. The word

‘advertere’ is a Latin word which means to ‘turn toward’. Advertising and advertisement are

derived from the base word. The customer gets the different chances to know about different

products and their services.

Cook (2001) defines in his book that advertising is everywhere in the society. Our attitude

toward advertisement is according to our ideological position and personality. There are
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different influences of advertising. First one is advertisement can influence society good or
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bad and secondly some Ads are bad because they portray female body and sexism etc.

advertisement use fiction, action, photography, cartoons, rhythms, enjoyable and memorable.

The advertisement is homogenous internationally. Discourse as complex as advertising.

Sometimes discourse is separate from ads and the picture shows its meaning clearly. Zong 4g

is a telecommunication company in Pakistan and it is the only company which gives 4g

internet with super fast speed. It provides bundles of offers to its customers and increases

their profit and selling.

Other AD Participants

Situation Function
An AD

Language Substances

Paralanguage
Pictures
Society
Music

Fig.1 (Interaction of elements in Ads) (Cook, 2001)

Theoretical framework
In critical discourse analysis, a model of Fairclough is applied as a theoretical framework. It

gives three dimensions. First one relates to written and spoken text. Secondly, it involved

discursive practice in which the production and interpretation of text involved. The third

dimension relates to social practice. These dimensions included objects to analyse like verbal,

visual etc. The text is just not related to the sentence but also involved images, signs, colours

etc. In the second dimension, the process involved related to the production and reception of

objects. It involves listening, reading, viewing, speaking. It answers the questions like who
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are the manufactures. What are their objectives? In the third dimension, power is involved in
the whole process. How discourse is used as social practice. In the advertisement, researcher

has to analyse both their written and oral discourse and check out how they influence society

through their discourse.

Text
analysis/
TEXT description
 Representing
 Relating
 Identifying Processing
analysis/
DISCURSIVE PRACTICE Interpretation
(Production, distribution, consumption)

Social
SOCIAL PRACTICE (order of discourse) analysis/
Explanation

Fig.2 (Fairclough dimensions of discourse analysis) (Janks, 1997:27)

Objective
 To identify the behavioural changes brings through advertisement towards a specific

network.

 To analyse how linguistic tools articulate telecommunication message.

 To check the impact of advertisement on the life of the consumer.

Purpose of study
The purpose of this study is to analyse the discourse of the Ads with the help of Fairclough

model.
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Limitation of study

This research is limited to one network. Only zong 4G is to be analysed than any other

network. This study is specified in advertisement only. This study is limited to Pakistan

telecommunication company Zong. Only one advertisement is to be focused here.

Literature review
In this chapter, the researcher will discuss what is advertisement and discourse of the

advertisement. What is the effect of critical discourse of advertisement and how

telecommunication discourse affects society?

The advertisement is defined as an audio or visual form of communication to sell the product.

To attract the customer, advertiser adds different types of portrays, images, sound, nature,

feature relates to something interesting. In the advertisement, major stakeholder is its

producer, consumer and agencies. Advertising techniques show how a product can solve your

problem. Different magazines, billboards, TV, radio, social media are the sources used to

give advertisement of a product. To increase the profit or to sell a product or to give

information to the consumer about their product, the manufacturer use advertisement as a

tool. (Kuldip Kaur, 2013)

Cook (2001) defines the advertisement that it is used to inform, influence and persuade

people towards the product. Advertisement theme is not to sell a product but also change the

thinking process of people. It also affects your cognition towards buying of something. It

develops identity, awareness and to give warning to the people. There is one perspective of

advertisement is related to gender. In the advertisement, the publisher adds females and

relates their feature with the product to attract the customer. So somehow advertisement also

plays a negative role in the society. In the local context of CDA, the advertisement is not
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much important.
Blommaert, (2005) defines discourse as a language in action. It engages complex linguistic

form larger than a sentence. It defines a language structure used by people. All human

activity relates to social, cultural and historical patterns. Discourse used as a social practice

and social events. In the advertisement, discourse reflects the identity of telecommunication.

Two powers affect the discourse like a social agent and social practices. To analyse the

discourse of advertisement, linguistic and semiotic analysis.

Discourse is not the only use of language but also other things include in it. “Whatever

signifies or having meaning can be considered part of the discourse.” (as cited in Miller,

1997, p.13)

Many times advertisement is considered as entertainment like good music, wonderful

imagery, and information about fashion. The advertisement is considered bad when they

attract people towards those which people actually do not do. Wodak (2009) illustrates that

the advertisement gives different information. There are different kinds of advertisement.

Printed advertisements published in the newspaper, leaflet, broadcast on media.

One type of advertisement where organization use product vs. company without using the

product. Secondly directly approach through overstatement vs. no approach. Thirdly quality

matters vs. adding humour and emotions. Fourthly using different media after a long time vs.

in short time product get noticed. And in last long copy found in the local newspaper. (as

cited in Simpson & Mayor, 2010, p.34)

Faircolough and Wodek (1997) define CDA as “language use in written and spoken text as a

form of social practice.” He added seven features related to critical discourse analysis.it

focuses on the properties of language. It also talks about power, ideology and reality.

Research questions
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 How does discourse interpret by Zong network?

  How the language of advertisement influence people?

 What is the impact of advertisement on consumers?

Research methodology
In this research, the researcher has to analyse the advertisement of Zong telecommunication.

Researcher uses the critical discourse analysis as a methodology. To analyse the effect of

advertisement on the life of people. And to check how the producer uses advertisement as

promotion tools to increase their sale. The researcher will use Fairclough model to analyse

the data.

Data collection
Data is collected through electronic media. The researcher chooses the pictures of

advertisement from Google to analyse them. The researcher collects different picture without

sampling. Most frequent and updated pictures are gathered to analyse. The television

advertisement is just watched to get the main idea of Zong telecommunication.

Data analysis
The discourse of advertisement is analysed through Fairclough (1995) three-dimensional

model. It gives three aspects as mentioned above.

Font size
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 Different font
size

Use of fonts:
In print, media font is strongly noticeable. In advertisement as seen in above example

different font size used for different information. Different size of text shows that most

important information is highlighted. Which information attracts the customer is written in

bold size and capital letters and the terms and condition are written in small letters in one

corner. So that customer gets the product without any condition. These are the tactics used by

the ad maker to grab the attention of the customer.

Comparison
with other
networks

Comparison:
As stated in an advertisement for the 4G feature. Only Zong have a 4G feature in Pakistan

and it compares itself with other telecommunication. It creates an attraction for its customer.

As the world becomes a global village, this is a technology time period and everybody wants

to keep updated. To get connected with other world people want the fast network.
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 Code mixing

Code-mixing and switching

Marketer adds some attractive feature in their advertisement so that they can grab the

attention of the consumer. The main theme is to sell their product by creating it more

interesting. As the above figure shows the mixing of Urdu and English. Urdu is added “ab sab

ka Hoga” it shows the value of language in the advertisement. Word “attack” is used to

attract the attention. As something important is going to be explained. To mix the English

language with national languages brings its value globally. It can also develop the concept of

attack on different websites in one time through zong 4G.

This figure displays the special idea that attracts the specifical students. As mentioned above

in bold letters about offer just for students. Nowadays most of the students do their work

through the internet and need internet all the time. The young generation will attract from

such offers and pick this product. But one hidden thing is the packages that they did not

mention about price and offers. As shown boys and girls chatting and using mobile, so it
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affects our social practice. Without any written text they give the message about youth
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frankness and environment of universities. Advertisement never used complete sentence but

it gives proper meaning even in a short phrase.

Only the symbols are used to gives the message. In the above figure, cars show their feature

of speed and models of cars show that which one has much more speed. And their colour

difference shows the assimilation of the car with zong. So without discourse, you can

understand the meaning easily. And the above statement shows that the right network keeps

you on track easily.

Rhythm and rhyme

The main idea is to attract the consumer and it can be done by adding different characteristics

like rhyming words or colourful images, young boys and girls, latest fashion and highlighting

the attractive message. So these are some tactics used by all advertisers. Zong has one quality

of 4g on the basis of which most of the consumer get attracted.

Conclusion
This research shows how discourse gives meaning verbally and written. It also shows that in
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the advertisement the societal perspective is kept in mind to attract the attention. Most of the
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advertiser use the different tactics like changing offers, changing the area of selected

consumers, grabbing the attention of one specific city, adding features that are unavailable to

some areas etc. it is concluded that advertisement affects afterlife in different ways depending

on our interest and values. Fairclough model shows that sometimes only text grab the

consumer and sometimes social practice effects. Researcher getting one point that discourse

matter a lot in the life and language use construct our identity. Advertisement play with the

minds of customers. It is understood that the language of the telecommunication is capable

enough to take actions. The creative producer focus on the hidden intentions to impress

customers. They play tricks on it. Mobile networking effects the social life and

telecommunication get the advantage of it. On one hand, they make life comfortable and easy

by giving different offers but on another hand, they damage the youth through focusing their

attention towards useless things.

Recommendations

The advertiser should make such ad that gives the complete information about the product,

about what the advertisement means for. They must focus on language that how it impacts in

the good or bad way in the society. The government should restrict towards these companies

to give complete information to the customer and should not lead bad impression of society.

Further study

According to (Cook, 2001) “ advertising is the form of literature”. This study focuses on the

language of one telecommunication company so there is a lot more to understand. Different

products use different ways of advertising to sell their product through different media can be

analysed.
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Abbreviations:

Ad* advertisement
CDA* critical discourse analysis
DA* discourse analysis

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References
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Kuldip Kaur, N. A. (2013). Beauty Product Advertisements: A Critical Discourse Analysis.

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