CG 7
Language, Truth, and Advertising
Syllabus and Course Guidelines
Instructor: Julie Sedivy; 236 Metcalf Research Labs; 3-3383
Office hours: Tuesdays, 12-1; Wednesdays 11-12
TAs: Giulia Righi;
Jae Yung Song
Course Goals:
Advertising is fundamentally persuasive in nature. It is an attempt to get
you, the consumer, to act in some way that benefits whoever is doing the
advertising. At times, advertising seeks to achieve an impact by appealing
to your rational self-interest as a consumer in a direct and transparent way.
Other times, it seeks to have an impact in less direct ways, using techniques
whose effects may be difficult to consciously evaluate in real time as you
absorb the ad’s message. In this course, we will use advertising as a
backdrop for studying important aspects of how human communication
works. You will learn some of the basic methods and findings from the
scientific study of language as they apply to commonly-used advertising
tools. The course will focus on using this knowledge to make intelligent
observations about advertising that you encounter in daily life. Ultimately,
your new expertise should enable you to more consciously evaluate the
intended impact of certain advertising techniques. It should also provide
you with some of the conceptual tools you need to evaluate the scientific
soundness of laws and policies pertaining to advertising, and to design
research projects to further study the cognitive effects of specific
ingredients found in ads.
Course Content:
Week 1. Introduction and Background:
Persuasive communication, choice, and consumer rationality
Historical background
Week 2.Advertising claims, truth, and literal meaning
Evaluating literal meanings
Looking beyond literal meanings: connotation, evaluative language,
specificity & vagueness
Week 3-4 More non-literal meanings: Implications
Implied vs. asserted levels of meaning
Communicative assumptions of relevance and cooperativeness
Implications involving expressions of quantity and comparison
Quiz #1
Week 5. Presupposition
“Everyone knows it” -- using language to signal common knowledge
Week 6. Speech Acts
Communicative goals in context
“We’re not selling anything” -- Disguising the communicative functions
of ads
“Who says?” -- The importance of the communicative agent
Week 7. Constraining advertising practices
Evaluating current Federal Trade Commission criteria for deceptive
advertising
FTC guidelines for endorsements and testimonials
Limits on legal constraints
Week 8-9. Human inference and memory
Memory for linguistic form and meaning
The importance of what is forgotten: exploiting properties of selective
human memory
Quiz #2
Week 10-11: Association and memory
Association networks and memory links
What’s in a name? Word associations involving meaning and sound.
Brand names & trademark infringement
Week 12: Attention
Getting attention: incongruity, ambiguity and cognitive engagement
Managing attention: selective emphasis and de-emphasis
Tracking eye movements to study attention
Week 13: Language variation and audience targeting
Linguistic differences in dialect by geography, class, gender, register
Marketing identities
Quiz #3
Reading Week:
Review and exam preparation
Course Format
Monday and Wednesday meeting times will consist of lectures. On Fridays,
the class will divide into two smaller groups for more informal discussion of
the course material. Attendance at all classes is required.
Course Requirements
1. In-class quizzes 30
2. Journal 40
3. Final exam OR Final paper 30
The journal assignments will consist of responding to specific
exercises set in class. These will typically involve finding relevant examples
of ads and commenting on them, or conducting mini-experiments to
investigate concepts introduced during class. The Friday discussions will
revolve around the journal exercises.
If you have received a minimum of an average grade of B based on
the journal and quizzes by April 1, you may choose either a final exam or a
final paper. (If your grade averages less than a B, you must take the final
exam).
The final paper is to be approximately 15 types double-spaced pages,
and should consist of either
a) a research proposal for an empirical investigation of one of
the course topics applied to advertising. You must clearly
motivate and articulate a specific central hypothesis, and
propose a method and detailed study design to address it; or
b) a policy recommendation (at any level – organizational, local,
or national) based on scientific arguments, and incorporating
relevant class material.
Final papers are due on the date of the final exam.
Late papers will not be accepted. Seriously.
