1-P3 Adverting and Culture

After reading Freedman and Jurafsky’s essay “Authenticity in America”, I was surprised about the large amount of information we can find just through the food advertising. And it turns out that the advertisements of potato chips directly represent a relationship between the culture, language and food. In rhetorical thinking, in author’s opinion, the advertisements are made by targeting different kinds of customers, especially about the customers’ class and income. So obviously, people from different class, income, works have different culture and value. As for the different customers, the advertisements have totally different pints and foci to make the products more attractive.

Freedman and Jurafsky concerned about the language used in the advertisements. They agree with the idea that language is a powerful market of group identity, because language differences are closely related to the socioeconomic class. And they explore the connection of potato chips, culture and language in high-falutin, health, distinction and authenticity. I can clearly figure out the difference in each part, mainly based on the price of potato chips and their targeting customers. Because the different culture people have, they focus on different aspects in each part. In theese analysis of potato chips advertising, I think the direction is very interesting. In the lower class, people expressed preferences for some traditional food. The high status instead tended to value and eats more exotic foods. As for the food advertising part, they differentiate chips by testing the linguistic of comparison and negation words. And it turns out that more expensive one is willing to use words to compare with other brands. It also reflects the culture of the upper-class in the United States.

One thing that I imagine in the food advertising analysis is the way they get people’s attention, which also will be concerned in every advertisement. Actually, I do not think people will pay attention to what you say in the first place, because there are too many advertisements in the market now. From my experience, for the high volume of food choice in the market, people only pay attention to the food that can catch their attention. Then they began to read content that the Freedman and Jurafsky discussed in the essay. Different food may have different ways to show in the advertisement to become eye-catching among all the food. What’s more, people’s diverse tastes also become an important factor for the producer to concern about. For example, a chocolate advertisement but only show a simple chocolate, but also a star eating it on TV advertising. Actually, when people watch the advertisement, they would focus more on the star’s face, because most of them believe that the facial expression can represent the taste of the chocolate in a profound and vivid way. People usually focus on it taste. However, some girls are more likely to pay attention to the appearance, and they even screaming when they see the Chocolate waterfall in a TV advertisement. This might be another point for people to do analysis.