A Systemic Functional Analysis of the Advertisement of the Cadd

[pic] A Systemic Functional Analysis of the Advertisement of the CADD A statistic in 2008 shows that around one in six deaths on roads caused by drunk drivers. People may have wrong judgment and slower reaction after they drunk alcohols. A traffic accident is most likely to occur in such situations. As a consequence, a variety of campaigns have taken numerous actions to persuade people not to drink and drive. They built websites, and published advertisements and videos to promote their ideas. The Campaign Against Drinking & Driving is one of them.

CADD is trying to free people whose relatives have died or injured in drunk driving from sorrows. This short essay will analyze a public service advertisement against drink and drive published in the website of the CADD. The visual images, verbal texts, and the linkage between them will be discussed in systemic functional approaches. The advertisement is displayed in a horizontal angle which involves viewers’ reflection. Two elements, a collection of smashed glasses and the sentence “ What’s the price of a bottle of wine” are most salient in their color and size.

In a blank background, the green glasses and the red sentence are enlarged to attract viewers’ attention. Furthermore, the distance between viewers and the visual image become intimate by close shot. Firstly, some visual metaphors can easily observed from the visual image of this advertisement. The shape of broken bottle is identical to a crashed car. The target domain is a collection of smashed glasses, while the source domain is a crashed car. The separated segment can be seen as the tyre of the crashed car. In addition, some small glasses that arranged to two lines can be regarded as car tracks.

The designer used a broken bottle to form a scene of a car accident. The connection between the broken bottle and the crashed car is the wine, namely, the alcohol. It warns implicitly that a car accident will happen if the intake of alcohol is excessive. Apart from the connotation the metaphors contain, some other elements abd styles of representation are consisdered as carrriers of connotation (Machin,2007). Firstly, the participant can be analyzed. As there is no participant in the “crashed car”, it can be concluded that the result of drunk driving is being a victim in a car accident.

Then, the color of these visual images also has connotations. The color of headline and text is red, while the wine bottle is green. Since the background is blank, these two contrastive colors form a sharp contrast to attract viewers’ attention. The red color also means warning, so that viewers will put more attention on the headline and text. Additionally, the linguistic messages cause the advertisement’s purpose more explicit. There are two clauses in the advertisement. The first clause is a special question which asks for the viewers’ responses.

The designer wanted viewers to give an answer of “price”. According to the analysis, the “price” in the headline “what’s the price of a bottle of wine” can be analyzed in three levels. The first level is analyzing from its denotation. The “price” in this level will be the value labeled in the goods shelf. The second and third level meanings are connoted in the background. The “price” in these two levels are more likely consequences of drunk driving. As this advertisement aimed at persuading people not to drink and drive, the connotation of “price” can be derived from it.

The “price” paid in the second level is drunk drivers’ health, even the life. In order to understand the third level, the background of the Campaign Against Drinking & Driving should be introduced. One of the CADD aims is providing support to the families of victims killed or injured by drunk drivers (CADD). If a person killed or injured because of drinking alcohol over legal limit, his relatives will in grief for a long time. As a consequence, the “price” in the third level is the sorrows of relatives. A word play the designer made can be noticed after analyzed the three levels the headline contains.

The viewers will understand the meaning of headline by digging into the word “price”. After the advertisement having guided viewers to consider the the consequences of drunk driving, the designer raise his idea timely in the following text. “Don’t drink and drive” is an imperative sentence which expresses the attitude of persuasion. If visual images linked together with linguistics messages, the advertisement will be understood better. The headline and the broken bottle are complementary in achieving the goal of the advertisement. The verbal texts appears in the top, and the image forms an illustration of it.

A question is introduced by the headline, and the broken car extended viewers’ understanding of this question. The viewers are led to the direction of the relationship between the wine and the car. In this way, the visual image extends the understanding of the verbal information. In addition, the second clause also can related with the logo in the advertisement. The logo was comprised of four capital letters: CADD; which is the abbreviation of the Campaign Against Drinking & Driving. The idea that transmitted by the campaign is not drinking and driving, which expresses the same meaning with the text.

Moreover, there are a wine glass in the first letter D, while a car key in the latter letter D, and red slashes cut the letters. As a result of special form of letters, the topic of the advertisement is pointed out: do not drink and drive. Additionally, the red slashes echo the color used in the text and the headline, which connects the elements in this advertisement closely. In conclusion, this essay analyzed the visual images, linguistic messages and the connection between them in systematic functional approaches. The purpose of this advertisement is persuading people not to drink and drive.

The designer guided people to think about the consequences of drunk driving in visual and verbal messages, then the designer’s purpose is achieved by a persuasive way. However, because the publisher of this advertisement is a campaign that mainly helps the drunk drivers’ relatives, more attention will be attracted, if some information about those people added. Word count:1022 Reference Machin, D. (2007) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis, Hodder Education CADD Retrieved from http://cadd. org. uk/aims. htm This advertisement is retrieved from http://gongyi. hexun. com/2011-08-12/132383278. html