Emotional Appeals in Children’s Powdered Milk Advertising Language Across Cultures

Authors: Zhu Li, Ang Lay Hoon (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia)
Speaker: Zhu Li
Topic: Language in Real and Virtual Spaces
The (SCOPUS / ISI) SOAS GLOCAL CALA 2020 General Session

Abstract

Advertising, as a form of social communication, is considered to be particularly reflective of cultural values, so does children’s powdered milk advertising. Emotional appeals in an advertisement are the extent to which advertising relies on building affective or subjective impressions of intangible aspects of a product, including such appeals as humor, guilt, fear, nostalgia and sympathy. This qualitative study, involving children’s powdered milk advertising whose targeted consumers are parents with children at age 0-6, examines the languages of thirty Chinese and American children’s powdered milk advertisements, such as phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and usage. The finding illustrates the similarities and differences between the languages of children’s powdered milk advertisements, and shows different emotional appeals of children’s powdered milk advertising in both countries.

Keywords: Advertising, Emotional Appeals