Multimodality in German and Turkish TV-Commercials: A Comparative Analysis of Ritter Sport and Eti Commercials
İrem AtasoyToday, with the advance of technology, our communication types have gained a multimodal characteristic. Therefore, nowadays texts are no longer seen as monomodal structures, which only include verbal information, but as multimodal structures, that combine different semiotic codes such as language (written and/or spoken), image (still and/or moving), music (jingle and/or song and/or instrumental) and sound (natural and/or artificial). These structures are called multimodal texts in linguistics and semiotics. Multimodal texts have a great potential for meaning making. In linguistics and semiotics, TV-Commercials are defined as multimodal texts, which use verbal, visual and auditory resources to convince a specific target group of buying a specific product or service. TV-Commercials are considered as one of the most analyzed multimodal text types in these two fields. The aim of this study is to analyze German and Turkish TV-Commercials with a multimodal oriented approach. This paper also presents the similarities and differences between the multimodal structures of the analyzed TVCommercials, respectively, multimodal texts, in two different languages. The corpus is comprised of TV-Commercials of chocolate and/or chocolate containing products which are produced by the German brand Ritter Sport and the Turkish brand Eti between 2010-2016. The analysis criteria have been defined moving towards a multimodal oriented method, that is based on text linguistics and text semiotics. The analysis focuses on the following modalities which are used in the selected corpus such as language, image, music and sound, as well as their submodalities and the intermodal relations between them.
Almanca ve Türkçe Televizyon Reklamlarında Çok Katmanlılık: Ritter Sport ve Eti Reklamları Üzerine Karşılaştırmalı Bir İnceleme
İrem AtasoyGünümüzde gelişmekte olan teknolojinin de etkisiyle birlikte bildirişim biçimlerimizin çok katmanlı bir düzlemde gerçekleşmeye başlaması sonucunda ürettiğimiz ve karşılaştığımız metinler, tek katmanlı salt dilsel yapılar yerine, farklı gösterge sistemlerinden dil (yazılı ve/veya sözlü), görüntü (hareketli ve/veya hareketsiz), müzik (reklam melodisi ve/veya şarkı ve/veya enstrümental), ses (doğal ve/veya yapay) katmanlarını içeren ve anlam üretiminde bu katmanların tamamının farklı işlevler üstlenerek birbirini tamamladığı çok katmanlı yapılara dönüşmüştür. Bu yapılar dilbilim ve göstergebilimde çok katmanlı metinler olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Çok katmanlı metinler arasında bu iki bilimsel disiplinin en fazla incelediği türlerden biri televizyon reklamlardır. Televizyon reklamları hem dilbilim hem de göstergebilim alanında uygun dilsel, görsel ve işitsel göstergeleri kullanarak belli bir hedef kitleyi belirli bir ürün ya da hizmeti satın alması yönünde harekete geçirmeyi amaçlayan çok katmanlı metinler olarak tanımlanır. Bu çalışmanın amacı Almanca ve Türkçe televizyon reklamlarını çok katmanlı metin yaklaşımıyla karşılaştırmalı olarak inceleyerek bu iki farklı dildeki reklamların çok katmanlı yapıları arasındaki benzerliklerle farklılıkları ortaya çıkarmaktır. Bütünce olarak 2010-2016 yılları arasında yayınlanan Almanca ve Türkçe çikolata ve/veya çikolata içeren ürünlerin reklamları seçilmiştir. Seçilen reklamlar Alman Ritter Sport ve Türk Eti markalarına aittir. Çalışmada kullanılan ölçütler metindilbilim ve metin göstergebilim temelli çok katmanlı metin anlayışından yola çıkılarak belirlenmiştir. Yapılan çözümlemede bütüncedeki reklamlarda kullanılan dil, görüntü, müzik ve ses katmanları, alt katmanlarıyla birlikte ele alınarak bu katmanların arasındaki bağlantılar üzerinde durulmuştur.
Today, with the advance of technology, our communication types have gained a multimodal characteristic. Therefore, nowadays texts are no longer seen as monomodal structures, which only include verbal messages, but as multimodal structures, that combine different semiotic codes such as language (written and/or spoken), image (still and/or moving), music (jingle and/or song and/or instrumental) and sound (natural and/ or artificial). These structures are called multimodal texts in linguistics and semiotics. Multimodal texts have a great potential for meaning making. In linguistics and semiotics, TV-Commercials are defined as multimodal texts, which use verbal, visual and auditory resources to convince a specific target group of buying a specific product or service. For this reason, they are considered as one of the most analyzed multimodal text types in these two fields. The aim of this study is to analyze German and Turkish TV-Commercials with a multimodal oriented approach. This paper also presents the similarities and differences between the multimodal structures of the analyzed TV-Commercials, respectively, multimodal texts, in two different languages. The corpus is comprised of 20 TVCommercials of chocolate and/or chocolate containing products which are produced by the German brand Ritter Sport and the Turkish brand Eti between the years 2010 and 2016. For each language, ten different TV-Commercials of the mentioned brands are chosen randomly by considering the criteria that they contain the following modalities: language, image, music and sound. The analysis criteria have been defined moving towards a multimodal oriented theory, that is based on text linguistics and text semiotics. The analysis focuses on the following modalities which are used in the selected corpus such as language, image, music and sound, as well as their submodalities and the intermodal relations between them. All selected TV-Commercials which comprise the corpus of this study have been analyzed by using the mentioned criteria. Since a detailed analysis of each TV-Commercial is very comprehensive, only one data is chosen from each language to show an itemized examination. The results of the analysis have been separately presented for each language, and comparatively interpreted by pointing out the similarities and differences between the analyzed TV-Commercials in German and Turkish languages. The detailed analysis of the modalities and intermodal relations of the researched TV-commercials has indicated that there are many similarities in the following modalities and submodalities; language - word types, image - visual items, color, light, camera range, and camera angle. It has been found that both German and Turkish TV-Commercials use similar verbal and visual modalities. The use of the brand names and the substantives “Schokolade (DE) / çikolata (TR)” as keywords is remarkable in all the selected TVCommercials in both languages. This can be related with the brands’ values and advertised products. One of the most significant similarities between the analyzed TVCommercials is the connection between eating chocolate and being happy. To emphasize this relationship, similar visual and verbal modalities have been used synchronously, which are assisted by auditory modalities such as music and/or sound in the analyzed TV-Commercials. The analysis also detects that the intermodal connections between the modalities and submodalities in the selected TV-Commercials in the two languages are very coherent and compatible. This can be explained by the increasing impact of the globalization in advertising. The results of the study have also shown that there are some differences in the use of the modalities music, sound, and the usage rate of the modalities in the examined German and Turkish TV-Commercials. In the analyzed German TV-Commercials, the same brand jingle called Colors of Life is played, whereas a different instrumental song is played in each Turkish TV-Commercial as background music. Besides, the intensive use of chocolate bar breaking sounds to indicate the quality of the advertised product is very significant in the Turkish TV-Commercials. The differences between the analyzed TVCommercials in the German and Turkish languages can be associated with the brands’ values and types of the advertised products.According to the results of the multimodal analysis, there are more similarities than differences between the analyzed German and Turkish TV-Commercials. However, in terms of the use of the modalities, each language has an original characteristic. Based on the results of the multimodal oriented examination, this study demonstrates that due to the increasing globalization, TV-Commercials are becoming much more alike in their fundamental characteristics, even if they are created in different languages.