The explicature used in the printed advertisements of “a” Mild Cigarette

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on analyzing the printed advertisement of "A" Mild cigarette, which is produced by PT. Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna and using the theory of explicature as the part of Relevance Theory of Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson. Explicature is a part of pragmatic study concerning with anything that is inferred from an utterance describing the full propositional form whose indeterminacies have been resolved by a process of inference. The advertisement of ”A" Mild as the core of information in persuading public's thought about the advantage of the cigarette product is printed in the form of sentence or utterance through the messages often conveyed to create brand image. Based on that background, the research about the explicature used in the printed advertisement of "A" Mild cigarette was conducted to the following problem: How is the explicature used in the printed advertisement of "A" Mild cigarette?

This research was conducted using descriptive qualitative method based on the explicature as the part of Relevance Theory of Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson. The data were in the form of sentences or utterances derived from the files of the printed advertisement, which had been advertised. The data were selected from August 2000 to December 2004.

Data analysis revealed some findings covering the formulated research question. First, the explicature could be developed in specification vague terms, supplying empty categories with content, word sense disambiguation, reference assignment and relations with events and states. So, the categories of explicature were used to flesh out the linguistic clues of an utterance when it is implicitly stated, vague its terms, and empty categories or words which are incomplete.

Second, the printed advertisement of "A" Mild does not take any political agreement, but reaches an intended sale by creating brand image. In addition, every utterance has minimum words but has maximum meaning. So, it is relevant related to contextual effect as effectively as possible.

Based on those findings, it is recommended to audiences to understand the "A” Mild advertisement by explicating it related to contextual effect. In addition, it is also recommended for the next researchers to conduct researches on daily conversation in society finding out the implicated premises and implicated conclusion. Furthermore, Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory of higher-level explicature is also suggested to be used in conducting the researches on the same area.