Explicatures used in slogans of Yellow Pages advertisements media

ABSTRACT

This ‘Yellow research Pages’ of focuses on analyzing the written text from slogans of advertisements media published by PT. Telkom using the explicature theory proposed by Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson. Explicature is a part form. relevance theory that is inferred from original utterance to a fully propositional The advertisement has a main part in the consumers to buy or use certain product/ service, namely slogan. A slogan is a ‘hook’ to gain readers/ consumers’ attention. In addition, slogan has to be short but represent the advertiser message about the products/ services offered and easy persuading to remember. Based on the background, this research about the explicature used in slogans of ‘Yellow Pages’ advertisements media was further conducted with the following research problem: how are the explicatures used in slogans of ‘Yellow Pages’ advertisements media?

This research was conducted using descriptive qualitative method based on the explicature theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson. The data were in the form of from phrase and sentences derived from written text of slogans found in ‘Yellow Pages’ 2005 edition in order to get the most up to date publication. The data were selected exclusive and display advertisements form which contain explicature.
After analyzed the data, some findings covering the formulated research problem are revealed. First, constructing a hypothesis about explicit content (explicature) via disambiguation decoding (supplying (developed empty in categories specification with content, vague word terms), sense disambiguation by adding some new words related with the context), reference resolution (through presupposition, inference that including cognitive effect) and other enrichment process (through relating it with the encyclopedic knowledge of certain states of product or service offered). So, the explicature were used to complete the linguistic clue from the advertiser uttered in a slogan which is usually stated in vague terms and incomplete sentence.

Second, some slogans usually mentioned the name and kind of product/ service offered but some did not. The slogans which mentioned the name and kind of product/ service will make the readers easy to catch the relevance of it by relating it with the context from the slogan itself. On the contrary, the readers should know the context from some slogan which did not mention the name and kind of product/ service offered by enriching the encyclopedic knowledge from the advertisements.

Based on the findings, it is recommended to the next researchers who are interested in doing further research in the same area to use oral data such as TV/ radio jokes or exchange conversation to be analyzed by Sperber and Wilson’s theory of explicature and higher level of explicature