Glinert Lewis H
Dartmouth College, Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science, 6191 Bartlett Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Res Social Adm Pharm. 2005 Jun;1(2):158-84. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2005.03.003.
The US Food and Drug Administration has called for research that may assist in developing standards for risk/benefit messages in the promotion of prescription drugs. Linguistics-based models of meaning and inference, though frequently applied to advertising, have not hitherto been used in this arena.
This study was intended to illustrate how discourse analysis, a methodology for microanalysis of texts in context, can elucidate the workings and interplay of promotional, informational, and other functions of direct-to-consumer drug advertising, anticipating threats to "fair balance" and pinpointing textual phenomena and issues suited to empirical study.
The text and visuals of a small corpus were analyzed along several dimensions, using theoretical insights of linguistic pragmatics and ethnography of speech to ask what the advertisement is seeking to do and what messages a viewer is likely to derive.
The linguistic and rhetorical features include an intense switching and fusion of styles and modalities: the traditional advertising distinction between personal and impersonal, "company" and "consumer", was ostentatiously flouted. The role of spokesperson was assigned to characters in a real or virtual narrative. The narrative portion of the text and images often struck an ironic or postmodern note, eg, by mixing science with science fiction. The overall functions of the commercials (promotional, informational, and aesthetic) were themselves frequently blended. The text deployed several linguistic or rhetorical strategies to send a double message for promotional advantage, including syntactic-semantic ambiguity, voice-over risk messages at odds with upbeat visuals, and a vagueness of certain words in particular contexts.
Findings contribute to our understanding of how TV commercials convey meaning with respect to drug benefits and risks, with implications for advertisers, regulators, and patient education. They also suggest new foci for empirical study.
美国食品药品监督管理局呼吁开展相关研究，以协助制定处方药推广中风险/收益信息的标准。基于语言学的意义和推理模型虽常应用于广告领域，但此前尚未用于此。
本研究旨在说明话语分析（一种对语境中的文本进行微观分析的方法）如何阐明直接面向消费者的药品广告的促销、信息及其他功能的运作与相互作用，预测对“公平平衡”的威胁，并找出适合实证研究的文本现象和问题。
运用语言语用学和言语民族志的理论见解，从多个维度分析一小批语料库的文本和视觉内容，以探究广告意图及观众可能获取的信息。
语言和修辞特征包括风格和模态的强烈转换与融合：公然无视传统广告中个人与非个人、“公司”与“消费者”之间的区别。代言人角色被赋予真实或虚拟叙事中的人物。文本和图像的叙事部分常带有讽刺或后现代色彩，例如将科学与科幻相结合。广告的整体功能（促销、信息和审美）本身也常常相互融合。文本运用了多种语言或修辞策略来传递双重信息以获取促销优势，包括句法 - 语义歧义、与欢快视觉效果相悖的画外音风险信息，以及特定语境中某些词语的模糊性。
研究结果有助于我们理解电视广告如何传达有关药品益处和风险的信息，对广告商、监管机构和患者教育具有启示意义。它们还为实证研究提出了新的重点。
