Medical Authority in Pharmaceutical Ads

[Maggie Ronkin]

One of my student researchers—in a BS/MD program—is studying
pharmaceutical advertisements.  She is analyzing televised ads for products to enhance the sexual
performance of women and men, although the purpose of the products is never
mentioned directly.  For example, according to my student, one
ad depicts three women chatting about PMS casually in what looks like an
after-work bar setting.  After one
offers another a folk diagnosis and recommends a pharmaceutical product, a third, in a
different and detached voice, mentions the possible side effects of taking the product. This warning probably is required by
law.  In
the end, the ad plays on
humorous recognition that the third woman not only is one of the girls
(who interacts casually and even uses a bit of non-standard grammar),
but also is a physician.  We are trying to characterize the voice/voicing of
medical authority that delivers the warning, which, female or male, is performed in other ads of the same
genre.  Some
students have applied terrific concepts of entextualization, and we
also have coined a not sufficiently multimodal term, register
displacement. 
Can anyone help us characterize this phenomenon from the literature or simply by brainstorming?

 

Thank you very much.

 

Maggie Ronkin



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