Medical Authority in Pharmaceutical Ads

[Maggie Ronkin]

Hi Celso,

Thanks for the link to your article!  It's not mimicked self-quotation but another voice that intrudes, sometimes embodied (e.g. the dual roles of one of the girls who's also a physician in my student's first example), and sometimes not.  Below is another example. The Narrator, intruding in Line 12, is a displaced voice in a medical register (And I'm told that the visual accompanying the intruding voice is a romantic scene between a man (evoked in lines 1 to 3) and a women).  Also, there's a bit of variation across examples: This one makes the warning accessible with understandable vocabulary and simple directives, and makes explicit mention of the purpose of the product in Line 13.

Reporting on an auto advertisement, one respondent has helpfully observed that this way of delivering what are probably legally obligatory warnings in television advertising also is not restricted to pharmaceutical advertising.

Maggie



Man:  
1. Wouldn’t you know 
it
2  One moment we’re on the 
road to romance (1.0)…
3  when suddenly it gets interrupted 
[sound of knocking on door] 
...
Narrator:  
12 Tell your doctor 
about your medical conditions and all medications
13  and ask if you’re healthy 
enough for sexual activity
14  Don’t take Cialis if you 
take nitrates for chest pain
15  as this may cause an unsafe 
drop in blood pressure 
16  Don’t drink alcohol in 
excess with Cialis
17  Side effects may include 
headache, upset stomachetc (list).
> Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 21:23:09 +0100
> To: linganth at cc.rochester.edu
> From: lxalvarz at udc.es
> Subject: Re:[Linganth] Medical Authority in Pharmaceutical Ads
> 
> Hi Maggie, could you elaborate on "register displacement"?  Is it like 
> mimicked self-quotation in a different "voice"?  I wrote something on "code 
> displacement" some years, though I don't know if that's the same thing. 
> It's: Celso Álvarez-Cáccamo. 1996. "The power of reflexive language(s): 
> Code displacement in reported speech". Journal of Pragmatics 25, pp. 33-59. 
> You can get it at: http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/artigos/1996jop.pdf .
> 
> -celso
> Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo
> 
> At 12:58 02-11-2007 +0000, Maggie Ronkin wrote:
> 
> >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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