What techniques would you suggest?

[McCreery John]

Dear Friends,

I am in the early stages of putting together a research project on the
language and images used in Japanese TV commercials. The primary data
for the study will be the commercials described on the CM at NAVI website,
where the publishers of two trade magazines, Sendenkaigi and BRAIN each
week present their favorite commercials. The presentation includes one
or more key visuals, the full text of the narration and titles, a list
of the creative staff involved in producing the commercial, and a
concept statement concerning the thinking that went into the
commercial's making.Also included are profile information on the sponsor
and product category and the length of the commercial and an evaluation
by the editorial staff of BRAIN, giving one to four stars for
impressiveness, ease-of-understanding, liking, and performance.

My question to you is this: Confronted with this kind of material, what
linguistic, anthropological, or other techniques would you use to
analyze it?

My first impulse is to use the framework I developed for analyzing a
Taiwanese exorcism in "Negotiating with Demons: The Uses of Magical
Language," an article published in American Ethnologist back in 1995. I
am also reviewing the approaches described in Guy Cook's _The Discourse
of Advertising_. My purpose in posing the question asked above is to
discover approaches I may have missed and to get a sense of the field in
which this study might be situated.

Your help will be much appreciated.


John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya
Nishi-ku, Yokohama
JAPAN 220-0006

Tel +81-45-314-9324
Fax+81-45-316-0449
e-mail mccreery at gol.com

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