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p. 47 Exercise: Graphological Analysis Analyse the following Dodge Challenger Rallye advertisement graphologically fol-lowing the example in your textbook.
A. AnalysisPreparationCar ad with a car at the top of the page, writing below using English alphabets.
First Impressions: dated ad, fast car, typical, directly to male decoder / receiver– text is communicative to analyst although the analyst is from a somewhat different Cul-
tural Context (some decades later, female, North American, more specifically Canadian)
– Dodge and Chrysler logo and lexis suggest that this ad was produced in the United States
– landscape behind car, although impressionistic, resembles mid-west and southern, high
desert states.
Hypothesis: the car ad looks like a typical example of such a register in the late-twentieth-century, targeted to a male audience.
DescriptionVerbal Communication
1.a. The verbal text at the bottom third of the page is written in three paragraphs spread
over three columns, following regular upper and lower case conventions.
One Arabic numeral is used: 35. Punctuation is used predictably following syntactic
independent clause conventions, although in the last paragraph the first two grapho-
logical sentences are not complete independent clauses Dodge Challenger Rallye. A
special kind of road machine for a special breed of man.
Some bolding has been used for emphasis of certain words, no italics or underlining.
Because this ad was first produced in the early 1970s for a magazine, it follows the
typical magazine font and margins of that time. The ad has been reproduced on a
website of dodge ads, but its earlier format has been kept intact.
The verbal text that makes up the paragraphs is consistent. However, the verbal graphs
outside the paragraph are different:
the title of the verbal text Wanted: Men who can handle a real road machine. Dodge
Challenger Rallye. is in the largest bolded font of all the verbal graphs on the page;
the model’s caption Extra care in engineering makes a different in Dodge . . . depend
on it is in a slightly smaller font, but still bolded;
the words with logos are written on the visual text: ‘Dodge’ on the top left and
‘CHRYSLER, MOTORS CORPORATION’ on the lower right.
1.b. i. Experiential – normal English graphs encode typical lexis pertaining to cars etc. (cf. p. 97
Chapter 4); upper case letters emphasize ‘CHRYSLER, MOTORS CORPORATION’.
The red letter graphs (the rest are black) emphasize ‘Dodge’ in the upper logo. Capi-
talization highlights the title words: ‘Wanted: Men. Dodge Challenger Rallye.’, and the
caption words: ‘Extra’ and ‘Dodge’. Throughout the paragraphs, certain words are
capitalized, although they do not begin the sentence: ‘Challenger Rallye (2x)’, ‘Chal-
B. ContextualizationInteractive Situation – field – magazine ad; mode: written to be seen and possibly read;
personal tenor: producer of ad unknown to receiver public of ad; functional tenor: to
persuade / sell
Represented Situation – field – car travelling through landscape; mode: picture to be
seen; personal tenor: no people, only car; functional tenor: to interest and attract
decoder in order to sell
Register – magazine car ad
Purpose – see functional tenor above
Strategy – verbal text – mixture, some description; visual text – narrative (see experiential)
Metafunctions (see visual and verbal descriptions)i. Experiential – cars and more (see Chapter 4 also)
ii. Interpersonal – interactive producer of ad and unknown public receiver of ad
iii. Textual – single page multi-modal text including visual and verbal text
Linguistic context – a. placement of text in magazine, and magazine – unknown
b. see p. 97 for lexical analysis
Cultural context and dialect– temporal – 1973, geographical – North America – Ameri-
can car, American producers, but Canadian as well as American receivers; social – target
audience / decoder for this model males between 16 and 30, middle class (at the time,
thought of as a masculine ‘hot’ car). 0 – encoder is advertising consultants for Chrysler
The word on the car’s engine is Pacer, which draws the world of car racing and cars that
set the pace for race cars into the meaning of the visual and verbal text. In addition,
rather than a typical licence plate combination of letters and numbers, the licence on this
car reads the brand name of the car DODGE CHALLENGER.
C. ResultsMajor – visually, the picture of the car dominates; verbally, English graphs, graphological
sentence, paragraph and column conventions dominate (this is a more complex and
varied text verbally than visually (see Chapter 4, Lexis, and analyse semologically etc.)).
Minor – visually landscape; verbally, emphasis through bolding and size of font, one number
Predictable - graphological choices quite predictable in visual and verbal texts
Unpredictable - less predictable: that car given illusion of motion, and that driver obscured,
Also less predictable that art work used to represent car rather than photograph, but to
say more would require analyses of more car ads of the period.
Note - I have not counted individual graphs in the verbal text; I could have if I thought it
would contribute to my interpretation of the text.
D. ConclusionsSummaryGraphologically, the visual text makes up the upper two-thirds of the magazine page, while the verbal text makes up the lower one-third of the multi-modal text. The visual
image focuses on the car, although the car is pictured on a road that winds through a rocky mountainous background of the sort that occur naturally in America’s south-west states. The car is pictured as if it were in motion, speeding through the barren, rugged countryside. Only as small portion of the driver’s head is represented. Interest-ingly, the visual image is taken from art work rather than a photograph. The verbal portion of the text follows magazine standards with regards to columns, complete sentences and conventional paragraphs for the most part, other than a few bolded, capitalized and enlarged words pertaining to the brand name and sellable features of the car. In addition, in the final paragraph of the verbal text, the punctuation is at odds with syntax, as the graphological sentences, initiated with capitals and ending with periods, do not correspond to complete independent clauses.
InterpretationIn terms of registerial conventions, this ad is quite predictable with the focus on the car that producers are trying to sell both visually and verbally. Magazine ads typically include verbal and visual elements graphologically, with different sized fonts, and special effects like bolding to emphasize what is most salient in the ad, and what is most likely to convince the targetted market to buy the product being advertised. Whether the choice of art work over photograph, and ‘moving’ car over ‘unmoving’ car is predictable or not would require further analyses that lie beyond the scope of this discussion. It is interesting that in terms of cultural context, the ad, which is over 40 years old, is much more verbal than contemporary ads. This may reflect the increasing visual orientation of the public, with its 40 years of inter-net access. Certainly, the increasing familiarity and expectations of multi-modal texts to both producers and receivers has affected the evolution of registerial choices.
What is perhaps most interesting concerning this particular car ad is the values of the target consumers it encodes. The lexical analysis of Chapter 4 points to this; how-ever, there are also graphological features that suggest a comparatively young male target consumer, who values speed, a rugged, barren, isolated, ‘masculine’, cowboy-like landscape, where he can challenge and empower himself as a hypothetical driver by speeding, unencumbered by anything or anyone. There are no ‘feminine’ colours, but only colours that fit in with the landscape. In addition, if the analyst were male, he might be able to comment in greater depth about the type of vents, hub caps, Pacer word on the engine that characterize this particular represented participant / car. Still, since the analyst is of an age that she remembers the car, she can say it was con-sidered a trendy car by young men who value powerful sexy machines. At that time, elitist and classist high school students considered such cars ‘greaser cars’ intended for male students interested in automotive mechanics. The point is, in its cultural context, this particular car was not family-oriented nor female-oriented. It was not a
‘neutral’ car. And while the graphological choices of the verbal text in particular do not contribute much to this sexist and classist stereotype, there is some support for such values in the visual choices that the producers have made.
Review of graphological analysisAnalysisPreparationNote first impressions of the graphological style of the text:
Describe the obvious generally.
Is the text communicative to you? Completely? Partially?
What graphological features make this text communicative to you?
Does the text include verbal and or non-verbal graphs? Letters? Pictures? Other?
Where is the text from?
How does the text build on your cultural expectations?Formulate preliminary hypotheses based on dialect and register.
DescriptionVerbal Communication
1.a. Describe the Verbal Graphs
If the text is written in English letters, does it follow conventions concerning the use of
lower and upper case?
Are numerals used: Arabic, Roman?
Punctuation – Is it predictable, following conventions, or unpredictable?
Have special effects been used: italics, bold, underlining, other?
Is the text handwritten / printed or typed? If typed, what fonts have been used? Size of
font?
What is the layout / composition of your text (margins, justification, location of text)?
What spacing conventions / constraints are used: paragraphing, indentations, double-
spacing, stanzas, lists?
Is the verbal portion of the text consistent in choice of font, size, tenor, effects?
1.b. Describe how each metafunction of language is encoded verbally.
i. Experiential function – choice of letter graphs and type of numeral, by the range of
punctuation devices, spatial conventions of positive space, and relationship to negative
space;
experiential focus may be emphasized by special effects, e.g. bolding, underlining,
italicizing and the like.
ii. Interpersonal function – choice of style, font, writing tool, ‘paper’, legibility, and
punctuation as deliberately formal or informal, signalling cline of social distance (friend