Critical Textual Analysis Essay

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Textual and Visual Features in the Air Asia Advertisements

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Nowadays in modern societies, advertisements surround us everywhere we go and appear in our daily life. It can be seen through various types of medium such as television, radio, internet, billboard, newspapers, and magazines and even in our mobile phone and tablets. It is impossible for us to avoid from advertisement as we encounter with it every day from the moment we start our day. For instance, as claims by Cook (1996), we cannot walk down the street, shop, watch television, go through email, surfing internet, read a newspaper or magazine and take train or bus without encountering advertisements. The huge billboard on the highway and creatively-painted advertisements on the body of public transport are views that we cannot escape from (Choo, 1999). Hence, according to Cook (1996) it is strange if many people are reluctant to pay attention to advertisement.

Bhatia (2004) points out advertisements, sales promotion letters, job advertisements and book blurbs are some of the primary members of the colony of promotional genres although they are different in terms of the specificity of the product they promote. Advertisements serve the same set of communicative purposes, though most of them use different strategies to promote the product or service. Straight-line advertisements most often use 'product appraisal ' as the main