A discourse analysis on language use in Vanguard’s (investment

company) advertisement

Triana Cahyaningtyas
Faculty Language and Art, Semarang State University
[email protected]

Abstract
Investment is one of subjects that is highly discussed among middle class/ upper
middle class society these days. In order to make more people use the investment
companies’ service, the companies must make a good advertisement. In
advertisements, language use is really important. This Paper aims to analyze the
discourse on commercial advertisement, especially investment advertisement. The
researcher chooses Vanguard’s investment advertisement because Vanguard is
very famous investment company in the US. This paper will look at the
advertisement from three perspectives. First, it will analyze the structure of the
advertisement using grammatical rules of a short functional text. Second, it will
analyze the language using the degree of formality. Last, it will analyze the
persuasive technique using Aristotle’s rhetoric.
Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Investment, Advertisement

1. Introduction
Language is one of the most important aspects in our life. People use language
to communicate in order to achieve certain goals, like to inform someone about
something, influence/ inspire / motivate other people, build relationship, learn,
promote oneself and socialize (Ho, n.d.). In marketing, language use is very
important to achieve marketing goals, boost sales and generate revenue. The goal
of language use in marketing field is to provide certain information with the
objective to influence or convince people to buy specific product or service.
Basically, marketing is the process of identifying customers’ needs and
determining how best a company’s product/service meet those needs. In contrast,
advertising is the exercise of promoting a company and its products or services
through paid channels. In other words, advertising is a component of marketing
(American Marketing Association, n.d.). According to Cambridge Dictionary,
advertisement is a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a
product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy. A company has to pay a
certain amount of money to advertise both their products and services. Therefore,
the company needs to use effective language. There are two kinds of ads. Those
ads are non-commercial and commercial ads. Non-commercial ads is ads that is
.not to sell a product or service but to raise awareness about an issue, collect funds
for a cause, or promote an idea (Manager, 2019). However, commercial ads is ads
that is specifically designed to persuade, influence and convince people to do a
purchase. In this paper we only focus on commercial ads.
There are many kinds of medium that can be used to advertise a certain
product but here I choose an advertisement from Vanguard (an investment
company) in Youtube. Investment topic is currently very much discussed, as
people realize how important it is –to prepare for retirement. Publishing an
advertisement in Youtube also becomes more common nowadays because
YouTube is the second most popular social media platform. Every day, people
watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. Most YouTube
users fall in the age group of 15-35. More than 70% of YouTube watch time
comes from mobile devices (Blogger, 2022). In order to develop a good
advertisement, a company should pay attention to the use of language as well as
its effectiveness to persuade, influence or convince the audience (target market).
The use of language in an ads and the goal its goal to deliver meaning which is to
persuade, influence or convince the audience is called as the discourse of it.
There are so many studies that discuss about discourse in advertisement, but
the study about discourse in investment advertisement is still need attention.
Commonly, a study about discourse in an advertisement includes beauty product
advertisement, daily-need products advertisement, and food advertisement.
Therefore, the study about discourse analysis in investment advertisement is
important to be conducted. One of the most famous investment companies in the
US is a company called Vanguard.
Vanguard is an investment management company founded by J.C Bogle in
1975 (47 Years). Its headquarters is located in Malvern, Pennsylvania USA and
Vanguard also the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest
provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world after BlackRock's and
iShares, according to Wikipedia. This company keeps growing as people start to
prepare for their retirement.
In this paper I would like to analyze Vanguard’s commercial advertisement on
Youtube entitled “Vanguard: The value of ownership”. Now, the advertisement
has been watched 13.578 times and got 230 and 43 likes comments from the
viewers. There are three part of this paper: first, the paper is about the structure of
the advertisement. Second, the paper is about the use of language in the
advertisement and third, the paper is about persuasive technique used in the
advertisement.
This Paper will answer 3 research question bellow:
a. What is the structure of advertisement?
b. How is the language use in the advertisement?
c. How is the language use in the advertisement influence the
audience?

2. Literature review
In linguistics, discourse is defined as language beyond the sentence (Edward,
2021). Discourse analysis also called as the way we investigate a text. Here,
discourse analysis means a theory for studying written or spoken language in
relation to its social context. Its purpose is to examine and understand how the use
of language in a certain situation or circumstance. Understanding the discourse of
a text is very important to achieve the goal of communication which is to make
meaning. The discourse analysis of an ad enables us to look at the ways in which
its producers purposefully create particular effects for strategic reasons (Andrew
Jardine, 2004).
 One of example of a text is an advertisement. We can investigate or analyze
the advertisement from many perspectives, like the structure, the language use and
the persuasive techniques. The structure can be analyzed by using grammatical
rules, the language use can be analyzes by the degree of formality and the
persuasive can be analyze by Aristotle’s rhetoric.

Figure 1 Aristotle's Rhetoric

3. Methodology
Research methods are the strategies, processes or techniques utilized in the
collection of data or evidence for analysis in order to uncover new information or
create better understanding of a topic (Guide, 2022). This paper uses a qualitative
research to collect the data. The data was taken from Vanguard’s commercial
advertisement that is published on Youtube. This paper intends to analyze about
the structure of the commercial advertisement, the use of the language, and the
persuasive technique.

4. Hypothesis
The proper use of language in advertisement leads to a good marketing result.
If a company wants to promote their product, it must consider the use of the
language so that the marketing goals can be achieved effectively.
5. Theoretical Framework

Structure of
Advertisement
Effective and
impactful
Advertisement
 The Use of Language
in the Advertisement

Persuasive
Techniques

6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. Reference
American Marketing Association. (n.d.). Marketing vs. Advertising. Retrieved
May 15, 2022, from https://www.ama.org/pages/marketing-vs-
advertising/#:~:text=In basic terms%2C marketing is,is a component of
marketing.
Andrew Jardine, A. J. (2004). A Discursive Analysis of a Television
Advertisement. GCB - Gender and Consumer Behavior, 7.
Blogger, G. (2022). YOUTUBE USER STATISTICS 2022.
https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-
statistics/#:~:text=YouTube is the second most,time comes from mobile
devices.
Edward. (2021). What Is Discourse Analysis?
https://www.sampleassignment.com/blog/what-is-discourse-
analysis#:~:text=Discourse analysis is the evaluation of language
%27beyond,say%3A focus groups%2C interviews%2C social media%2C or
documents.
Guide, R. (2022). Research Methods: What are research methods?
Ho, L. (n.d.). How to Set Communication Goals to Improve Your Social
Relationships. https://www.lifehack.org/870977/communication-goals
Manager, I. (2019). Overseeing non-commercial ads.
https://icas.global/overseeing-non-commercial-ads/#:~:text=The main goal of
non,electoral ads of political parties.

List of figure
Figure 1 Aristotle's Rhetoric ................................................................................... 4