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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 11:3 (2020) ► pp.391–414

Communicative problems in Boeing’s advertisement campaign for the combat aircraft Super Hornet

| Roskilde University
| Roskilde University

This article focuses on an advertisement campaign run in Danish national newspapers promoting Boeing’s combat aircraft F 18 Super Hornet. The campaign received extensive media attention due to its scale and unconventional methods. On the basis of pragmatic text analysis we describe three features in the advertisements: Genre problems, a controversial depiction of sender and recipient, and problems relating to argumentation. We conclude that (1) the analyzed text is predominantly commercial in intent, although framed as information by a sender position that is partly ambiguous in terms of identity, and (2) the campaign’s main arguments are flawed, since decisive justification is not accessible. Based on the findings, the conclusion suggests that the campaign is best understood as a hybrid between public relations and public affairs.

Keywords: advertisement campaign, genre, argumentation, reframing, public relations, public affairs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Public relations as rhetorical communication practice
  • 3.From public relations to public affairs
    • Expectations of genre are exploited in order to mislead the recipient
    • Unclear presentation of sender and recipient
    • Evidence is not provided
  • 4.Genre is exploited in order to mislead
  • 5.Description of the advertisement’s genre
    • 5.1 Rhetorical context
    • 5.2 Sender and recipient positions
    • 5.3 Sender’s purpose and the macro speech act of the text
    • 5.4 Forms of presentation
    • 5.5 Is the text appropriate to the situation?
  • 6.When rational justification fails
    • 6.1Five acts of reframing
      • Reframing of the campaign as a debate
      • The ad’s commercial arguments are reframed as attitudes in a debate
      • The reader is reframed as a participant in a direct democracy
      • The company is reframed as a responsible agent in the public sphere
      • The campaign is reframed as a legitimate political process
    • 6.2Teleological argument fields
  • 7.The argument data are inaccessible
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.17020.kja
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