Different Types of American Political Adverts

It is quite evident that language and politics are inseparably connected. The successful prosecution of political activities requires effective deployment of linguistic facilities. In modern political campaigns voters must rely on the mass media for most of their information about political candidates and issues. Advertising has become more and more dominant in campaigns. In contemporary political systems election campaigns are taken not only as an important social event but as a linguistic event as well.

There are three major categories of political adverts have:

1. positive ads, which include only statements about the candidate, with no explicit mention of the candidate’s opponent;

2. contrast (mixed) ads, which contain both positive statements about the candidate and negative statements about the opponent;

3. negative or attack ads (sometimes called pure negative), which contain only negative statements about the opponent and nothing positive about the candidate.

These three categories can be found among American political ads. The example of the negative ad is the poster against Obama with the text written on it: “Guess he can’t”. The article from “The Seattle Times” (September 21st, 2008) headlined “Barack Obama for president” is a remarkable example of a contrast ad. Obama’s poster “Yes We Can” belongs to the category of positive ads.

There are commonalities and differences in linguistic dimensions among mixed, positive, and negative ads. Mixed ads are like negative ads and different from positive ads since these employ less "everyday" language, avoid the first-person singular and plural (using fewer pronouns altogether), and use more negations. Negative ads have many sentences ending with question marks, perhaps reflecting their rhetorical nature. Use of pronouns in positive ads is expected given that candidates often speak for themselves in these ads. The close parallel of mixed and negative ads in pronoun usage is not surprising given that candidates rarely speak for themselves in mixed and negative ads.

Markova Ivanna

To the Problem of Interpretation of the Intertextual Elements

Nowadays the problem of intertextuality is becoming more and more popular with linguists, as all the cultures of the world, as well as their literatures, are interconnected that enables language users to exchange information that remain vital and actual through time.

The development of means of mass communication and distribution of mass culture have led to a very strong semiotization of a human life. The reason for such active involvement of intertextual elements in the texts is an inevitable process of search for newer expressive means.

Professor I. V. Arnold understands intertextuality as «inclusion in the text either the whole other text with a different topic or its fragments in the form of the marked or non-marked, transformed or unchanged citations, allusions, reminiscences».

Intertextual inclusions possess the property of duality, they belong to the text in which they are used and at the same time to that text in which they were introduced originally.

It should be pointed out that modernism and postmodernism are characterized by especially extensive use of various forms of intertextuality.

The problem of interpretation of the intertextual elements is the key one. If a prototext represents universal background knowledge, a translator should aspire to preserve its dominant function, as well as the format. Intertextualisms appealing to the national background knowledge, should be adapted to the accepting culture. Narrowly known intertextualisms should be also preserved, if it is possible, in order not to lose allusiveness, "incomprehensibility" of the original text; however, if the translator thinks that the reader of the translation will not be able to understand them, they can be supplied with comments, because an incorrect or inadequate full interpretation of intertextual elements can lead to essential semantic losses. At the same time the translator should take into account the dominant function of an intertextual element.

Melnyk Lilia