Transformation of Precedent-related Phenomena in Japanese Advertisements and Commercials

• Main Author: A. D. Mozgunova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MGIMO University Press 2021-06-01
• Series: Концепт: философия, религия, культура
• Subjects: precedent-related phenomena; japanese advertisements and commercials; semantic transformations; analytic transformations; influence; chronotope; culture
• Online Access: https://concept.mgimo.ru/jour/article/view/516

Modern commercials introduce not only information, but mostly suggest a certain lifestyle, thus creating myths; consumer society is one of those myths, and society perceives and sees itself through this myth. According to Jean Baudrillard, through mass-media things get a new deeper meaning, their own symbol and self-expression. People value not the goods as they are, but their aesthetics characteristics. And application of the precedent-related phenomena approach to the advertisements and commercials helps give the goods new characteristics, which have no direct connection to them. Precedent-related phenomena have axiological value and can express the concepts, that is why it becomes possible for a target-text to adopt the meaning, which is linked to the precedent-related phenomenon in the cognitive database of a cultural personality. Referring to those characteristics and features of a precedent-related phenomenon, the advertising product under consideration gets them. The object of this research is transformation of precedent-related phenomena in Japanese advertisements and commercials. The key aims are to reveal main types of transformation, reveal aims of transformation and analyze the function of transformed precedentrelated phenomena in Japanese advertisements and commercials. The study is considered to be relevant as transformations of precedent-related phenomena may cause transformation at semantic level, for example, transformation of the chronotope of a precedent-related text or situation, change of spatial patterns, features and attributes, connotations of precedent-related name. Analyzing the precedent-related phenomena in Japanese advertisements and commercials basing on lingua-cultural and lingua-cognitive methodology reveals new perspectives of the study. The findings of the study allow for the conclusion that the majority of the precedent-related phenomena in advertisements and commercials can be and are transformed; main transformations refer to chronotope, features and attributes as well as transformation of the form of phenomenon. The aim of transformations is to link the phenomena and the message of the phenomena to the narrative of the advertisement or commercial. With the help of transformation it becomes possible to provide the commercial text and advertising product with the necessary characteristics, evaluation and connotations, so that to make the commercial text more expressive, emotionally or intellectually attractive and restrict the range of recipients.