Raising assumptions: intertextuality as a marketing tactic in reason and tickle advertisements

Advertising constitutes one of the most enduring and influential genres of mass media communication and has, as such, attracted attention from various academic disciplines, including linguistics and its subfield sociolinguistics. This dissertation departs from an argument put forward by Crook (2004), which posits that one of the primary objectives of advertising is the attempt to establish and reinforce positive associations with the advertised brand, in order to gain an advantage over competitors. To analyse this function, the project combines a range of pragmatic and discourse analytic methodologies, under a relevance theoretic framework, in order to conduct an empirical analysis of the role of intertextuality in print advertising. In addition, the study aims to uncover the manner in which intertextuality is combined with direct/logical vs. indirect/emotional claims, by using Simpson's (2001) reason and tickle constructs. The results support the conclusion that copywriters use intertextuality to foster positive associations with the advertised brand, but also suggest that direct - or reason - product claims serve to guide readers' inferences about the relationship between the intertext and the advertised product/service. Based on these findings, the researcher also makes specific recommendations for future analyses in the field of critical discourse analysis.