Le discours publicitaire destiné aux adolescents françaisambivalences linguistiques et sémiotiques et implications socioculturelles

Résumé

Advertising discourse focused on today’s youth essentially consists of five interconnected areas of analysis: the psychological, sociological and cultural aspects of the adolescent, and the linguistic and semiotic development of social and commercial messages. Due to constant change in contemporary Western society, the approaches used in these research areas, which the current study employs to analyse advertising posters, need to be constantly updated. Research into the mutual influence of social change relating to the setting in which the adolescent develops their identity, and how the adolescent simultaneously transforms and conditions this setting is of great interest to the field of Applied Linguistics. Based on the hypothesis that discourse strategies in modern day advertising necessarily reflect social, economic or linguistic change in our Western society, the research highlights the fundamental impact of the youth market on advertising. Focusing on social and commercial advertising posters and their semiotic, linguistic and psycho-emotional technicalities, the study questions the nature of this change, how it redefines the adolescent and how change in the adolescent, in turn, impacts on advertising discourse. To ensure objectivity and rigour, this study employed a methodology combining deductive and inductive, chronologically sequenced, and interdependent approaches. A survey was carried out in order to obtain a current picture of adolescent behaviour with regards to publicity and consumerism. The data gathered from a sample of 1,040 participants enabled the researcher to compile a relevant linguistic corpus which describes the preferences, worries and needs of today’s adolescents. This corpus was then analysed from a semiolinguistic standpoint. The study has two main aims: firstly, to provide information about and reflect on the discursive tools, such as language “rituals”, linguistic and semiotic imagery, etymological references, and neo- and multi-linguistic variation, which specifically capture the attention of adolescents; and secondly to collate the linguistic, semiologic and paralinguistic preferences of today’s youth in terms of how they reflect the psychological and social changes which they are constantly exposed to. The conclusions of the study show the introduction of linguistic, discursive or iconographic transgressions to be obvious symbols for youth in Western society. Advertising language should reflect the preferences for, and the use of adolescent language. For this reason, the abundance of neologisms, the presence of Franglish and of English in modern poster advertising are salient. Moreover, the fact that the adolescents of today are in constant contact with violent images and words via exposure to different media and pastimes (roleplaying games, videogames, etc.) cannot be overlooked. Humour and/or violence in discourse and images – morbid themes, trivialisation of sexuality, mythicizing of the forbidden or the unthinkable – are characteristic of today’s advertising messages. These aim to shock and some will certainly attract the attention of today’s youth. The study found the existence of a teenage public who are experts in new media, placed at the centre of the contemporary family’s decisions as consumers, and who are indisputable direct and indirect consumers. For the aforementioned reasons, virtually all advertising should be conceived using skilled and innovative mechanisms focused on the transmission of values with positive connotations, with special emphasis on affective and referential functions and stimuli for the adolescent’s imagination so that this demographic identifies with it.