LINGUISTIC AND IMAGE MANIPULATION IN COMMERCIAL ADVERTISEMENTS ON BILLBOARDS

The manipulation through advertising has become an issue the consumers are facing on almost a regular basis. This research study analyzes nine visually manipulated print ads that captured from billboards in several Medan city streets. This study is conducted in qualitative descriptive method in which the research analysis is conducted through three levels of analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis based on Fairclough that engulf micro level analysis (text description), meso level analysis (discursive techniques description), and macro level analysis (social and cultural phenomena). The research analysis is centered on the description of linguistic and image manipulation in the advertisements, the description of discursive techniques, and the descriptive explanation of ideological assumptions through the social and cultural phenomena that are implied in the advertisements. The results point out that manipulative strategies occur vastly and variously both in linguistic and semiotic aspect such as the major use of declarative, adjectives, disjunctives and pronouns in linguistic aspect; and the major use of symbolical representation, color saturation, illumination, and large size of particular objects in the advertisements in visual semiotic aspect. In addition, the results indicate that the manipulative adverts reproduce certain ideology that relates to social cultural phenomena in people’s life. As the chosen advertisements contain with texts and images that manipulated through the application of digital image editing software to elicit particular effects which make the advertisements look convincing, dramatic and vivid even though they are made-out illusion or fantasy, this research then is able to uncover the hidden messages of the manipulative commercial advertisements that are actually far from the truth and reality about the advertised products.