Research Information System
Fifteenth Annual Cice Network Conference: Identities And Citizenship Education: Controversy, Crisis And Challenges, Lisbon, Portugal, 13 - 15 June 2013, vol.I., pp.3
CHILDREN & HUMOUR FACTOR IN TV COMMERCIALS
Uğur Gündüz, İstanbul University, TURKEY
+905557609355
Inci Çağlayan, İstanbul Kültür Üniversitesi, TURKEY
+905337471757
Nilüfer Pembecioğlu, Istanbul University, TURKEY
+905357789505
Abstract
Television Commercials are very influential when it comes to little kids as an audience. As researches prove that the brands and concepts introduced throughout the early childhood might have longlasting impact on children. The addiction to the brands and dedication to the habits is a way to become loyal customers in future. The television viewing habits are also very important since they establish the visual signs of the childhood experiences. Due to their repetitive occurrence, most of the television commercials are remembered even after many years. As a child the messages are remembered in its bulk form, several things mingled into another, the concepts, colours, sounds, humourous or sad moods, events and actions. Sometimes the messages are directly recorded into the brain without any further questioning, etc. These cultivated messages might become the attachment points and the most effective structure of the patterns in life in future.
This study concentrates on how the television commercials of Turkish television are associated with childhood and humour. Childhood is a concept highly given importance throughout the commercials through visual or spoken messages. Humour is also seen as a part of the childhood, so, the combination of the two brings up many creative ideas. The main aim of the paper is to figure out how much of the commercials were devoted to childhood concepts to sell the product. During the study, the television commercials of Turkish televisions are questioned. Due to the limitations of the time and other factors, the most popular term for television viewing: the winter brake time is a time mostly devoted to “television viewing”. Regarding the focus group, in Istanbul, 20 children of , 6-12 years were questioned regarding which of these commercials were liked most. The collected data is classified through various communication theories and analyzed regarding Todorov, Genette and Barthes methodology. Not only the textlinguistic factors were considered but also the discourse analysis were concentrated on. At the end, not only the stylistic variations of the childhood and humour combinations were found but also the structural, functional and discourse analysis of these commercials were achieved.
Key Words: Humour, TV Commercials, Childhood Concepts in Commercials, Infantalization, Discourse Analysis of TV Commercials