“Negotiating Roles and Identities in Corporate Advertising: A Multimodal Analysis of the Total Energy Doubled 2005 TV Commercial”

Building on the author's prior investigations into ideology in an advertising context, the chapter focuses on visual, verbal and sound affordances involved in the construction and negotiation of the identities of the TV commercial viewer, the participants represented in it, and the company, and in the implicit values associated with social well-being which the commercial conveys. The analysis first shows how various compositional devices invite the viewer to "read" the two parallel narratives unfolding on the split screen as one, and how this interpretative process is reinforced by an underlying Opportunity-Taking/Cause-Effect pattern which the narratives co-realise when read vertically, from the top down. It also explicates the facilitatory role of compositional features in construing complementary, stereotyped gender roles for the represented participants of each narrative, consistent with their grammatical roles as Benefactor (the company) and Beneficiary (the viewer/consumer/customer). Scrutiny of interpersonal meaning-making resources (angle, gaze and distance) sheds further light on the positioning of, and power relations construed between, the viewer/consumer/customer and the company. Analysis of the film soundtrack emphasises the interpersonal role of music and song lyrics in reinforcing the company and customer identities through affective involvement. The investigation into the experiential and textual meanings respectively encoded, in the final sequence, in the baseline and company logo supports the interpretation of the ideology underlying the previously established company-client discursive role relationship, which associates the company with values of technological expertise, care and social responsibility, and construes the customer as uncritically sharing a cultural conception of social well-being as consumption.