Article Critique

The article critique I will be covering is extracted from the Text & Talk 29-2 (2009), entitled as “But it’s all true!”: Commercialism and Commitment in the Discourse of Organic Food Promotion from Guy Cook, Matt Reed, and Alison Twiner. It chiefly holds the debate over marketing language used in organic foods, explores the motivation behind this commercial gimmick, and discusses the social relationship between text producers and consumers.

“But it’s all true” is a thought-provoking article, which consists of rich understandings towards the development of a marketing discourse by applying various analytical methodologies. Inside, it covers the findings of a one-year research project, investigating the discourse of organic food promotion in Britain during 2006. The research project combines corpus analysis, textual analysis, interviews and focus group discussion to look into the latest trend of marketing communication and promotional strategies found in market for organic foods.

In this research, there are three datasets collected for analysis. First, a 500,000 and 250,000- word machine-readable corpus is collected for analyzing frequent words and collocations of organic food and non-organic food promotion respectively. Texts used in product labels, packaging, newsletters, advertisements, reports, press releases are all the materials to be discussed. Second, transcriptions of interviews with sixteen stakeholders responsible for the communicative strategies for promoting organic foods are included. Third, transcriptions and recordings of focus group, comprising different demographic sources, are also coded for discussing product labels and promotional leaflets.

The project pinpoints the evaluation of how entrepreneurial sectors gain the unprecedented boom in organic business. Ideally, the best investigation site would closely be related to a commercial setting. The research team picks up the supermarket as the investigation site to examine how organic movement has adopted the marketing practices of corporate retails. The findings across wordings and presentation skills adopted by product producers mirror the metafunctions in the organic foods discourse.

1. Patterning of Poetic Language
Current packaging of organic food frequently combines similar rhythms of words such as “organic baby new potatoes” and “delicious with chopped mint or chives”. This language tactic seems to impress consumers in a much imagery way. Also, sensational and vague languages are profoundly written in the discourse, particularly for the taste. Words referring to flavor including delicious, mouth-watering, real, succulent, superb are much empty in meaning, in which they are commonly practiced in advertising setting to create a sensational picture to buyers. In addition, analysis has also discovered a trend that there is a proliferation of pre- and post-modifiers to formulate a verb on the description.

2. Excessive use of Personal Pronouns
An apparently casual, dialogic and interactive style is usually applied in the organic product promotion. You-view benefits are highly indicated, by the word form appearance of you, across many organic corpuses than non-organic ones. As mentioned in the article, the word form of you is the 27th most frequent word. Whenever retailers emphasize the need of you, as for consumers, a close relationship between producers and buyers can be built up. Obviously, high degree of personal pronoun over formal addressees (You and We not Farm producers), and familiarity over formal lexis (Mums not Mothers) are preferred by consumers ourselves.

3. Divergent way of Unfolding Message
Apart from word choices, the theme and rheme is also deviated from the original meaning. Suppose the marketing efforts in related fields shall be focused on the positive environmental, health, and social effects the organic products can bring to the customers. Also, contributions including environmental protection, fair trade, community-based production and ethical employment practices are also reasonable messages the products can advertise. The real case however turns to be more like a storytelling description by merely touching the necessity of taste instead of any commitment towards the environment and society.

4. Equivocal Claims of Language
Outside the obligatory data of ingredients, nutrients, product origin and expiry date, the retailers frequently deploy the tactics of vague quantifiers (many people, more people) and modal hedges (could be, tend to) in the discourse of organic food promotion, which easily mislead the consumers to believe the untrue details.
Despite the fact that the textual analysis in this research successfully mirrors a different marketing discourse has been created by organic product producers as for a latest communicative strategy in marketing promotion, the methodology can be further improved in order to achieve a more comprehensive discussion. For example, there is seemingly a limitation and shortcoming that number of respondents in interview groups is insufficient. With only sixteen stakeholders in interview and eight people in focus groups, it is difficult to collect rich insights into questions. Also, inadequate respondents may lead a dishonest response. For example, a writer of corporate promotional material may uphold the point that customers are not simply purchasing a product but at the same time buying a nice feeling influenced by the packaging.

It is obviously true how language deploys the metafunctions in a discourse. As language itself can represent the reality and manage relationships, therefore, text producers can have a great influence on shaping consumer attitudes towards conceptualizing a word, a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph in one product. In the discourse of organic products promotion, two main functions are being performed. First, about the experiential metafunction, different words used and approach to present the text can shape the consumers’ view of buying. Here, the poetic pattern and storytelling-liked framing can demonstrate a pleasurable sensation. Second, about the interpersonal metafunction, the sound linking of firm and customer greatly amplifies the close relationship among seller and buyer, enhancing the credibility of organic production and taste, as well as creating a pseudo familiarity. These are all the functions the meaning, relationships and connection the role of language can perform throughout a series of textual analysis.

In my site of investigation, the public library, written discourse is prominently observed. When compared to the discourse of organic product promotion, the library discourse seems to have a more complex situation. As the frequent communication channel between library administration party and library users is highly relied on text materials like signs, notice, user guides and leaflets, they can hardly utilize the usage of speech exchange across social actors as what advertising producer for organic food can do. For the further research of my site investigation in library, despite the limitation to carry out any corpus analysis, transcriptions and recordings of interviews as the ways the writers conduct databases in the article, I will look deeper into the textual analysis approach and examine the patterning of language adopted among the library materials.