ANALYZING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN MALAYSIAN ADVERTISEMENT: MCQUARRIE AND MICK’S RHETORICAL FIGURES FRAMEWORK APPROACH

This study analyses how Malaysian university students construct meanings of advertisements found in men’s magazines, centring on their interpretation of figurative language. Four second-year TESL undergraduates were asked to interpret ten selected advertisements of various products and services using McQuarrie and Mick’s Rhetorical Figures Framework (1996). These rhetorical figures are the following: repetition, reversal, substitution and destabilization. Fauconnier and Turner’s Conceptual Blending Theory was then used to analyse how they composed, completed, and elaborated the input and blended spaces. The results revealed that although the respondents came from similar backgrounds, they employed different strategies in making sense of the advertisements. It was found that their general knowledge, personal experience, emotion, interests, personality, language proficiency, visual clues, and assumptions played a significant role in facilitating their understanding. Some of them constructed similar frameworks, whereas different in others. It can thus be concluded that advertisements in a larger context can be used as literary devices and are good authentic teaching materials for teaching and learning English.