Narratives of cultural value in Romanian advertising

• Author: Maria Magdalena Popescu
• Position: Carol I National Defense University
• Pages: 171-178

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşo v

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 12(61) No. 1 – 2019

https://doi.org/10.31926/but.ssl.2019.12.61.1.16

NARRATIVES OF CULTURAL VALUE IN

ROMANIAN ADVERTISING

Maria Magdalena POPESCU1

Abstract: Communication can no longer be defined today without

reference to culture, as these both tailor human’s existence. Spiritual and

affective values are embedded in culture and inherent in all types of

communication, while people’s identity, emergent in discourse, is defined

culturally and communicated in inordinate narratives. More than that,

globalization and internationalization make worldwide values merge and

define the messages to fit a society in continuous transformation. In this

context, the present paper looks at the way narratives are structured when

they surpass literary genre and migrate to the realm of media and

advertising.

Keywords: narratives, cultural values, advertising, discourse

1. Introduction

Naturally, the texts that ensure the interaction of individuals in society are meaning

born discourses whose analysis and narrative structure extend the meaning beyond

literary genres. The narratology of discourse and the analysis of stylistic elements that

determine the existence of a text together with the pragmatic features, contextualizing

the text within the social, in series of events with characters, places, humans or local

representations in the way they appear in the author’s cultural code are theoretically

differentiated in classifications brought by Jahn (2005), emergent from Chatman’s

(1978) and Prince’s (1982) approaches.

If Chatman differentiates the form from the content in a narrative and looks at the

story (content) as all that builds it- people, places and actions, separated from the form

all these take in order to be communicated, (as seen in fig.1), Prince brings up the

importance of readers and the limits of the text in decoding meaning as well as the

contributions personal references bring to the constructio n of meaning generating, in

turns, texts of their own. In contrast, Jahn differentiates between narratives based on

the communication channel into printed, pe rformed and non-narrative (i.e. style or

form- description, argument) . Transgressing the literary genres, all these are applicable

in all discourses considered today, from politics to media and from advertising to

textbooks.

1 Carol I National Defense University, popescu.maria@myunap.net