Food advertising analysis: a great and useful method

 In the past, I always believed that the usage of food advertisements is to attract the consumers. But, after reading the article “Authenticity in America: Class Distinctions in Potato Chip Advertising”, written by Joshua Freedman and Dan Jurafsky, I change my mind. The food advertisements not only have the usage of attracting people, but also have the usage of analyzing the distinctions between classes. Freedman and Jurafsky do the analysis mainly focus on the Potato Chip Advertising.

Before doing the experiment, the authors choose twelve bags of potato chips and divide them into two groups based on the price per ounce. Then they examine the language on both two groups. They surprisingly find out that the expensive chips always use the complex words, negation words, long sentence, and more concern about health. Also, different from the inexpensive chips, the expensive chips focus on telling consumers the naturalness, ingredients, and process. However, the inexpensive chips are not doing as well as the expensive chips. The number of the complex words and negation words is less than the number of the expensive chips; the inexpensive chips always use short sentence instead of long sentence; most important, inexpensive chips choose to focus on the historicity and location rather than focus on naturalness, ingredients, and process. But how can food advertisements show the difference between social classes? Apparently, we can suppose that the expensive chips represent the upper class in America while the inexpensive chips represent the lower class in America. From the distinction between expensive chips and inexpensive chips, we can clearly draw a conclusion that the upper class more concern about health, organic food, and also have higher education level than the lower class (the long sentences mean higher education level). However, the lower class more concern about the location and the history of the food rather than the naturalness of the food. So one kind of food advertising can show great connections and distinctions between language and culture.

My favorite part of this article is when the authors examine the complexity of the words. When the words are longer, they are more complex. I think this method of food advertising analysis is also useful for meat advertising. In expensive meat package, it will say “organic and succulent” while the inexpensive meat package will say “fresh and juicy”.