Brand Tone of Voice:

12 brand tone of voicecommunicating a personality that is accessible and liked by consumers, theclarity of the language chosen is not the only concern.3 Linguistic analysis of brand positionsIn this section, I apply some linguistic frameworks with a view to elucidatinghow far the language of the two brands is different, and whether this communicateseach position as more ‘tangible’ or more ‘intangible’.There are many possible analytical frameworks to apply, but I have selectedfour which have already borne fruit as a means of analysis of other genres andwhich appeared intuitively likely to reveal something of interest in the documentsof study. These are:1. Chains of reference, examining how references to the brand and closelyassociated elements are made throughout the text (cf. Halliday & Hasan,1976; Prince, 1981; Cook, 2001);2. Participant roles, examining how the brand, its services, providers andaudiences are ‘positioned’ in relation to one another through the grammarof the clause (cf. Halliday, 1994; Thompson, 1996; Fairclough, 1989;Clark, 1992; Delin, 2000);3. Presupposition and assumption, looking further at how audiences arepositioned in relationship to the brand through the kinds of implicitassumptions that are made about participants (cf. Vestergaard &Schroder, 1985; Fairclough, 1989; Delin, 2000; Cook, 2001);4. Tenor, looking at how social relationships are assumed or constructedthrough the texts by means of markers of social distance such as formalityor informality (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Myers, 1994; Goodman &Graddol, 1996; Fairclough, 1992);In what follows, we will look at these approaches in turn, showing what eachreveals about the way language is being used by Orange and HSBC and itspossible relationship with the position of each brand.3.1 Chains of referenceThe first linguistic tool examines chains of reference in the text to see how thebrand and concepts related to it are evoked and kept activated in the mindof the hearer/reader. The examination of chains of reference has long been afoundational means of description of text cohesion (see in particular Halliday& Hasan, 1976; Halliday, 1994: 310) and has also been discussed by Cook (2001:151) in relation to advertising texts.