Brand Tone of Voice:

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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.
J. Delin 13What is important for the current purposes is not so much that texts arecohesive, but that the appreciation of this cohesion depends on the ability of thereader to retrieve the relationship between semantically-underspecified referringexpressions such as pronouns, and definite referring expressions which assumeshared knowledge, with concepts that are currently activated in short-termmemory. This analysis looks at how brand concepts are referred to, activated, orallowed to decay, by the choice of different types of referring expressions.The key elements in this process are the noun phrases in the text, whose contentand form can serve either to strongly evoke a brand (which is the conceptwe are interested in), reinforce it, or not evoke it at all. I developed the categoriesshown in Table 3 for application to branding from seminal frameworks in thelinguistics and psychology literature (e.g. Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Prince, 1981;Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski, 1993). The table shows seven different relationsthat can hold between a noun phrase and a brand concept, and predicts howstrongly the brand will be evoked as a result. I have also included some featuresof graphical identity, including fonts, colours, and logos, where it appears thatthey are being used significantly to evoke the brand.Link Definition Example Evokesbrand?RepetitionRepeating the full reference tothe brandOrange… OrangeHSBC… HSBCStronglyevokesPartialrepetitionA phrase contains a referenceto the brand, but refers tosomething other than the brandconceptOrange… the OrangeService PromiseHSBC… HSBC branchesStronglyevokesCo-referenceWhere a concept is reinforcedby referring to it again, but notusing a full descriptive NPOrange… weHSBC… with usStronglyevokes 9Brand elementsWhere a link is created bylanguage or visuals recognisablyspecial to the brandSpecial terms such asOrange TalkShare;Distinctive fontBrand colourLogoStronglyevokesPossessiveinferrablesWhere a link is created byreferring to something that thebrand has, does, or has given tothe customer, using a possessiveNPOrange… our networkYour phoneHSBC… our branchesYour accountEvokesGeneralinferrablesWhere a link is created byreferring to something thatthings of this type (e.g. banks,telecomms companies ingeneral) have or doOrange… the networkHSBC… branchesDoes notevoke
Page 1 and 2: Journal ofAppliedLinguisticsjAL (pr
Page 3 and 4: J. Delin 4, I discuss conclusions,
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Page 7 and 8: J. Delin they cannot keep control o
Page 9 and 10: J. Delin Other brand values that oc
Page 11: J. Delin 11cations. In fact, the ad
Page 15 and 16: J. Delin 15Brand elements are there
Page 17 and 18: J. Delin 17or through explicit asse
Page 19 and 20: J. Delin 19animate objects, we woul
Page 21 and 22: J. Delin 21Orange’s subordinate r
Page 23 and 24: J. Delin 23ProcesstypeMaterial:acti
Page 25 and 26: J. Delin 25Minimiser Action Results
Page 27 and 28: J. Delin 27The crucial point here i
Page 29 and 30: J. Delin 29many of the products and
Page 31 and 32: J. Delin 31And you don’t have to
Page 33 and 34: J. Delin 33relative absence in the
Page 35 and 36: J. Delin 35be part of brand positio
Page 37 and 38: J. Delin 37clients to further their
Page 39 and 40: J. Delin 39general impression. The
Page 41 and 42: J. Delin 41ReferencesAllen, T. and
Page 43 and 44: J. Delin 43John, O. P. (1990) The

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