TIRE-REPAIR SERVICE ADVERTISEMENT: A SEMIOTIC STUDY

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1 TIRE-REPAIR SERVICE ADVERTISEMENT: A SEMIOTIC STUDY 1 Deri Fikri Fauzi, 2 Sutiono Mahdi, 3 Eva Tuckyta Sari Sujatna, 4 Lia Maulia Indrayani 1234 Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Padjadjaran PO box 40600, Jatinangor, Indonesia 1 deri12005@students.unpad.com Abstract Advertisement is not always created to attract or promote one s product or service. Tirerepair service advertisement has the same pattern in using text and context, which absolutely do not consider about variations and eye-catchingness. The writer found that this advertisement would not consider highly in eye-catchingness or attractiveness, but the service provider just showed that they provide the service. Here the writer provides one of service which is located almost along Main Street in Bandung city, tire-repair service. The provider of the service promotes his service by certain features seems similar one another, such as the name, the medium of advertisement, and other supporting equipments. The writer looks deeply into the sign systems in this service advertisement which deal with symbolic, iconic, and indexical sign and how each sign works to create a paradigm. Keywords: tire-repair, advertisement, semiotics 1. Introduction Emery et al. argued (1986) that basic thing in advertisement is helping the selling or offering product through promotion. The provider of the product or service needs to apply certain techniques to persuade and influence the costumer then communicate with the costumers. These techniques, called persuasive technique, must be unique and eye-catching due to its function as promoting media. But this condition is not accommodated in tire-repair service advertisement in Indonesia. The service providers used the same way, text and context, in promoting their service. They didn t apply the concept of advertisement especially uniqueness. And the writer would do the research about it through semiotic approach. Erna et al. (2012) had done the study about English property advertisement in newspaper and television using semiotic approach. And the study concluded that the provider of the product used English mainly to show luxurious and it was made for international costumer. In the opposite way, tire-repair advertisement used two languages, Bahasa Indonesia and English. English is used in this advertisement is not used in the same way that English property advertisement does; it doesn t show the luxurious and who the costumer is. It s quiet different with common advertisement which uses various text, color, shape, medium, etc. but it uses the same language and same context such as the medium of the text. Semiotic as the study of signs that analyzed in this article is actually found in our daily life. Human life is filled by signs. Every day in our life we consume signs. Even crying, speaking, laughing, it is all indicating as signs. Wannisinghe in Syarifuddin (2013) also stated that semiotics involves not only what we refer to as signs in everyday speech, but anything which stands for something else. Thus, we can 76

2 communicate each other with signs intercession and the life process will be more efficient. According to Charles Sanders Peirce (Floyd, 2001), semiotic is a relationship among a sign, an object, and a meaning. A sign may be simple or complex. Unlike Saussure, Peirce does not define the sign as the smallest unit of signification. Anything or phenomenon, no matter how complex, may be considered as a sign from the moment it enters into a process of semiosis (Syarifuddin, 2013). Thus, it is clear that sign is a concept or idea that appears in commentator s mind refers to the pointed object. Saussure (Floyd, 2001) mentioned that sign has two sides; signifier is a material aspect from sign, such as a cat or handwriting while signified is a concept of mentality. When we mention the word cat from signifier (/c/a/t/), what appears in our mind is not the real cat, but a concept of the cat; such as, has four legs, mew, like eating fish, a beautiful animal, etc. If Saussure divided signs in two sides, Peirce divided it into three sides or triadic. They are representament (the firstness), object (the secondness), and interpretant (the thirdness). Based on the object is a concept which is recognized by the user of the sign related to the representament. It is also included as semiotic process in a halfway (R-O) (Syarifuddin, 2013). Then, signifier is the sign vehicle while the signified is the meaning. In this theory, things have no place but words acquire meaning as they enter a system of relations (Syarifuddin, 2013). Thus, signifier and signified cannot be separated and related one another. Object may be like some other representations already held in thought because this new semiotic stimulus seems to conjure up those similar signs (Chandler, 2007). Mackey s statement is in line with Peirce s theory of semiotic that emphasized in signs based on objects. The relationship between signifier and signified consist of three forms, (Danesi, 2004), as follows: 1) Signifier is a description of the direct meaning from signified (icon), such like photo. 2) Signifier is the result (causal relation) from the signifier (index), such as smoke from the fire. 3) Signifier is not the result, the cause or the direct description from signified, but something which related conventionally and arbitrary (symbol). Based on the two expert s statements above which are different opinion one another, thus this article is intended to Peirce theory. Among representament, object, and interpretant, the most often be analyzed is object. Then among icon, index and symbol, index is sign that mostly analyzed in advertisement. Berger (2010) stated that advertisement is made not only to attract people but also as the provider identity. And it influences how the advertisement constructs the purpose through symbols, fonts, etc. Eventually advertisement leaves certain impression to the costumer or reader. Shitemi in Syarifuddin (2013) argued that semiotic analysis can also be applied to communication and information representation in contexts of various media. That is why semiotics can be conducted as a research approach in finding the meaning of advertisement. Besides, the difference of the advertisement which uses the same pattern in promoting the service is unusual and it is means something. So, the writer argued this study is important to do due to its difference then the writer would find the factors behind its unusuality. 2. Method The method used in this article was descriptive qualitative method. It was focused on meaning of kinds of sign, iconic, symbolic, and indexical. Next the writer would figure the similarity and even the differences among advertisement at the same service. The meaning 77

3 of each signs, similarities, and differences lead into a paradigm of the advertisement. 3. Results Indonesia as a big developed country in the world with population amount over 250 million needs the huge amount of transportation also. The people in Indonesia prefer to choose motorcycle as their transportation than the others type of transportation, car, public transportation, etc. Commonly the people of Indonesia choose this kind of motorcycle is due to its price which is cheap. And for this fact, there are many things which support motorcycle as the largest transportation in Indonesia. One of them is tirerepair service. The writer took 20 samples from the tire-repair service advertisement along the main street in Bandung city, Indonesia. One of advertisement can be seen as follow, Figure 1 tire-repair service advertisement From 20 advertisements which the writer had been collected, there are non-language elements which showed in every advertisement. These elements are things which are showed beside flag/ advertisement name and are used as attention getter. The elements can be seen as follow: Table 1 Non-language elements of tire-repair service advertisement No Element Description 1 Unused tire/ ex-tire The tire is used as the media of the advertisement. The advertisement is written on it. The writing is white, whereas the background, the tire, is black. The different size of tire shows the different size of tire the provider can repair. For example if the provider can only repair motorcycle tire, he uses ex-motorcycle tire as his media of advertisement. In the other hand if the provider can repair car, or even truck, tire, he uses it as his advertisement media. 2 Air compressor The color is bright red. Commonly in big size. 78

4 The advertisements had also language elements which show in every tire-repair service advertisement. The description can be seen below: Table 2 Language elements of tire-repair service advertisement No Language elements Amount Percentage 1 Flag or advertisement name (Tambal Ban/ tire repair) Tubeless/ tubles/ cubles/ tubless Tambah angin/ adding air Ganti oli/ oil changing Vulkanisir/ tire retread Discussion The facts on the tables above have shown that there are so many signs emerged in order to build certain interpretation to the reader or costumer. The signs on these advertisements mostly used iconic sign, since the function of the advertisement is getting costumer attention. The provider provided the simplest signs in order to inform the costumer what he provided. All iconic signs which used in these advertisements are simple and made to be as eye catching as possible. The usage of ex-tire means that the place provided certain service which deal with tire, tire-repair service. Even the color of the tire is black, which means less eye catching, but the flag or name advertisement in the contrastive color is written on it. The usage of the ex-tire itself is very simple to understand by the costumer that the place provides the service of tire. The usage of air compressor in the same color indicates all service provider understand well of its function as attention getter. The bright color can easily looked from far away and as result it can make costumer easily to find it. Furthermore, it is useful in the night when every color less visible but bright red color is more visible in the night even in less light condition. The service provider sometimes combine his tire-repair service with another service, such as adding air (80%), oil changing (65%), tire retread (3%), etc. It means that the service provider wants to expand his service not only about tire-repair but also into different field of service. It indicates also that the provider of the service wants to provide as many services as they can provide in order to attract costumer. Through symbolic signs, such as the name of other service, the provider expands their service. Something different happens in language elements in this advertisement. The writing tubeless (which indicates only one layer tire is used) is sometimes different among one service provider to another. As the table stated above, it is 90% of tire-repair service advertisement includes kind of tire, whether tube or tubeless tire, that the provider can fix. But from that amount, some of service provider used the word incorrectly, such as tubeles (less s ), tubles (less e and s ), and even cubles (misspelling). It indicates several meanings which the writer puts it in several hypotheses as follow: 1. It indicates the service provider doesn t have much academic experience, and or 2. It indicates the service provider focuses on how it is pronounced and how it is heard. And they don t pay attention too much on how it is written. And in Sundanese, as tribe in Bandung city, it is common costume for the people. They prefer focus on how it is pronounced than how it is written. As another example they pronounce and write facebook as pesbuk, and it is used as a rubric column in Sundanese 79

5 newspaper Galamedia (Local Daily Newspaper). As the conclusion tire-repair advertisement is different with another advertisement which attract consumer as possible as can. It is made only to show that there is a place for tire to repair. This advertisement only enhances in showing its existence in the side of the street. It is quite easy to understand why all tire-repair advertisements only focus on how they can shows the service to the costumer rather than how to attract the costumer. This service doesn t need to attract costumer as many as they can, it is enough to make sure to the costumer that it is there when the customer needs its service. Another thing the writer can conclude of the paper is almost every tire-repair service provider don t pay attention to the language elements of their advertisement. It can be seen on how they write word tubeless, most of service providers write it incorrectly. 5. Emery, Edwin et al. (1986). Mass Communication (sixth edition); Concepts and Issues in the Mass Media. Dubuque: Win. C. Brown Publishers. 6. Merrel, Floyd. (2001). Charles Sanders Peirce s Concept of The Sign on The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics. New York: Routledge p Syarifuddin, Salmia et al Index in Alexandre Dumas Novel the Man in The Iron Mask: A Semiotic Analysis. Canadian Center of Science and Education Vol. 6 no 10 p Acknowledgements I thank three my lecturers and also anonymous referees for their helpful and insightful comments on this paper. References 1. Andriyanti, Erna et al Analisis Semiotik Wacana Iklan Properti Berbahasa Inggris di Surat Kabar dan Televisi di Indonesia. Kajian Linguistik dan Sastra. Vol. 24 no 1 p Berger, Arthur Asa. (2010). Pengantar Semiotika: Tanda-tanda dalam kebudayaan kontemporer. Yogyakarta: Tiara Wacana 3. Chandler, Daniel. (2007). Semiotics The Basics. Madison Ave, New York: Routledge 4. Danesi, Marcel. (2004). Messages, Signs, and Meanings: A Basic textbook in Semiotics and Communication Theory. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars Press Inc. 80