Freedman and Jurafsky Reaction

The piece by Freedman and Jurafsky was very interesting for me. I don’t think that I have ever thought about advertising in this sort of way. The way that everything was so precise and scientific was astonishing. Normally, when I think of advertising, I think of things like audience and color scheme. I would never imagine encountering linear regression when analyzing advertisements.

Methods aside, there was a very strong connection made between food, language and culture. The authors demonstrated with scientific evidence that food is advertised differently using different language to different social classes. They were able to determine the type of language and persuasive arguments for bags of potato chips based on the price of the chips. They explain that chips that are directed towards a higher class of people use more complex phrasing and use different persuasive techniques than those directed towards a lower class. The more expensive chips specifically use negative expressions and comparison to tell the consumer that their product is superior. They also make sure to say how their product is different and unique.

 I found the most interesting part about this piece to be the use of science and statistics to analyze the advertising techniques of different potato chip brands. It was very intriguing to see the use of the Flesch-Kincaid system to determine the complexity of sentences on each bag, along with the sheer number of words that were on the bag. The researchers went very in depth with their investigation of these potato chip bags to determine the relationship between food and language.

Another area that could be worth studying in a similar fashion would be cereal. Cereal is definitely a food that has many different advertisement strategies. I believe that “sugary” cereals would use simple language and be directed more towards children, while some healthier cereals may use some of the complex language that was found in the expensive brands of potato chips. Though there are only a few different companies that make cereal, each company may have a different advertisement strategy for different types of cereal. Overall, I think that looking at food and advertising from this point of view is a very unique way of analyzing the packaging.