HEHERSON P. VALDEZ
JERRIBEL V. REYES
Bachelor of Arts in English Language Studies
Isabela State University-Cauayan Campus
ABSTRACT
The growing number of studies in Critical Discourse Analysis, particularly advertisements, highlighted how a particular discourse or group of discourses change or alternate society’s traditions, cultures, values, beliefs, norms, and ideologies. Incorporating the framework of Fairclough (2001) and by adopting the transdisciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, wherein the theories in sociology were integrated into the analysis of texts, this study examines the forty (40) political campaign advertisements from Facebook and YouTube. It analyzes the interrelationship of text and context, identifying their underlying sociological and political ideologies. More specifically, this paper examines the Philippine political campaign ads focusing on rhetorical tools, capitals, and representations. There are seven (7) rhetorical tools identified in this study: the use of taglines, testimonials, catchy lines and slogans, the use of humor, figures of speech such as simile and hyperbole, repetition, and ad hominem. The use of two types of capital, social and cultural capital, was also observed in the ads. On the other hand, three (3) representations of politicians’ positionality are identified: politicians as our only hope, politicians as a savior, and politicians as people who grew up in poverty. The samples that had been analyzed show hegemonic features of Philippine political advertising. This study proposes that the creation of political campaign advertisements in the Philippines, as supported by the theory of Bourdieu (1986) and Gramsci (1978), needs to reassess and evaluated.