Week 3, Bundle 8

Goal: Explore syntagmatics, with special focus on narrative (sequential syntagmatics)
Textbook: Ch. 3, 135-37, 140-41; mainly based on the typology of narrative presented in lecture this Monday and not taken from the textbook.

Remember: it is convenient to categorize syntagmatics into three types:
- Spatial
- Sequential (we will focus primarily on this type here)
- Conceptual
Go back to the W3 lecture page and review the typology of narrative structure
- Video ads that tell a story obviously instantiate a narrative.
- We saw a couple of prime examples in lecture on Monday
- Here are four more video ads that tell a story
  - Budweiser "Someone Waits for You at Home"
Q1-2. Pick any two of these ads, your free choice, and analyze each of them in terms of the typology of narrative presented in lecture (4 points for each ad). Ignore "Evaluation" completely. Use the timings as necessary to identify sections of the ad that correspond to different parts of the typology. Remember that not all narratives will incorporate all parts of the typology.

Print ads often present a kind of "flattened" version of a narrative, which enables you to identify the pieces of a narrative, even if they are not presented in linear order.
- The Superstyle curtain track ad discussed in lecture is a perfect example of this (better than the Tivo ad, which has enough text to actually tell a little traditional story within that paragraph). Review what we said about this ad, how we broke it down in terms of the narrative typology. Here are three more print ads of the same type, with a narrative embedded in the flat facade of the ad:
  - Cascade dishwashing detergent
  - Charnos lingerie
  - Max Bygraves ad
    - Note that this last one is a British ad, and it depends upon the public's awareness of who Max Bygraves is and what his music sounds like. You may not have that background knowledge. Here are a few samples of his "work":
    - Note also that the term "hairpins" in the ad refers to "hairpin curves", sharp curves when the road almost doubles back on itself, e.g., going up or down a steep mountainside.
Q3-4. Analyze two of these ads (your choice) in terms of the narrative typology, and be sure to break out the sequence of discrete events that together make up the story. As before, do not attempt to include "Evaluation".

Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky (from his book Through the Looking Glass, a sequel to Alice in Wonderland) begins with a very famous initial nonsense verse (the whole poem contains quite a lot of nonsense, but it is densest in the first stanza, which is repeated again at the end).
- The first stanza contains eleven made-up words. These are used as paradigmatic choices in their positions in the context of the stanza. Read this first verse and think about what you can figure out about those particular words. Then answer the following question:
Q5. Pick four nonsense words (your choice) used as paradigmatic choices in this stanza (the first four lines of the poem). Then tell us what you can figure out about their meaning, using any clues you can find. (Clues may include above all syntagmatic information from the way they combine with the surrounding words, nonsense or real; your own perception of a word [whats does it remind you of in real English?], other paradigmatic choices from real English that could have been substituted for a nonsense word, etc.) Make sure you explain what gives you each idea that you come up with.
Once you are finished with this, you are welcome to consult the "explication" of the first stanza offered to Alice later in the book by Humpty Dumpty. Do not simply copy his ideas in answering Q5!
For fun, here's a parody that uses advertising product names
You can find lots more Jabberwocky parodies at the same site.