Chapter Four - Clichés as Social Cognition

Summary

This chapter conceptualises clichés as socio-cognitive representations in advertising and branding discourse. It draws on social cognition and argues that clichés are useful resources for the construction of brand identity. Two current UK print advertisements and a corpus of UK corporate mission statements are analysed combining corpus linguistics tools and textual analysis of cliches and their collocates using tools from SFL’s transitivity system, social actor theory, appraisal theory and conceptual metaphor theory. The findings demonstrate that, ideationally, cliches are used to construe an ideal self for the brand evoking models of superiority, difference and wholeness and interpersonally building a relationship of trust with the customer or stakeholder who is the ultimate addressee of the mission statements.