| The present study deals with social change advertising campaigns in Germany and Spain. The fundamental objectives of social change advertising are not only awareness or attitude shifts but influence on behavior---that is to say to get individuals to change their behavior in order to enhance a positive social change that will benefit the society as a whole.;The empirical basis of this research is defined by a corpus of 18 printed advertisements and 93 from TV taken from organ donation campaigns, Anti-AIDS, Anti-Drugs and Anti-Racism campaigns run between 1986 and 1996. Following a theoretical review, in which emphasis is placed on the relevance of sociology, social psychology, semiotics and discourse analysis for advertising research, the investigation adopts a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary methodological approach.;The main focus of the study consists of identifying the specific communication strategies used in social change advertising and exploring intercultural differences. Attention is drawn to the different linguistic and non-linguistic expressions of illocutionary force that in social change advertising discourse play a special role and to the cultural values that determine the persuasive process in social change advertising. |
