AN INVESTIGATION INTO LEXICAL CHOICES IN NARRATIONS OF AMERICAN CARTOON TRAILERS

Abstract

Thanks to the rapid spread of the Internet, the process of advertising forthcoming cartoons has become easier and more impressive. Apart from using posters, filmmakers make use of another effective and attractive tool–trailer, which is commonly known as a short video about an upcoming film shown in advance for the purpose of advertising it. To convince viewers, appropriate strategies of using language are employed. Therefore, the copywriter must pay great attention to choice of words in narrations of trailers. This paper is aimed at examining the striking lexical choices employed in the transcriptions of narrations of American cartoon trailers (NACTs). These cartoons cover a variety of themes which are love and sacrifice, youth and beauty, friendship, nature’s beauty, adventures, science fiction, etc. It is hoped that the findings of the paper, to some extent, will be useful for creating English texts advertising animated films as well as for writing English for Vietnamese learners.