Perspectives: Japanese and American Television Commercials: A Cultural Study with TEFL Applications

Page No.: 
123
Writer(s): 
Paul Stapleton, Hokkaido University

This paper suggests that japanese and American television commercials reflect
the values of their respective cultures and are therefore pedagogically useful
in the EFL classroom. A preliminary examination of 200 commercials from
japanese and American television programs indicates that there are significant
differences in the types of commercials shown, with 54% of the japanese
commercials surveyed appealing to emotion, compared with only 7% of the
American, and 66% of the American commercials using logic as the central
theme, compared with only 10% of the japanese. As rich sources of both
cultural information and natural language, commercials provide EFL teachers
with a means for promoting learner awareness of the values of the target
. culture through communicative language use.

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