The construction of a relationship: variation through texts.

The unstable relation between magazine and customer is reflected in a changing tenor of discourse.
The first step in the analysis of the texts is the study of the participants. The second step is the choices made at the level of mood, the types of clause, which are reflection of the speech function. The third step is analysis of modality, and the linguistic choices made with respect to it.

Text analysis and results

Letter 0. Presentation of initial identities.
The customer is still a subscriber.
The relationship is friendly, fairly personal and direct. This is reflected in high number of proposals, abundant use of modality, and the second person pronoun as the main subject.

Letter 1 and 2. The identity of the ideal subscriber.
The customer is still a subscriber, but he does not renew his subscription.
The relationship starts changing. The letters do not include a single proposal, but are a series of propositions. They do not include imperative forms. Modality is almost non-existent. The “you” almost disappears as a grammatical Subject. The text is less interactive and the main subjects are “I” and the magazine.
Letters 3 and 4. The customer’s identity starts wavering.
The customer is no longer a subscriber.
The relationship is somewhat tense. The clauses are combination of proposition and proposals.
Paragraphs are short, and subordinate clauses are presented as independent ones. The texts content more imperatives, more proposals, and more modal adjuncts, and strong judgements on the propositions. The main subject is “you”, but in negative way in which the identity of customer is questioned.

Letter 5. The customer’s identity collapses.
The customer does not renew his subscription.
The relationship is unstable and uncertain. The identity of customer is no longer clear. The text is full of doubt and has abundant use of modality. The main subjects are “you”. “I”, “we”, or “the magazine” are no longer present in the text. The clauses are declarative and interrogative, asking directly why the customer did not accept the proposition. The language is a clear power strategy.
Letter 6. Thanks for renewing the subscription.
The customer renews his subscription.
This letter shares linguistic features with Letter 0.The relationship is again friendly and stable.
The identity of customer is no longer questioned through modal adjuncts or interrogative clauses.
The proposal component is still there, to keep an interactive style. The main subject is “you” but now is in very friendly way.

Conclusion. Evaluation of the success of the campaign

We saw that analysing the participants in the advert is the best way to define this subgenre of advertising, direct mailing campaign. The participants are the magazine and customer. The customer has the power to end his subscription. The magazine, since it wants to avoid this, creates an attractive identity for customer throughout a series of personalized letters. The customer will be powerful and his power resides in his subscription to the magazine. These letters are characterised by a changing tenor of discourse, which is reflected in the linguistic choices made at the levels of mood, modality and the grammatical subjects.
This campaign is very successful, both from a linguistic and a marketing point of view.