Ad-Theatre Techniques: Motifs of Orality and Popular Culture in Kenya’s Radio

Abstract

This is a study of theatre by its persuasive function in commercial contexts. Specifically the study is a critique of the influences of orality and popular culture on audiences in commercial set ups as evident in dramas of radio advertising. It begins from the awareness that the drama genre has been at the heart of Africa’s rich literary heritage, and that it still finds use in contemporary spaces through mass media. Since the advent of radio in Africa drama has been a preferred technique of radio advertising in Kenya, yet scholarly research on drama as a persuasive genre through the radio medium remains scant. This is in spite of the fact that advertising communities are already aware of its marketing potential. The purpose of this study is thus to examine some of the techniques that drama uses in radio advertising, based on the assumption that because advertisements are made to woo buyers, the genre possesses strong rhetorical elements that can render for scholarly analyses. The study demonstrates the awareness that drama has been a cultural production in Kenya, and that orality has always punctuated dramatic practice at every phase of its development both in form and motif. Secondly, it demonstrates the eternal presence of oral leitmotifs in contemporary use especially in advertising discourses. The study uses a qualitative design. Data is in the form of audio records of advertisements that use the technique of drama in radio which have been transcribed, translated and analyzed to arrive at conclusions about the persuasive strategy of orality and popular culture in the radio medium. Since radio is a purely audio-acoustic media just like primary orality, Walter Ong’s theorizing about transiting from primary orality to typographical forms has been employed to enable us understand the psychodynamics of audio-acoustic messages, and what makes them click so easily with audiences. His views about ‘imagined audiences’ have also been used. In the first chapter we have established a background to the study. The second chapter deals with the literature review and theoretical framework. In chapter three we discuss the study methods while in chapter four we analyze selected data in terms of the oral motifs used using Walter Ong’s structural-functional theorizing in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. In chapter five the thesis analyzes the use of popular culture as a marketing strategy, while chapter six deals with thesis summary, conclusions and recommendations for further study. The study finds that aspects of indigenous theatrical forms based in primary orality feature prominently in drama-mediated advertisements, and that these features illuminate on the psychology and philosophy of radio listeners, and that advertisers prefer modeling their content on trendy topics adorned in literary stylistics. These findings are important because they affirm the enduring nature of orality in modern times. They also point to practical applicability of orality in modern discourses on one hand, and on the other, awareness that adverts strongly suggest the ways in which Kenyan consumers understand their world.