‘Reason’ and ‘tickle’ as pragmatic constructs in the discourse of advertising

This paper explores certain pragmatic features of advertising discourse. It focuses on and expands upon a binary distinction between types of advertising discourse which was proposed initially by Bernstein (1974) and which has been touched upon more recently by other commentators such as Cook (1992). This is the distinction between reason advertisements (those which suggest a motive or reason for purchase) and tickle advertisements (those which appeal to humour, emotion and mood). It will be argued that Bernstein's distinction can be accommodated relatively systematically within contemporary frameworks of language and discourse. Drawing on a range of work in pragmatics and in systemic-functional linguistics, this paper takes some tentative steps towards the development of a theoretical model with accounts for this particular communicative-cognitive dimension of advertising discourse.

The Non-Responsive Receiver Problem in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

This letter exposed a serious unfairness problem with IEEE 802.11 MAC based Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) when operating TCP connections, and identifies the three common factors that contribute to this problem. The work initiated the development of a programmable wireless framework that is subsequently used in a spin-out company (TOM), and by the Telecoms Technology Testing centre in Taiwan(Dr D Chieng).

Characterization and Modeling of the Indoor Radio Channel at 868 MHz for a Mobile Bodyworn Wireless Personal Area Network

This letter reports the statistical characterization and modeling of the indoor radio channel for a mobile wireless personal area network operating at 868 MHz. Line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS conditions were considered for three environments: anechoic chamber, open office area and hallway. Overall, the Nakagami-m cdf best described fading for bodyworn operation in 60% of all measured channels in anechoic chamber and open office area environments. The Nakagami distribution was also found to provide a good description of Rician distributed channels which predominated in the hallway. Multipath played an important role in channel statistics with the mean recorded m value being reduced from 7.8 in the anechoic chamber to 1.3 in both the open office area and hallway.