American Patriotism and Corporate Identity in Automobile Advertising - "What's Good for General Motors Is Good for the Country and Vice Versa?"

The triumphal march of the automobile and its connection with American culture have often been acknowledged in scholarship. By contrast, the culture-specific, value-oriented advertising strategies of the most important US carmaker General Motors (GM) in its home market have received less attention, especially in American Studies. This study focuses on the connection between GM products and America and the fundamental values represented by politics, business, and society. The author examines which textual and visual strategies GM uses in its image advertising to establish and maintain its patriotic American image. He argues that GM's advertising campaigns follow a patriotic leitmotif and are consistently in line with American core values, often generating new patriotic ideas.

List of contents

American Core Values - Patriotism - Consumer Culture - Image - Automobile Advertising - General Motors - Dinah Shore - «See the USA in Your Chevrolet» - «Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet» - «The Heartbeat of America» - «Keep America Rolling» - «An American Revolution» - «Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit» - «Rethink American»

Product details

• Authors: Markus Weik
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 14.03.2019
• EAN: 9783631776940
• ISBN: 978-3-631-77694-0
• No. of pages: 362
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 215 mm x 28 mm
• Weight: 536 g
• Illustrations: 40 Abb.
• Series: Mainzer Studien zur Amerikanistik
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics