The Discourse of Brand Slogans of the Best 100 Universities in Asia 2019: ASystemic Functional Grammar Analysis

Abstract

Brand slogan as a part of branding plays a defining role for universities to win fierce competition. It creates emotional bonding and memorability in the mind of potential students and stake-holders. This study investigates words choice and word arrangement used in brand slogans of 100 best universities in Asia 2019 by making use of the Systemic Functional Grammar’s Experiential Metafunction. Results indicate that words most preferred for their brand slogans are patterned and are circled around: “Truth” (4/11%), “Integrity, “sincerity” (each 3/8%), and “Act”, “creating”, “creative”, “diligence”, “excellence”, “global”, and “justice” (each 2/6%); Verb (12/48%), Noun (11/44%), Adjective (1/4%), Prepositional phrase (1/4%). They are structured in Structures of Modification (10/40%), Structures of Complementation (9/36%), word (5/20%), and Structures of Predication (1/4%).