Anything/Whatever Ad February 17, 2008

  I like this advertisement as they play around with the two words ‘Anything’ and ‘Whatever’. Misunderstandings is clearly shown in this advertisement as the words ‘anything’ and ‘whatever’ simply mean a thing of any kind. However, the words actually belong to the names of the soft drinks. I realised that verbal cues and non-verbal cues always come together when we communicate with others. The facial expression of the customers clearly shows that they were frustrated that the cashier did not give them the soft drinks that they wanted. The bewildered look of the cashier shows  that he was confused by the requests of his customers. I have not tried Anything and Whatever. Have you tried it? Heard that they are any taste for any thirst. In our lives, we can identify such situation when slangs that belongs to our own social or ethnic group are used in the presence of others. For example the word ’shiok’ can be easily understood by most Singaporean teenagers, but foreigners may not understand what that word means. Therefore, to enable effective communication to occur among people not from our social groups, it would be better to exclude slangs.