as Tacos. You instantly know that the characters are Mexican due to their appearance, dark skinned, long moustaches, wearing ponchos and sombreros, riding horses through the desert. The music and appearance of the characters are the main signs used to recognise Mexico. However the poor dubbing of their voices and the words ondelay ondelay are also common cultural signs portrayed in the media. Italian signs are also often used to sell food products such as pizza and pasta. For example the Dolmio commercials that use to be on television. They showed a large Italian family(Italians like large families) having pasta for dinner(traditional Italian meal), they had napkins tucked into their shirts(suggesting they were going to eat a lot of food in a messy manner), the characters were primarily large, they used the words mama and papa(Italian words for mum and dad) and the main character had pasta sauce on his mouth with the tag line do you wear the Dolomio grin. All of which are signs the media use to portray Italian people. Once again the music also played a major role in recognising the cultural stereotypes. Even the name Dolmio sends a linguistic message of Italianicity. If the media do not understand the cultural characteristics of a country they would not be aware of the shared cultural values of the community and could easily offend the country. For example the eating of beef in India is not practised, the colour white is a symbol of death in China, and the left hand in some countries is known as the toilet hand. This demonstrates the differences in culture that could be very embarrassing for companies. The simplicity of colour or a name could be very offensive and have disastrous implications, which demonstrates the necessity for market research. However I believe that cultural values also need to be lived to be learned, for more accurate results. The media are a very powerful tool of communication. They are used as a tool to educate, i...
