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helping in any way we can.” Up to the last line of the ad, the “we” could be read as
encompassing both the advertiser and the audience. The last line makes a clearer
distinction, though, about the company helping. In this ad, as in many others of this
group, there are references to strength and recovery. The ad from American Express (9/17,
p. C7), reads in part: “we…are absolutely committed to safeguarding the investments you
entrusted to us. We have over 100 years of experience…” Although the ad speaks about
making sure their clients’ investments are safe, it also is a clear message of the safety of
the company, a clear commercial message. Just a couple pages away in the same edition of
the paper, the ad from Merrill Lynch (9/17 p. C5) assures clients that their assets are safe,
saying “we go forward with a renewed sense of purpose.” The Merrill Lynch ad is unique
in this group as it also says that “staying calm and maintaining perspective will prove to be
the best strategy.” This may be read as an entreaty for investors not to pull their money
out of the stock market and to keep doing business as usual with the company.
Not surprisingly, a majority of the ads in the “we will recover” group are placed by
financial companies and investment firms.
2
All take the road to recovery very seriously in
their full-page ads, and each in its own way touts the strength of the company as indicative
or even synonymous with the strength of the nation. The corporate sponsors of the “we are
with you” ads-as-letters metonymize their corporate identities, with “we” representing the
paternal strength of the corporate entity. The sponsors of the “we will recover” ads
metonymize “we” as representing the victims of the attacks and the people of the United
States in general. Bower notes that scholars studying the epistolary form “may focus on
the form’s link to women’s discourse forms, its seeming intimacy, its metonymizing of both
absence and presence, its availability to all” (2000, p. 163). Indeed, the dialectic of
2
JP Morgan Chase (9/14, p. C16), Aon (9/14, p. C6), American Express (9/17 p. C7), Merrill Lynch (9/17, p.
C5), Fleet (9/17, p. B11), Marsh & McLennan (9/17, p. C9), and Lehman Brothers (9/23, p. A8).
Convention