The Art of Persuasion: Exploring Linguistic Resources in Advertising
1. Features of Advertising
Advertising is the art of persuading recipients to purchase goods, services, or ideas. It aims to influence attitudes, behaviors, and consumption needs through compelling arguments.
Advertising copy serves several purposes:
- Appellate Function: Modifying behavior or habits.
- Referential Function: Showcasing product features and properties.
- Poetic Function: Presenting a product aesthetically.
The advertising process involves:
- Multiple Transmitters: The advertiser, the advertising company, and the actors or characters within the message.
- Targeted Audience: Advertisers select audiences with shared characteristics, choosing specific media outlets and times.
- Realized Effect: Advertising achieves its goal when the recipient purchases the product.
- Multi-Code Creativity: Combining words, colors, sounds, and images.
- Constant Evolution: The advertising world constantly adapts to a consumer-driven society, requiring innovation and significant financial investment.
2. Functions of Language in Advertising
Advertising utilizes various language functions:
- Referential: Presenting objective facts (e.g., Today is Tuesday.)
- Expressive: Reflecting the speaker’s subjective attitude (e.g., How well you live, Eugenia!)
- Appellate: Calling for the recipient’s attention or action (e.g., Waiter, a menu.)
- Phatic: Opening, maintaining, or closing communication channels (e.g., Can you hear me?)
- Metalinguistic: Using language to discuss language itself (e.g., I don’t know what kleptomaniac means.)
- Poetic/Aesthetic: Drawing attention to the way things are said (e.g., Three Trapped Tigers.)
Advertising aims to motivate recipients, drawing them into the product and advertisement through persuasive arguments.
3. Linguistic Resources in Advertising
3.1 Phonic Resources
Audio-based advertisements utilize:
- Sound Devices: Alliteration, paronomasia (e.g., More books, more free), onomatopoeia, and rhyme (e.g., If you want adventure, set out on reading) to enhance memorability.
- Varied Tones: Persuading through intonation, closely linked to the appellate function (e.g., Bring home the stars of Hollywood!).
- Visual Cues (in written ads): Different fonts, sizes, and contrasts to attract attention. Intentional misspellings can also be used.
3.2 Morphosyntactic Resources
- Unique Products: Articles and pronouns emphasize product exclusivity (e.g., There’s only one Andalusia). Superlatives, exaggerated nouns, and implicit comparisons are common (e.g., The chiquiprecios).
- Personal Connection: First and second-person pronouns and imperatives create identification and exclusivity (e.g., Will you give your children just a few recommendations on education?).
- Concise Language: Preposition suppression, unusual slogans (e.g., Fall/Winter Fashion. Egg Shampoo.).
- Impactful Structures: Nominal constructions, verbless sentences (e.g., Seville, cleaner than none), ellipsis (e.g., Cádiz, silver cup), and short sentences (e.g., The Fires).
- Repetition: Reinforcing the message (e.g., Yum, yum, I want you green! Green!).
3.3 Lexical-Semantic Resources
- Positive Values: Words with positive connotations and social status (e.g., nature, exclusivity, tradition) (e.g., We keep it real.)
- Technical Language: Technical terms and neologisms convey scientific value and sophistication (e.g., Lacto-bacillus, with soy isoflavones, ADSL, SMS).
- Foreign Words: Suggesting elegance and innovation (e.g., pack, shampoo, After Shave).
- Wordplay: Polysemic terms and stylistic figures (e.g., Find your interest.).
- Rhetorical Devices: Synesthesia, paradoxes, personifications (e.g., a really smart car), metaphors, hyperbole (e.g., Andalusia, unstoppable), and comparisons (e.g., Better than bread).
- Connotation: Targeting specific audiences by using language that resonates with their values and feelings (e.g., new, luxury, beauty).