AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE FEATURES IN ENGLISH ADVERTISEMENTS
It can be seen from table 1 that the hygiene, beauty, food and detergents ads are dominant in the women’s magazines while technical equipment ads prevail in men’s magazines. The reason is that women are potential purchasers of daily consumer goods while men are potential purchasers of technical equipment. So advertising language tries to win its audiences by noticing audiences’ gender identity.
In addition, since the subjects involved in advertisements vary from simple to complex, shared knowledge by the addresser (ads) and addressee (the audience) varies. For example, knowledge of technical equipment, sometimes demands high educational background or special interests in a certain field. To convey different knowledge clearly, advertisements don’t always speak in the same way. In the following section, we will make a comparative study of three points in order to find differences in the choice of words in three types of advertisements: the selection of adjectives, the use of compound words and the use of pronouns.
2.3.2 Selection of adjectives
Adjectives, as emotive and exciting words, are used to enhance the facts of a certain product or service. In the study of the selection of adjectives, we have first divided adjectives into two groups: descriptive adjectives and evaluative adjectives. The former is used in objective description and the latter give the advertiser’s subjective comments. Then we have listed those frequently used descriptive adjectives and evaluative adjectives in daily consumer goods ads and technical equipment ads, and we surprisingly have discovered descriptive adjectives differ from each other in two kinds of advertisements.
Table 2 Comparison of frequently-used adjectives
in daily consumer goods ads and technical equipment ads
| Descriptive adjectives | Evaluative adjectives | |
|
Daily Consumer Goods Ads |
radiant, shiny, dazzling, gold soft, smooth fresh creamy, crispy clean |
easy, convenient rich, effective, crucial healthy, fast valuable, flew essential good/better/best magic |
|
Technical Equipment Ads |
audible, visible high-volume, full-colour, high-speed magnetic, sharp invisible, multiple flexible, versatile |
Table 2 shows that descriptive adjectives in daily consumer goods ads such as fresh, crispy, and soft, tend to convey the sense of sight, touch, and taste. The temptation aroused by this vivid description of a product is hard to resist especially for women who tend to be moved by pleasant senses; compared with men, women are inclined to think in terms of images and perceive through senses. However, men, the target audience of technical equipment, are good at rational thinking. Men are not controlled by senses. On the contrary, the product’s interior quality and function is what they pay attention to. So the descriptive adjectives used in technical equipment ads are the ones conveying information of the product, such as
