AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE FEATURES IN ENGLISH ADVERTISEMENTS

Table 1 Distribution of three types of 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

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 audible, visible, high-volume, high-speed, etc.

2.3.3 Compound words

A compound word is often a noun or an adjective made up of two or more words. Compound adjectives are often seen in advertisements. In the present study, we found compound words turn up with varying proportions in three types of advertisements.

Obviously, compound words turn up in 65% technical equipment ads, 40 percentage points higher than that of daily consumer goods ads; 30 percentage points higher than service ads.

Compound words in technical equipment ads, are usually combined to give an exact description of a certain feature or a certain function such as high-volume, full-color, multi-functional, non-stop, water-cooled. Often numbers are employed in front of the hyphen, which is seldom seen in other advertisements, such as 64-bit, 24-valve, 4-wheel, 255-horsepower.

This difference can be accounted for in terms of the different complexities of the goods. In comparison with daily consumer goods and services, technical equipment is much more complicated in function and structure. It is just the advantageous function or newly designed structure that the advertiser wants to highlight in technical equipment ads. Thus, the advertiser employs, even coins, so many compound words that they can make the introduction of complicated technical equipment brief and precise. Grammatically, compound words help to avoid using clause, which enhance the readability of advertisements.

2.3.4 Use of pronouns

Pronouns of the first and second person: we, I and you outnumber the other pronouns in advertisements. It is because that you, we and I help create a friend-like intimate atmosphere to move and persuade the audience. Advertisements with lots of pronouns of the first and second person are called gossip advertisements. Here, gossip has not the least derogative meaning. It originates from old English god sib, meaning friendly chats between women. Advertisements that go like talking with friends closely link the advertisement and the audience. The audience will easily accept a product, a service or an idea as if a good friend recommended them.

Though pronouns of the first and second person are popular in advertisements, there are some differences in the use of these pronouns in the three kinds of advertisements. The first person we almost never occurs in daily consumer goods ads and technical equipment ads, whereas we is used in almost 80% the service ads in the corpus. The following are some examples.

What can we do for you?

So come on and join us as we celebrate MillenniaMania Singapore.

…, we help our neighbors find the best ways to give to their favorite charities­

We’re stronger than ever.

…

There are two factors to explain the phenomenon. First, in daily consumer goods ads and technical equipment ads, a product is the focus of information. When the product needs to be mentioned, “it” is used, and in most cases, the brand name is used, even repeated to impress the readers. However, in service ads, service is actually the product. Since service is intangible, we can be regarded as the replacement of the service. Second, it is more necessary for service ads to create a friend-like atmosphere, because winning trust is the first thing service ads want to do.

3. Syntactical features

3.1 Similarities

The purpose of all advertising is to familiarize consumers with or remind them of the benefits of particular products in the hope of increasing sales, and the techniques used by advertisers do not vary markedly. An advertisement is often merely glimpsed in passing and so, to be effective, its message must be colorful, legible, understandable and memorable. The rules governing the language of advertising are similar. We have summarized the lexical features of English advertisements. If words are leaves of a tree, and sentences branches; the branches must also possess their similarities.

First, length of a sentence in advertising is usually short. A sentence in daily consumer goods ads has 10.3 words on average; in technical equipment ads, 11.8 words; in service ads, 12.3 words.

Second, as to sentence structure, simple sentences and elliptical sentences are often used in advertisements. Compared with complex sentences, simple sentences are more understandable and forceful. Elliptical sentences are actually incomplete in structure but complete in meaning. The adoption of elliptical sentences can spare more print space, and take less time for readers to finish reading. In addition, a group of sentence fragments may gain special advertising effectiveness. Let us compare the following two advertisements.

a. Baked. Drenched. Tested to the extreme. A Motorola cellular phone …

b. The Motorola cellular phone are baked and drenched to extreme.

Obviously, by using elliptical structure, sentence a is far more brief, eye-catching and forceful than sentence b. What’s more, it conveys attitudes that sentence b lacks. Sentence a implies a kind of appreciation for the phone, by splitting the sentence into several fragments and rearranging its word order. Therefore skillful arrangement of elliptical sentences may add color to a sentence.

Third, as to sentence patterns, interrogative sentences and imperative sentences are heavily used in English advertisements. Imperative sentences are short, encouraging and forceful. They are used to arouse audiences’ wants or encourage them to buy something. For instance:

Enter something magical. (Oldsmobile)

Feel the clean all day. (ALMAY)

Bye one. (Honda motor)

…

In the explanation of the high frequency of the use of interrogative sentences, Linguist G.N. Leech (方薇,1997:77) discusses two main functions of interrogative sentences. Viewing from the angle of psychology, interrogative sentences divided the process of information receiving into two phases by first raising a question and then answering it. Thus it turns the passive receiving into active understanding. From the linguistic angle, interrogative sentences decrease the grammatical difficulty, because they are usually short in advertisements. Take the following interrogative sentence as an example: if it is asked to condense to one sentence, the condensed one will be complex and dull.

What’s in Woman’s Realm this week? A wonderful beauty offers for you.

→There’s a wonderful beauty offer for you in Women’s Realm this week.

Fourth, the passive voice is usually avoided because the passive voice gives the audience an indirect and unnatural feeling. In daily communication, passive voice is seldom used; so is in advertisements. Present tense prevails in most advertisements because present tense implies a universal timelessness. On the rare occasions where the past tense and the present perfect tense is used, it stresses the long traditions associated with a product, such as “We’ve taken our whisky in many ways, but always seriously”; or emphasizes its reliability, such as “We’ve solved a long-standing problem,”; or makes an appeal to authority, such as “Eight out of ten owners said their cats preferred it.”

3.2 Differences

3.2.1 Headline

The term Headline refers to the sentences in the leading position of the advertisement—the words that will be read first or that are positioned to draw the most attention. Therefore, headlines are usually set in larger type than other portions of the advertisement. Research (Coutland L. Bovee & William F. Arens, 1992:294) has shown that, on average, three to five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. Therefore, if the advertiser hasn’t done some selling in the headline, he has wasted the greatest percent of his money. So it might be suggested that advertisers should not be afraid of long headlines.

A headline has numerous functions. First of all, the headline must attract attention to the advertisement fast. It should take only a few seconds to capture the reader’s attention. Otherwise, the entire message may be lost. A headline also selects the reader, that is, it tells whether the advertisement’s subject matter interests the reader. The idea is to engage and involve the reader, suggesting a reason to read the rest of the advertisement. Therefore, the headline is the most important in an advertisement.

Generally, we can classify effective advertising headlines into five basic categories: benefit headline, provocative headline, news/information headline, question headline, and command headline.

Benefit headlines make a direct promise to the reader. News/information headlines include many of the how-to headlines and headlines that seek to gain identification for their sponsors by announcing some news or providing some promise of information. Provocative headlines are used to provoke the reader’s curiosity. To learn more, the reader must read the body copy. A question headline will pique the reader’s curiosity and imagination by asking a question that the reader is interested in. A command headline orders the reader to do something. It motivates the reader through fear or emotion or because the reader understands the inherent correctness of the command.

3.2.2 Comparison of headlines of different types of advertisements

Table 4 tells which type of headline is most used in a certain type of advertisements.

Table 4 Comparison of headline s in three types of advertisements

Why question headlines are more frequently used in daily consumer goods ads? American sociolinguist Daniel N. Maltz (方薇, 1997:144) concluded through study that women tend to ask questions. They have ubiquitous curiosity. So the women-targeting ads, daily consumer goods ads, cleverly employ question headlines to cater to women’s curiosity. The question can be what women care, such as “ Which of these continental quilt patterns will suit your bedroom best?”; or what women seldom think of, such as “Hear the one about the comedian who never drank milk?”. No matter what kind of question, it will arouse women’s interest effectively.

According to the comparison, information headlines are most popular in technical equipment advertisements. For example:

Here’s the filmless version.

It’s about exchanging information easily with people you trust.

The muscular V6 gives the Grand Vitara undeniable appeal.

…

Technical equipment is the result of science and high technology. Unknown information in an advertisement accounts for a large proportion. Unlike daily consumer goods ads, no introduction of a product is necessary in headline, because we are so familiar with these daily used products that almost all information becomes given information. Therefore, headlines of technical equipment ads mean to attract readers by displaying the unknown information of a product.

However, service ads tend to give promise in headline to attract readers. For example:

Wherever you are, whenever you need us, the Allianz Group is always there for you.

The right bank can make all the difference.

Cancer patients fly free on the wings of angles.

…

Banks, insurance companies, public utilities and airlines prefer using benefit headlines to emphasize what they can do to customers. Consumer goods and technical equipment can present themselves in beautiful pictures. However, service ads are not able to present their “product” in print except language. So, they have to highlight their “product” in the headline.

4. Discourse features

4.1 Body Copy of an Advertisement

In general, a written advertisement consists of five parts: headline, body copy, slogan, illustration and trade mark among which headline, body copy and slogan are the main parts. Headline plays a role in catching attention from readers; slogan can be used as a device to create a corporate image and a common practice to conclude advertisement.

In this section we will discuss the body copy as a discourse component. The advertiser tells the complete sales story in the body copy. Set in smaller type than headlines or subheads, the body copy is a logical continuation of the headline and subheads. It is also where the sale is closed. The body copy should relate to the campaign appeal and to the reader’s self-interest, and it must explain how the product or service being advertised satisfies the customer’s need. The body copy may concentrate on one or several benefits as they relate specifically to the target audience. In some cases, especially in daily goods ads, body copy is omitted just because readers know what they are.

4.2 Differences in Body Copy s

Copy s fall into many categories. Some common types of copy s include straight-sell copy, institutional copy, narrative copy, dialogue/monologue copy.

In a straight-sell copy, the text immediately explains or develops the headline in a straightforward attempt to sell the product. Since the product’s sales points are ticked off in order of their importance, straight-sell copy is particularly advantageous for technical products that may be difficult to use in direct-mail advertising and industrial situations. Many camera ads, for example, use this straight, factual copy to get the message across. The straight-sell approach emphasizes the reason why the consumer should buy something. For example:

Pick up right where you left off with the new C-2000 ZOOM filmless digital camera.

You loved taking pictures then. You’ll love it even more now with the 2.1 megapixel C-2000 ZOOM. It’ll remind you of your favorite film camera of yesterday, but with all the advantages Olympus filmless photography offers today. Only the C-2000 ZOOM, for example, incorporates an all-glass, aspherical 3x zoom lens system featuring a large aperture f2.0 lens that’s exceptionally fast and bright. Along with automatic or manual features like aperture and shutter priority, spot metering, exposure compensation, white balance and ISO settings. And just like your film camera, the C-2000 ZOOM grows with you when you add external flash, lighting equipment, lenses or filter. So bring back old memories while creating new ones with the C-2000 ZOOM from Olympus--THE WORLD LEADER IN FILM AND FILMLESS PHOTOGRAPHY.

Sometimes the advertiser uses the institutional copy to sell an idea or the merits of the organization or service rather than sales features of a particular product. Often institutional copy is also narrative in because it lends warmth to the organization. Service ads, such as ads of banks, insurance companies, public utilities, and large manufacturing concerns are the most common users of the institutional copy.

Advertisers use the narrative copy to tell a story. It often sets up a problem and then creates a solution using the particular sales features of the product or service. It may then suggest that the audiences use the same solution if they have that problem. Service advertisements are often written in this . For instance:

LIFE INSURANCE ISN’T FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DIE.

IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE.

“It broke my heart to hear my daughter Dorsey say she wished her daddy was still here. But thanks to his foresight, we’ll still have the things he worked for”

Dorsey Hoskins’ father Bryan felt a tingling in his arm. The diagnosis—an inoperable brain tumor. He died six months later, at 33, leaving his wife Dean alone to raise Dorsey and her sister Hattie. Fortunately, Bryan bought life insurance when he got married, and again when his daughters were born. Dean invested the proceeds in her own clothing store, which gives her the flexibility to spend more time with her children.

Are you prepared? Without insurance, your financial plan may be just a savings and investment program that dies when you do. An insurance agent or other financial professional can help you create a plan that will continue to provide for the ones you love.

By using a dialogue/monologue copy, the advertiser can add the believability that the narrative copy sometimes lacks. The characters portrayed in a print advertisement do the selling in their own words, through a testimonial or quasi-testimonial technique, or through a comic-strip panel. All kinds of ads can use this body copy , if necessary. For example:

When I want a CD done right, I do it myself. Yeah, this machine rocks. It burns full-size CDs that sound totally like the original. It plays CDs. Records CD to CD at double speed. And records off of just about any source. LPs. Cassettes. The radio. It’s even got a text display. Anyway, now I’ve got my own greatest hits collection. The stuff I want to listen to. I’ve got to admit it’s getting better.

5. Conclusion

Up to now, we have analyzed language features of ads at three levels. Linguistic similarities analyzed in this paper and shared by all kinds of ads are shown as follows:

Ⅰ. Lexical features

a. One-syllable and simple verbs such as get and make are used.

b. Emotive adjectives are adopted to arouse reader’s interest.

c. Words are carefully chosen to make pun and alliteration.

d. Weasel words, such as help and like, make the use of strongest language possible in advertisements.

Ⅱ. Syntactical features

a. Sentences in advertisements are short. On average, a sentence consists of 11.8 words.

b. Elliptical sentences are used to spare advertising cost and at the same time improve advertising effectiveness.

c. Interrogative sentences and imperative sentences are common in advertisements

d. Present tense prevails in ads to suggest timelessness. And active voice is used to cater to audience’s habit in daily talk.

Ⅲ. Discourse features

A complete advertisement consists of five parts: Headline, Body Copy, Slogan, Illustration

and Trade Mark. Body copy is the key part, conveying product or service information.

While summarizing similarities of language features of three kinds of advertisements, we have discussed the differences between these ads on the following dimensions:

First, in order to achieve the highest advertising effectiveness, the advertiser precisely targets the audience by their social status, roles, income, educational background and gender. Therefore advertising language adjusts itself to get close to target audience.

Second, daily consumer goods, technical equipment and service are totally different advertising subjects. For example, some words in technical equipment ads are comprehensible only to those acquainted with that field. Take iMAC PC as an example. All the features of iMAC, plus: 400MHZ, G3 processor, slot-loading DVD drive, 10GB disk storage, dual 400Mbps FireWire ports, and iMovie video editing software. Laymen of computers must feel confused by these dazzling figures and units. However, in order to make the information of a technical product clear, some jargons are necessary. Therefore different kind of ads speak different language.

The study has shown that three kinds of advertisements in the corpus respectively demonstrate their own unique language features.

In daily consumer goods ads, descriptive adjectives tend to convey senses of sight, taste, and touch in the hope of satisfying women's appeal for beauty and comfort. No jargon is used. Headlines of daily consumer goods ads tend to ask question to arouse the interest of audience, especially women's. The body copy seems not so important and essential as that of the advertisement for products requiring high technological information, thus in some cases body copy is omitted in daily consumer goods ads.

In technical equipment ads, descriptive adjectives largely play the role of conveying information. Compound words, particularly compound jargons, are frequently used to exactly introduce a complicated product. Headlines of technical equipment mean to attract readers by transferring the unknown information of a product, so they are often information/news headlines.

In service ads, the use of pronouns, we and you, is statistically significant. You and we almost appear in every advertisement. “we”, as replacement of a certain service, is used in almost 80% the service advertisements. Institutional copy is often used to sell an idea or the merits of the organization or service rather than sales features of a particular product. Often institutional copy is also narrative in because it lends warmth to the organization. Banks, insurance companies, public utilities, and large manufacturing concerns are the most common users of the institutional copy.

In summary, no matter what kind of structure, or content, or words are used in an advertisement, all of them serve the purpose of attracting ads readers, conveying information to them, and urging them to purchase the products or to use the service. That is what an ad for, and that is also the function advertising language performs.

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