Have you ever wondered why advertisements arouse your desire for a seemingly unique and innovative product in a way which makes you necessarily buy it, just to realize later that you actually have no use for it and had better saved the money for something more utilitarian and functional? The effect of advertising can be subsumed under the acronym ‘AIDA’, which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action, a phase model of advertising effect. According to this model, the arousal of attention, interest, and desire culminates in the successful buying of the product being advertized. In this vein, advertising makes use of several advertising techniques, among them the most powerful manipulative means – language – as the title of Dwight Bolinger’s book Language: The Loaded Weapon (1980) suggests. The language of advertising is a powerful, highly elaborate, and in its creation time-consuming product, which manifests itself in three major linguistic areas, namely vocabulary, syntax, and rhetorical figures.
The Powerful Language of Advertising
“There is no question. I have to have this scarf. I have to have it. It makes my eyes look bigger, it makes my haircut look more expensive, it makes me look like a different person.” (Kinsella 14) Rebecca Bloomwood, the protagonist of Sophie Kinsella's novel Confessions of a Shopaholic, who has piled up debts, is just one victim of advertising. Have you ever wondered why advertisements arouse your desire for a seemingly unique and innovative product in a way which makes you necessarily buy it, just to realize later that you actually have no use for it and had better saved the money for something more utilitarian and functional? The effect of advertising can be subsumed under the acronym ‘AIDA', which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action, a phase model of advertising effect. According to this model, the arousal of attention, interest, and desire culminates in the successful buying of the product being advertized. In this vein, advertising makes use of several advertising techniques, among them the most powerful manipulative means - language - as the title of Dwight Bolinger's book Language: The Loaded Weapon (1980) suggests. The language of advertising is a powerful, highly elaborate, and in its creation timeconsuming product, which manifests itself in three major linguistic areas, namely vocabulary, syntax, and rhetorical figures.
First, the choice of vocabulary is a substantial part of the success of advertising language. In this respect, all advertisements employ key words or “trigger words”, which are in the majority of the cases adjectives or adverbs, such as “good/better/best”, “fresh”, “delicious”, “bright”, “extra”, “great”, and “golden”, but above all “new” (Dyer 149). They motivate the customer's fantasy and target his desire for new and extraordinary objects. Considering the connotation of these words, they are primarily positive and not rarely contain superlatives or display exaggerations (cf. Drumm 147) in order to manipulate the customers as successful as possible. What is more, as Drumm plausibly explains, the words are mainly taken from everyday language (147) in order to address as many potential customers as possible. The addressing with the personal pronoun “you” serves the same aim. It is noticeable that the direct word ‘buy' is rarely ever used - more indirect euphemistic words, such as “ask for”, “get”, “look for” or “take” are preferred (Vestergaard/Schroder 68). Another attention-seeking lexical device is phraseologisms, which are fixed idioms, generally well-known, for instance ‘to beat about the bush'. Furthermore, the choice of brand names is a well-wrought process; the labels are always positive and very often figurative in order to appeal to the customers' senses, such as ‘Herbal Essences'. The brand should be something individual and memorable
- there is a close connection between the names chosen and word-formation processes. To underline the individuality of the product, brand names are often coined or display neologisms, such as “Knorr-fresh” (Dyer 150). This example shows at the same time another technique, namely the creation of new compound words; in addition, misspellings are also commonly utilized, for example “Cornish Pastiez”, as Dyer puts forward (150).
Second, syntax is another effective means of demonstrating the manipulative power of language in advertisements. It is largely characterized by short, simple sentences, which do not include any hypotactical constructions, but merely parataxes, as they generally increase the understandability rate and thus hold the interest of the customer (cf. Schierl 175-177). Who would not turn away from an advertisement consisting of long and complicated sentences giving the customer, who is most likely enjoying his spare time, a hard time deciphering? Beyond that, the language of advertising displays an affinity to spoken language
- as a result it sounds more natural and targets the customers more effectively (cf. Drumm 148). In this connection, many sentences are incomplete, merely phrases, giving the potential buyer the opportunity to complement the fragment in his own imagination or, as Drumm puts it, to vary between the different statements (150). Moreover, this technique also draws the customers' attention to the deviances from the norm and as a consequence, to the content afterwards. Concerning slogans, shorter and incomplete ones are more catchy and easier to be memorized later. As another case in point, advertising language makes use of different sentence types, namely imperatives, questions, and exclamations: all of them have the same interest, that is to evoke attention - imperatives and questions achieve this by directly addressing the potential buyer, whereas exclamations implicitly convey enthusiasm. (cf. Drumm 148/149)
A final essential means of manipulating language in order to sell a product is rhetorical figures, which are most of the time incorporated into the slogan. These are the most noticeable features for non-linguists. Concerning syntax, especially ellipses, when some information is left out, and parallelisms, which are parallel constructions of two or more sequential sentences (Drumm 149), such as ‘we are successful writers, you were good singers', are of a major importance. On the level of sounds, alliterations, such as ‘Britain's best business bank' as well as rhymes are commonly used. Patocka traces this back to the facilitated memorability due to the increased flow of the language (89). The same goes for repetition - also in the form of anaphoras. Another major stylistic device used in advertising is the pun, a wordplay, which plays, for instance, with similar or alike words with different meanings (homonyms) (cf. Dyer 153). A well-known example is the pun ‘Beware of pickpackets' written next to a packet of French fries in a Mc Donald's advertisement. Here, ‘pickpackets' is clearly an allusion to ‘pickpockets', who might want to steal the delicious French fries being advertized. To come to an end, metaphors and similes are two more examples of figurative language use: “Come to where the flavor is ... Marlboro Country” is an example of a metaphor, whereas “Cool as a mountain stream ... cool fresh Consulate” is an example of a simile (Dyer 152/153). In short, numerous rhetorical figures constitute an essential part of the power of language and all of them share the purpose of evoking attention for the product.
All in all, the language of advertising is a very powerful means to manipulate the customer by appealing to his senses and seeking his attention, mainly through vocabulary, syntax and rhetorical figures. As a customer you feel the compelling urge to possess the product being advertized without being able to think sensibly any longer. The first regret comes when being at home again and realizing that the product is not as innovative and special as it first seemed in the advertisement. Just as I once came home with a new special sparkling pen, which was supposed to write ten times as good as ordinary pens, but, what a surprise, did not. If you do not want to end up like Sophie Kinsella's protagonist, you need self-control. What can we do to resist the manipulative power of the language of advertising? Knowing the different manipulative techniques of advertising language is an auspicious beginning and can lead the way with some further practice to a desirable ‘advertising-language-immunity-trait'.
References
Drumm, Daniela. Semantischer Mehrwert und Multifunktionalität von Phraseologismen in der englischsprachigen Anzeigenwerbung. Diss. Universität Trier, 2004.
Dyer, Gillian. Advertising as Communication. London & New York: Methuen, 1982 (= Studies in Communication).
Kinsella, Sophie. Confessions of a Shopaholic. New York: The Dial Press, 2001. Patocka, Franz. Charakteristika der Werbesprache. In: ide 22.3 (1998), p. 79-92.
Schierl, Thomas. Text und Bild in der Werbung. Bedingungen, Wirkungen und Anwendungen bei Anzeigen und Plakaten. Köln: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 2001.
Vestergaard, Torben and Kim Schroder. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell 1985.
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- Anonymous,, 2010, The Powerful Language of Advertising, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1360405
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