論廣告英語的語言特征

1、中國石油大學(xué)勝利學(xué)院本科畢業(yè)設(shè)計(jì)（論文） introduction we live in a world of advertising. as potential consumers, we are endlessly filled with all kinds of product or service information from various media including newspapers, magazines, television, radio and internet, etc. advertising tells the consumer what a specifi

2、c product, brand or service should do when it is used and thus helps him or her to understand and evaluate experience with the products and services that he or she uses. on the other hand, by making people aware of products, service and ideas, advertising promotes sales and profits. finally, adverti

3、sing is one of the major forces that are helping improve the standard of living around the world. combined with all these marketing and social functions, advertising becomes indispensable in the modern world. an advertisement is something that draws good attention toward a product, service or person

4、. a good advertisement usually is short, simple, impressive, persuasive and fascinating. seeing the panoramic view of the history of business, the success of high-quality branded products always corresponding with the guide of a good advertisement. in todays fierce market competition, advertising wr

5、iters become more and more thoughtful, creative and innovative. they use unique vocabulary, concise and comprehensive statement and attractive rhetorical devices to win the trust and love of consumers for goods and services. ads have a distinctive purpose, that is, to convince customers to buy their

6、 products. this purpose determines the characteristics of language style and makes it independent of the other styles in the context of linguistic study. as is known to all, english is the universal language of the world. so the author selects english advertisement to study the language features of

7、ads in this paper, hoping to explore the application of advertising and offer a certain reference value in some researches of this field, in the hope of offering help to advertisement writers and language learners. chapter i english advertisement1.1 definition of advertisement american marketing ass

8、ociation (ama) defines advertisement as “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media.” today, with the development of the technology and the diversity of the mass me

9、dia, english advertisement has influenced us pervasively in our daily life. however, whatever the primitive strategies advertisement takes, language is the main carrier of message all along, as the language of advertising, by vestergaard & schroder, says, “advertisement takes many forms, but in most

10、 of them language is of crucial importance.” advertisement language is a style of immediate impact and rapid persuasion. the point of an advertisement is to persuade you of the merits of a particular product or service, in order that you will take out some of your money.1.2 classification of english

11、 advertisement generally speaking, advertisements can be divided into two types: public relation ads and commercial ads. the former tries to advocate reputation for a social group, whose purpose is to leave a favorable impression upon the potential audience. the latter persuades people to purchase t

12、he products or use the recommended service. commercial ads are much more presented through mass media for the reason that manufacturers and companies are willing to spend a large sum of money to make a certain product known or to boost the image of a certain brand. in some cases, competitors, like c

13、oca-cola and pepsi, even spare no expense to launch advertising campaigns to win over the market share. commercial advertising can also be divided according to the target audience into consumer advertising and business advertising. most of the ads in the mass media are consumer advertisements. they

14、are typically directed at consumers. since consumer advertising is most accessible to common people, the present study will focus on consumer advertising.1.3 languages of english advertisementsusually, advertisement conveys information in three ways: audio, visual, and written language. it is a more

15、 common case that an advertisement is a mixture of the three. in radio advertisements, music is always accompanied by language; on tv and motion pictures, music and language illustration are mixed with each other. although music and pictures can provide some hints, or create a kind of atmosphere, th

16、e information about the product is limited. even worse, it may lead to misunderstanding. thus, we may say that language in a way provides more exact, detailed and dependable information whereas music and pictures only act as a supplementary means in advertising.advertisement language, playing a role

17、 of communication and persuasion, has developed its own features.this paper will focus on the language features of english advertisements, including lexical features, sentences features and rhetorical devices. it is hoped, by a systematic study of english advertisements on this three characteristics

18、, a lot of examples will be summarized and profound meaning will be given in the light of the function of language. chapter 2: lexical features of advertisements in english in this chapter, i will discuss the lexical features of english advertising. in linguistics, lexical is the vocabulary of a lan

19、guage. in order to make the information accessible to audience effectively, the choice of words in advertising is very cautious and skillful. the aim of the advertiser is quite specific. he wishes to capture the attention of the members of a mass audience and by means of impressive words to persuade

20、 them to buy a product or behave in a particular way. both linguistic and psychological aspects are taken into consideration in the choice of words. the following points are some prominent choices. 2.1application of personal pronouns to shorten the distance between advertisers and consumers, english

21、 advertisements often use many english personal pronouns, which can give consumers an immersed feeling and increase their sense of credibility and participation in advertising. usually the first person refers to advertisers, the second person means consumers,and the third person refers to readers. p

22、ronouns of the first and second person: we, 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 that go like talking with friends closely link the advertisement and the audien

23、ce. the audience recommended them. for example, a watch ad wrote this: we made this watch for you-to be part of your life-simply because this is the way we always made watch. we and you are two personal pronouns in the ad, they respectively refer to advertisers and consumers. this ad has a direct ta

24、lk with consumers, which can shorten the distance between advertisers and consumers.2.2 the frequent use of simple verbs g. n. leech, english linguist, lists 20 most used verbs in his english in advertising: linguistic study of advertising in great britain (方薇, 1997:20). they are: make, come, get, g

25、ive, have, see, buy, go, know, keep, look, need, love, use, feel, like, choose, take, start, taste. you will often read such sentences in an advertisement: buy x. use it. we make x will give you what you need. youll love x. get x. well make this quick. (hertz car return) all you need is a taste for

26、adventure. (millstone coffee) dont have much of a personality? buy one. (honda motor) most of these frequently used verbs have anglo-saxon origin that is the common core of english vocabulary. linguistic study shows english native speakers tend to use words of anglo-saxon origin, because native word

27、s have comparably stable meaning. in advertising, these simple words can win the consumers by their exact, effective expression and a kind of closeness. so english advertisements often use some simple words or shorter verbs. it aims to make the languages of english ads more simple, concise and vivid

28、. for example: buy one pair, get one free. (sunglasses ad) impossible made possible. (canon printer ad) just do it. (nike sports-shoes ad)the popular use of short verbs in english ads is easy for consumers to understand and remember the line of ads. it is beneficial for companies to sell their produ

29、cts and establish their brands by the communication on newspapers or tv.2.3 the extensive use of emotive words a close scrutiny of recent advertisements in english suggests that the soft-sell technique is now popular. by soft-sell technique we mean the one that favors a more emotive and less directi

30、ve approach to promote a product, mainly focusing on the building of brand image. as a result, emotive words, most of which are pleasant adjectives, are greatly encouraged to use. data from the corpus shows that the most frequently used adjectives are as follows: new, good/better/best, fresh, free,

31、delicious, sure, full, clean, wonderful, special, crisp, real,fine, great, safe, and rich. these adjectives help to build a pleasant picture in readers minds and manage to create a belief in the potential consumer: if i buy this product or if i choose this service, i will lead a better life. in addi

32、tion, comparatives and superlatives occur to highlight the advantage of a certain product or service. meanwhile, it can meet consumers preferences and make them feel happy and superior. the following are examples: dale batteries: the original and still be the best. (dale battery ad) lets make things

33、 better. (philips ad)above two cases, they used the superlative best and the comparative better in the ads, which can deepen the impression of the products for consumers. in fact, they played a very good promotional effect.2.4 flexible application of indefinite pronouns many advertisers sometimes us

34、e indefinite pronouns such as all, everyone, none, nothing to increase the popularity of their commodities because it can reflect the extraordinary characteristics of a product. for example: all is well that ends well. (tobacco ad) this is an idiom, but here, it is taken from an advertisement of a c

35、igarette. allrepresents all the cigarettes.meanwhile, it indicates the high quality of this kind of cigarette, all cigarettes are good, there is no exception.“end”, as a verb, means “finish”, while, as a noun, means “cigarette butt”. the sentence means that if the cigarette ends are good that the ci

36、garette is good. todays nobody. tomorrows somebody! (somebody taishin bank credit cards ad) the indefinite pronoun nobody meansnot important at all,somebodymeans important, which indicates that if you have no money today, you are nothing. but if you depend on and trust somebody taishin bank and borr

37、ow money from this bank, tomorrow you will earn money and you will become a very important person. 2.5 the repetition of key words in order to highlight a particular product and convey its information, advertisers often deliberately repeating key words in the languages of english advertisements. thi

38、s method can make the readers or audiences get a good memory of their ads. furthermore, it can help the consumers to pay more attention to the contents of advertising so that the advertisers can obtain their goals of promotion. for example: finish the job in less time, with less fuel and less noise.

39、(toyota cars ad) in this car ad, the repetition of the key word less stressed that toyota car has its superiority with less fuel and less noise, which can save the money of customers and increase their comfortable feelings if they buy this kind of car. free hotel! free meals! free transfers! for a f

40、ree stay-on-the-way in amsterdam, you can rely on kim. (kim tourism ad) in this ad, repeating free can appeal many customers to join in this tour quickly. so the repetition of key words can strengthen the effect of languages and make the ads become more attractive and persuasive.2.6 the creation of

41、new words advertisers are good at playing word games by changing the spelling of words or adding a prefix or suffix to a word that people are familiar with. while the new words are different from the original word form, but they can not lose the original meaning. creating new words not only can get

42、an effective dissemination(傳播) of information, but also it makes the advertising become more charming. in some of advertisements, the advertising copywriter misspells some words on purpose. although the new words still keep the original meanings, they are quite different from the original words in s

43、pelling, which will make the advertisement more vivid, interesting and attractive. e.g. we know eggsactly how to sell eggs.in this advertisement, “eggsactly” is the variation of “exactly”, a echo the word “eggs” at the end of the sentence. the orangemostest drink in the world. in this drink advertis

44、ement, the word “orangemostest” actually is “orange+most+est”. it uses this word to express the high quality a purity of the drink. chapter 3: sentence features of english advertisementsin this section, the author will talk about sentence features of advertising english. as we all known, the purpose

45、 of all advertising is to familiarize consumers or remind them of the benefits of particular products in the hope of increasing sales, in order to attain this aim; its message must be colorful, legible, understandable and memorable. the rules governing the language of advertising are similar. we hav

46、e summarized the lexical features of english advertisements. if words are leaves of a tree, and sentences branches; the branches must also possess their features.3.1 preference for simple sentences and elliptical sentences english advertising requires to attract customers and makes the ads readable

47、so that readers can get a glance of them. therefore, the languages of english advertising must use as few sections as possible to convey their information effectively and draw the customers desire of purchase. the length of a sentence in advertising is usually short. so, as to sentence structure, si

48、mple 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 pri

49、nt 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

50、baked and drenched to extreme. obviously, by using elliptical structure, sentence a is far more brief, eye-catching and forceful than sentence b. whats more, it conveys attitudes that sentence b lacks. sentence a implies a kind of appreciation for the phone, by splitting the sentence into several fr

51、agments and rearranging its word order. therefore skillful arrangement of elliptical sentences may add color to a sentence. more examples as follows: a diamond lasts forever. (a diamond ad)only four words are used in this sentence, but it can convey the characteristics of the diamond precisely. and

52、this ad has become a classic english ad in the history of advertisement. just do it! (nike sports shoes ad)nikes advertisement just used three simple words which we may say it everyday, but it can represent the spirit of nike. this simple sentence can encourage a lot of people to do everything they

53、can.3.2 the frequent use of imperative sentences and interrogative sentences as to sentence patterns, interrogative sentences and imperative sentences are heavily used in english advertisements. imperative sentences are short, encouraging and forceful. they are frequently used in english ads. these

54、ads aim to provoke the immediate actions of customers and make them to buy all kinds of commodities. this kind of languages belongs to loaded language(鼓動(dòng)性語言)in english ads. for example: go ahead, you can rely on us. (insurance and investment company ad ) get the feeling! (sports illustrated ad ) say

55、 yes to life, no to drugs. (anti-smoking ad) lay down your arms. (table ad)they are used to arouse audiences wants or encourage them to buy something. in addition, in the explanation of the high frequency of the use of interrogative sentences, linguist g.n. leech (方薇,1997:77) discusses two main func

56、tions 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, in

57、terrogative 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.轉(zhuǎn) whats in womans realm this week? a wonderful

58、beauty offers for you. theres a wonderful beauty offer for you in womens realm this week. 3.3 negative sentences are rarely used generally speaking, negative sentences are usually avoided in english advertising because it is foolish for companies to promote their products by negative propaganda. meanwhile, it is useless for companies to form their brand-image. even if they actually used the negative words in english advertising, they just want to make a contrast between their