A descriptive analysis of linguistic features of advertising language used in english slogans for food and drink products

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ KIM NGÂN

A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC
FEATURES OF ADVERTISING
LANGUAGE USED IN ENGLISH
SLOGANS FOR FOOD AND DRINK
PRODUCTS
(PHÂN TÍCH MIÊU TẢ ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ KHẨU HIỆU
QUẢNG CÁO MỘT SỐ SẢN PHẨM THỨC ĂN VÀ ĐỒ UỐNG)

M.A. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15

HANOI - 2012


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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ KIM NGÂN

A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC
FEATURES OF ADVERTISING LANGUAGE USED
IN ENGLISH SLOGANS FOR FOOD AND DRINK
PRODUCTS
(PHÂN TÍCH MIÊU TẢ ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ KHẨU HIỆU
QUẢNG CÁO MỘT SỐ SẢN PHẨM THỨC ĂN VÀ ĐỒ UỐNG)

M.A. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Supervisor: Kiều Thị Thu Hương, PhD.
HANOI- 2012


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION.......................................................................................................................................... I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................................... IV
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................................. V
TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................VI
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS......................................................................................................X
LIST OF FIGURES.....................................................................................................................XI
LIST OF TABLES.....................................................................................................................XII
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................1
1. Statement of the problem and rationale for the study......................................................1
2. Aims of the study....................................................................................................................3

3. Research question...................................................................................................................3
4. Scope of the study...................................................................................................................3
5. Methodology............................................................................................................................4
6. Organization of the study......................................................................................................4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................................6
1.1 ADVERTISING AS A DISCOURSE...............................................................................6
1.1.1 Discourse and discourse analysis.................................................................................. 6
1.1.1.1 Definition of discourse and discourse analysis......................................................6
1.1.1.2 Context and its role in discourse analysis..............................................................6
1.1.2 Advertising as a discourse: Advertisements as Texts....................................................7
1.2 CONCEPT OF ADVERTISING AND ADVERTISING SLOGANS..........................8
1.2.1 Definitions of advertising..............................................................................................8


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1.2.2Types of advertising...............................................
1.2.3Advertising as kind of communication .........
1.2.4Advertising slogan as an essential part of ad
1.2.4.1 Definitions of slogans and adverting slogans .................................
1.2.4.2 Purposes of advertising slogans ......................................................

1.3FEATURES OF ADVERTISING LANGUAGE ......................................................
1.3.1Syntactic Features of Advertising Language
1.3.1.1
Groups .......
1.3.1.2 Verbless and non-finite clauses .......................................................
1.3.1.3
Simple sente
1.3.1.4

Multiple sen
1.3.2Lexical Features of Advertising Language ..
1.3.2.1
Verbal group
1.3.2.2
Adjectives ..
1.3.2.3
Brand name
1.3.2.4 Personal Pronouns and Possessive Determiners .............................
1.3.2.5 New words and phrases ..................................................................
1.3.3Semantic Features of Advertising Language
1.3.3.1
Metaphor ...
1.3.3.2
Hyperbole ..
1.3.3.3
Personificati
1.3.3.4
Metonymy .
1.3.4Phonological Features of Advertising Langu
1.3.4.1
Rhyme .......
1.3.4.2
Alliteration
1.3.4.3
Assonance .
1.3.4.4
Onomatopoe
1.4REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES ON ADVERTISING LANGUAGE AND
ADVERTISING SLOGANS ..................................................................................................

1.5

CONCLUDING REMARKS ......................................................................

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................................
2.1

RESEARCH APPROACH ..........................................................................

2.2

RESEARCH SAMPLES .............................................................................
2.2.1Data source ...............................................................
2.2.2Description of research samples ......................


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2.3

DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES ....................................................

2.4

DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES ............................................................

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ...................................................................

3.1SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF FOOD AND DRINK SLOGANS ..........................
3.1.1

Complexity of sentence structure ..................
3.1.2
Types of sentence .................................................

3.2LEXICAL FEATURES OF FOOD AND DRINK SLOGANS ................................
3.2.1
Verbal groups .........................................................
3.2.1.1 Use of lexical verbs ..........................................................................
3.2.1.2 Use of finite and non-finite verbs ....................................................
3.2.1.3 Use of modal verbs ..........................................................................
3.2.1.4Use of tense
3.2.1.5Use of negat
3.2.1.6Use of voice
3.2.2
Adjectives ...............................................................
3.2.3
Brand names ..........................................................
3.2.4
Personal pronouns and possessive determin
3.2.5
New words and phrases .....................................

3.3SEMANTIC FEATURES OF FOOD AND DRINK SLOGANS ............................
3.3.1
Use of metaphor ...................................................
3.3.2
Use of metonymy..................................................
3.3.3
Use of personification ........................................
3.3.4

Use of hyperbole ..................................................

3.4PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF FOOD AND DRINK SLOGANS ................
3.4.1
Use of rhyme .........................................................
3.4.2
Use of assonance ..................................................
3.4.3
Use of alliteration ................................................
3.4.4
Use of onomatopoeia ..........................................
CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................
1. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS .................................................................................
2.
2.1
2.2

IMPLICATIONS ..........................................................................................
Implications for creating effective slogans
Implications for teaching Business English


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3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY................................................................................................ 61
4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES..................................................................62
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................63
APPENDIX – LIST OF ENGLISH FOOD AND DRINK SLOGANS...................................I

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
SFL

Systemic Functional Linguistics

TEFL

Teaching English as a foreign language

TESL

Teaching English as a second language


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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Distribution of four sub-categories of sentence structure
Figure 2: Distribution of four sentence types
Figure 3: Distribution of finite and non-finite verbs
Figure 4: Popularity of four figures of speech in the corpus
Figure 5: Occurrence of four figures of speech in the corpus
Figure 6: Popularity of four sound devices in the corpus
Figure 7: Occurrence of four sound devices in the corpus


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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Twenty most popular verbs in Leech‟s (1966) sample
Table 2: Twenty most popular adjectives in Leech‟s (1966) sample
Table 3: Information on advertising slogans used for research analysis
Table 4: Four aspects of advertising language examined
Table 5: Most frequently used verbs in the corpus
Table 6: Most frequently used adjectives in the corpus
Table 7: Occurrence of pronouns and possessive determiners in the corpus


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INTRODUCTION
1.

Statement of the problem and rationale for the study
Nowadays, in a developed world, thousands of new products and services are

introduced each day, which makes advertising become a real art - the art of informing,
persuading customers and deeply embedding into their minds. According to Bovée et al.
(1995:16-20), advertising has never been as ubiquitous as it is nowadays. Language in
advertising is typified by a slogan which is present in every advertisement. Slogans can be
considered the heart of advertisements wherever they appear. Angela Goddard in her book
“The language of advertising” titles these slogans the hooks which she calls “the initial
piece of attention-seeking verbal language used to draw the reader in” (Goddard,
1998:106).
Slogans are the most important and condensed messages advertisers would like to
send to their customers. Sharp and intelligent slogans can help advertisers leave
unforgettable impressions on their potential customers‟ minds. They provide continuity for
a campaign and reduce a key theme or idea the company wants to be associated with its

product or itself to a brief statement (Bovée and Arens, 1992:274). However, creating a
successful slogan is never an easy task. The use of just a few words in a slogan proves to
be harder than it is supposed to be. It requires a sophisticated linguistic insight into
phonology, lexicology, syntax as well as semantics and pragmatics. Hence, the study on
some successful slogans promises to bring about a lot of interesting facts in the art of using
language especially among not only marketers but also sociologists, psychologists and
especially linguists.
Moreover, what can be called a successful slogan is still a question. The answer
depends on the area of products and services the slogan is used, the country or
geographical regions it is used in and maybe the population of its target customers. A
slogan plays an important role to attract consumers because it sums up the specialty, the
benefit, and the marketing position as well as the commitment of a product or service
advertised. Moreover, a slogan should reflect the mood and the message conveyed by the
advertisement.


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In this study, the researcher chooses to analyze the advertising slogans of some
world-famous food and drink products in English for some main reasons. First of all, when
those products can be called famous, they must be successful in many aspects. They may
have a special secret of creating a great or even unique taste or they may have a long
history of building their own prestige and class. But one thing that can be ensured is their
successful advertising campaigns in which slogans play a vital part. The investigation into
those slogans will hopefully reveal interesting features in language used in slogans in
general and food and drink slogans in particular. Second, food and drink products play a
very important part in our daily life as an indispensible demand, so they have a wide scope
of activities with customers of different ages, backgrounds, religions, beliefs and values. In
this way, the slogans of those products, in a current competitive market today, need to be
created with a very careful choice of language to persuade their wide variety of demanding

customers. Hence, an investigation into linguistic features of advertising slogans can be of
great value to producers if they want to create a persuasive and effective slogan to advertise
their products. Last but not least, investigations into slogans in general and into linguistic
features of slogans in particular are limited and outnumbered by investigations into other
fields of advertising. In fact, while there exist quite a lot of papers on advertising language,
there are only a few studies on linguistic features of slogans such as “An investigation into
the style of the English language used in advertising slogans issued by some world-famous
airlines” (Bui, 2008) or “Presupposition and implicature in English and Vietnamese
advertising slogans” (Tran, 2007). However, these studies only yield insight into some
surface linguistic features of slogans or they only analyze slogans in light of some subbranches of pragmatics. Moreover, this is the first time slogans for food and drink products
have been discussed among MA theses in ULIS and becomes one of the few papers on
food and drink slogans in the world.
For all the reasons mentioned above and be motivated by previous studies, a study
entitled: “A descriptive analysis of linguistic features of advertising language used in
English slogans for food and drink products” is carried out. By conducting this study, the
researcher hopes to gain better insight into the most significant linguistic features of the
advertising language used in English slogans for food and drink products. This study with
its results is hoped to be served as an invaluable source of reference for teachers and


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learners of English as a foreign language, translators, advertisers and those who concern
themselves about this subject matter.
2. Aims of the study
The objective of this study is to investigate the advertising slogans for food and
drink products in the phonological, lexical, syntactic and semantic aspects to draw out the
most significant linguistic features of advertising language used in these English slogans.
Moreover, the study also grasps some implications especially in ways of creating an
effective slogan for food and drink products in the Vietnamese context to achieve success

for the brands.
3. Research question
In brief, the study seeks the answers to this research question:
What are the most significant linguistic features of food and drink slogans in
English?
Specifically, the linguistic features of slogans are analyzed based on these four different
levels:

4.



phonological level



lexical level



syntactic level



semantic level

Scope of the study

Within a shortage of time and the limited scale of a M.A thesis, the researcher only
investigates into 112 food and drink English slogans in print advertisements which are

listed in one of the most famous website with a large database of English advertising
slogans – adslogans.co.uk instead of analyzing advertising slogans of all fields and from all
sources. Moreover, the study deals with English slogans for food and drink products in four
linguistic aspects, namely syntactic features from the aspect of sentence complexity,
semantic features including some figures of speech, phonological features including some


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rhetorical sound devices , and lexical ones which refer to some most frequently – used
words in advertising language. Stylistic features or some other extra-linguistic factors such
as typography and layout are excluded. This choice of areas to be discussed, therefore,
helps the researcher obtain insight into the subject matter in a careful and thorough way in
order to provide the most valuable results.
5. Methodology
This study has used descriptive and analytic methods as it “involves a collection of
techniques used to specify, delineate, or describe naturally occurring phenomena without
experimental manipulation” (Seliger & Shohamy, 1989:124). These methods have been
utilized to analyze and describe the frequency of the occurrence of some linguistic
phenomena in food and drink slogans. The descriptive method helps provide in-depth
descriptions of food and drink slogans and the analytic method helps identify and isolate
certain aspects to focus on.
The study has also used a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods.
The quantitative method has been deployed in collecting and processing the data and the
qualitative method is necessary to establish the theoretical framework, examine the data
and draw conclusions.
6. Organization of the study
The study consists of an introduction and four chapters. The section entitled
“INTRODUCTION” outlines the background of the study. In this part, a brief account of
relevant information including the rationale, aims, research question, scopes, methodology,

and organization of the study is provided.
Chapter 1, with the title “LITERATURE REVIEW”, can be considered a brief
overview of some previous papers on the same subject in English. At the same time, it
provides the theoretical framework concerning discourse analysis, advertising, advertising
slogans as well as some linguistic means used in advertising language.
Chapter 2 – RESEARCH METHODOLOGY – refers to the research approach used in
the study and the methods of collecting and analyzing the data to help the author achieve the
best results in the study.


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Chapter 3 is called MAIN FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS, in which the author
summarizes her findings in the form of answering four research questions mentioned in the
first chapter to arrive at the most significant characteristics of the English language used in
food and drink advertising slogans.
The last section is CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS, which provides the
implications of the study to the creating process of advertising slogans in general and food
and drinks slogans in particular, and some suggestions for further studies.
The study ends with “BIBLIOGRAPHY”.


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CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1

ADVERTISING AS A DISCOURSE

1.1.1 Discourse and discourse analysis

1.1.1.1 Definition of discourse and discourse analysis
According to Widdowson (2000:8), discourse is a use of sentences in order to perform
acts for communication purposes which cohere into bigger communicative components and
set up a rhetorical model which characterizes language pieces as a whole type of
communication.
Widdowson (2000:100) also emphasizes the distinction between Discourse and Text
by stating that “discourse is a communicative process” and its situational effect is a change in
a state of affairs: information is conveyed whereas intentions are made clear and the product
of this process is Text.
Yule (1996: 139) defines discourse analysis as follows:
In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions arise in connection with
the way language is used, rather than what its components are…We were, in effect,
asking how it is language users interpret what other language – users intend to convey.
When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we, as language users,
make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean despite what they
say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse, and
successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking
what is known discourse analysis.

1.1.1.2 Context and its role in discourse analysis
Guy Cook (1989:39) considered context as “knowledge of the world outside
language” which helps us to understand and use it to interpret the messages both in spoken
and written form. According to Nunan (1993:10), “context refers to the situation giving
rise to the discourse and within which discourse is embedded”. From the two ways of
defining context, it can be concluded that context is something that is vital to understand
the discourse and there is no discourse without context.


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Discourse analysis studies language in use: both written texts of all kinds and
spoken data from informal to formal speech and it also studies the language phenomena
above the sentence level that are influenced by contexts, social phenomena, social
relationships as well as cultural factors.
Hymes (1962) sees contexts as a limit of the range of possible interpretations, and
on the other hand, a supporter of the intended interpretation. He states as follows:
The use of linguistic form identifies a range of meanings. A context can support a range
of meanings. When a form is used in a context, it eliminates the meanings possible to
that context other than those the form can signal; the context eliminates from
consideration the meanings possible in the form other than those the context can
support.

(Hymes, 1962 quoted in Brown and Yule, 1983:38)
1.1.2 Advertising as a discourse: Advertisements as Texts
Following Hervey et al. (1995:126), awareness of genre and text type is necessary
in that translators must be familiar with styles of presentation and language use based on
particular genre requirements in particular cultures. The present part concentrates on the
most major aspects of the advertising register and the genre of advertising as a text type
characterized by specific features.
Register can be defined as a set of lexical and grammatical features that come with
and help to identify discourse that occurs in a particular recurrent situation (Johnstone,
2002:147). With respect to advertising as a genre, Trosborg (1997:9) states that the defining
criterion of any genre is the communicative purpose that it is intended to fulfill.
Information included in advertisements should not be considered as a primary goal.
Instead, it should be perceived as a complimentary function which helps the advertisement
become more persuasive. Advertising as a genre can be classified under the category of
appeal-oriented texts, having the predominant functions of persuasion. In commercial
advertising, form and content are “at one in their overall goal of arousing consumer
response” (Reiss, 2000:38). In other words, a commercial advertisement strives at
convincing consumers to buy the advertised products.

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To sum up, it is also shown that the ultimate communicative purpose of advertising
genre is persuasion. This allows us to regard advertisements as appeal-focused texts.
1.2

CONCEPT OF ADVERTISING AND ADVERTISING SLOGANS

This part of the study will bring the general and basic ideas of advertising and
slogans which are necessary for understanding the issue as a whole.
1.2.1 Definitions of advertising
Advertising is an inevitable part of our modern market economy society whose
outstanding feature is its competitive fight. Cook (1992:182) states that advertising is not
some “external curiosity” into which we investigate but it is “something of which we are
part, and which is part of us”.
From a linguistics perspective, Adler (1985:25) defines advertising as “a
communicative situation” in which language can function in reference to the purposes and
real possibilities of this type of communication. With a different view on advertising,
Goddard (1998:10) focuses on the aim of advertising with these words below:
Advertising is not just about the commercial promotion of branched products but can
also encompass the idea of texts whose intention is to enhance the image of an
individual, group or organization.

An advertisement is identified as a public notice created so as to spread information
with the intention of promoting the sales of goods and services in the market (Vestergaard
and Schroder, 1985:2).
1.2.2 Types of advertising
Different criteria can be used to classify advertisements. Geographically, there are

local, national and international advertisements. In terms of advertising medium, there are
print and electronic ones. Besides, as for their purposes, advertisements can be classified
into commercial and non-commercial categories. The basic difference is that “commercial
consumer advertising is directed towards a mass audience with the aim of promoting sales
of a commercial product or service” (Leech, 1966:25) while the non-commercial is
produced by governmental agencies or associations. In other words, the most important
aim of commercial advertising is to sell a product or service whereas the objective of the


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non-commercial one is to influence the public through political propaganda or through the
contribution to charity. Even though there exist other types of advertising, it is the
commercial one which uses the largest amount of money, professional skill as well as space
in the media. This is also the type the analysis will concentrate on. Vestergaard and
Schroder (1986, p1-2) consider three types of commercial advertising:
 Prestige or good-will advertising - where firms advertise a name or an image
 Industrial or trade advertising – where a firm advertises its products to other
firms
 Consumer advertising – where a firm advertises its products to potential
consumers
Most television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisements belong to
consumer advertising. The consumer advertising includes alcoholic ads, cigarette ads,
drink ads, food ads, wear ads, cosmetic ads, automobile ads, home electric appliance ads,
and other products which are used and purchased by ordinary people. To this kind of
advertisements, most people have developed a kind of ambivalent psychology. On the one
hand, they are bored with the endless advertisements hiding in the newspapers and
magazines, clamoring on the radio, or dazzling on the TV. On the other hand, they still
need the information to guide their purchasing. Therefore, to attract the consumers‟
attention is the most important task for an advertising copywriter. All advertising slogans

which are analyzed in this study belong to consumer advertising category.
Non-commercial advertising can be also called Public Interest Advertising. The
general objective of public interest advertising is to inform, persuade, or remind people
about the particular idea, cause, or philosophy being advertised. This kind of advertising is
often used by non-business institutions, such as schools, hospitals and charitable
organizations. Due to the fact that public interest advertising is nonprofit, the words it uses
are much more different from the other 3 kinds of commercial advertising. Its purpose is
not to urge readers to spend their money, but to disseminate a kind of concept or advocate a
social ethic.
Moreover, advertising can also be classified based according to the type of medium
: TV, radio, brochures, leaflets, magazines, newspapers and other printed materials, the
Internet and Direct Mail advertising or outdoor advertising, etc.


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1.2.3 Advertising as kind of communication
Churchill, Jr. and Peter (1998: 142) show their opinions about advertising by stating
as follows:
Advertising is noted as any announcement or persuasive message placed in the mass
media in paid or donated time or space by an identified individual, company, or
organization to serve a number of audience about products and persuade or remind them
of buying, to convey information about the organization itself or issues important to the
organization in order to create or enhance perception of the quality or reliability of a
product, thus encouraging customer loyalty and repeat purchases.

Therefore, advertising is, in its nature, a form of communication between
advertisers and customers.
Goddard (1998) discusses the communication of advertising under the idea of
narrators and narratees. She states that the writer is the person who constructs the text in

reality (in advertising texts, the real writers are the copywriters and artists who work in an
advertising agency‟s creative department), while the narrator is the storyteller within the
text. Copywriters can “construct all sorts of different narrators to convey to us the message
of an advert” (p.29), for example, a female writer can construct a male narrator, or an adult
writer can construct a child narrator. Narratees are, on the other hand, people who appear to
be addressed. In fact, in advertising communication, a narratee is not a certain person, but
at least a target group, or the whole public.
The communicative situation of advertising is a type of communication called mass
communication. The participants of advertising communication are a copywriter and
audience who do not refer to any single person but also to a collective. The first category is
usually represented by an advertising agency where a group of people works on the
production of a certain message on behalf of the advertiser. The second category stands for
a group of people or audience who are usually exposed to advertising from different
sources. The audience differs in terms of sex, education, social status, age and income.
Hence, the copywriters have to take who different advertisements are made for into great
consideration. Then, the objects of the communication are products and services which are
advertised. Finally, the most important distinction of media is between speech and writing.


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1.2.4 Advertising slogan as an essential part of advertisement
1.2.4.1 Definitions of slogans and adverting slogans
According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995: 1349), “a
slogan is a short easily-remembered phrase used by an advertiser, a politician, etc.”
Therefore, in general, a slogan is a memorable motto used in political, commercial,
religious, and other contexts as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. In the
particular case of an advertising slogan, it is a verbal logo normally appearing just beneath
or beside the brand name or the logo of the product. In other words, a slogan is kind of a
condensed message of the whole advertisement which advertisers want their customers to

remember most. It is the usual case that slogans come to customers‟ mind first when they
think about the products.
As Whittier (1958: 11) suggests:
A slogan should be a statement of such merit about a product or service that it is worthy
of continuous repetition in advertising, is worthwhile for the public to remember, and is
phrased in such a way that the public is likely to remember it.

An advertising slogan or a tagline is, as Rein (1982:49) defines it as a
"unique phrase identified with a company or brand". It is often a summarized "big
idea" which gives the product or the company a concept in the contracted form and
"ties together all of the elements in an advertising campaign" (Rein, 1982: 54). A
slogan has "to say something about the product uniqueness or values" and it
"should command attention, be memorable and be brief" (Rein, 1982: 54).
In different countries, slogans can be replaced by different terms such as endlines
(in the UK), taglines or theme lines (in the USA) or signatures (in France).
1.2.4.2 Purposes of advertising slogans
According to Rey (1996, as cited in Abreu et al. 2006:42), slogans can be used for
the following general purposes:
 To express especially the main advantage of the product
 To identify clearly the advertised product


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 To attract the addressee‟s attention
The reason why a slogan commonly appears together
with the logo of the product is to ensure that if customers get
nothing from the advertisement, they can get nothing from the
advertisement; they can get from the slogan instead. Moreover, in
a printed advert, a slogan often comes next to the logo as an

example of KFC‟s.
In case readers just have a glance at the most noticeable position in the paper, the
logo, they must have a look at the slogan at the same time so in this way, advertisers may
reach their purpose of transmitting the key message of the advertisement.
1.3

FEARURES OF ADVERTISING LANGUAGE

Language has made a powerful influence on people and their behavior and this is
especially exact in the field of marketing and advertising. Hence, the choice of language to
convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is very important.
Advertising language is called a “loaded language” (Leech, 1966:76). Sternkopf
(2005:210) shows his opinion about advertising language by stating that “Advertising
language can take on any form that is required for communicating its message, thus
covering and utilizing the entire linguistic continuum”.
In this chapter, a description of the language of advertising on the syntactic, lexical,
semantic and phonetic levels will be presented.
1.3.1 Syntactic Features of Advertising Language
In this part, the major features of English used in advertising on the syntactic level
will be presented from the aspect of sentence types and sentence structure. It must be noted
that one of the difficulties analysts face when studying advertising language in general and
slogans in particular is its disjunctive nature, that is, in their belonging to what is called
“block” language, i.e. language restricted by space or temporal reasons. Because of the
special communicative purposes of advertising language and the obvious limitation of the
space, the grammar of advertising language shows certain features compared to the


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standard grammar that are not found in other registers. According to Leech (1966:93), the

root of the differences between discursive grammar and disjunctive grammar is:
In fully discursive grammar, minor and non-finite clauses are dependent, in fully
disjunctive grammar, they are independent…It means, in effect, that in disjunctive
language a sentence need not contain a finite predicator, and this in turn means that a
single nominal group or a single adverbial group may be grammatically independent.
Either of these groups may in turn consist of a single word. In other words, there is no
limit to the simplicity of a grammatical unit.

According to the increasing degree of complexity, the constituents of sentence are
classified into 4 sub-categories: groups, verbless and non - finite clauses, simple sentences,
multiple sentences. As a special kind of multiple sentences, compound-complex sentence is
not mentioned here due to its rare occurrence in advertising language in general and
advertising slogans in particular.
1.3.1.1 Groups
The Group is defined as expansion of a word (Richards, 1996:5).
Example 1:
NG: “New classics” (Chic and Cher)
Toolan (1988:57) and Bruthiaux (1996:79) state that one of the standard features of
advertisements is the tendency to use lengthy and complex noun phrases or groups. In
advertising language, the interesting part of a noun phrase is the pre-modifying part, which
is very complex and is characterized by some uncommon structural features. In many
cases, the whole adverting text contains only noun phrases. Inside each noun phrase,
clusters of two, three or more adjectives are possible.
1.3.1.2 Verbless and non-finite clauses
A verbless clause is defined as “a clause containing no V element but otherwise
generally analyzable in terms of one or more clause elements”. (Quirk and Greenbaum,
1973: 310). Within a verbless clause, we can usually infer ellipsis of the verb “be”, the


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subject, when omitted, can be treated as recoverable from the context (Quirk and
Greenbaum, 1973: 312).
Example 2:
Drei Wetter Taft. (is) Always perfect
A non-finite clause is defined as “a clause whose V element is a non-finite verb
phrase” (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1973: 310). The four classes of non-finite verb phrase
serve to distinguish four classes of non-finite clause. “The infinitive, the -ing participle and
the -ed participle are the non-finite forms of the verb” (Quirk et al.1990:41).
Example 3:
Flirting with an idea of an eye lift? (OLAY eye lifting serum)
In disjunctive grammar which is considered a common characteristic of
advertisements, non-finite and verbless clauses occur independently and can therefore form
a sentence by themselves (Leech, 1966: 93, 113-114).
1.3.1.3 Simple sentences
Simple sentences are sentences consisting of only one independent clause (Quirk
and Greenbaum, 1973: 166). According to these two authors, simple sentences may be
divided into four major syntactic classes including declarative, imperative, interrogative
and exclamatory sentences. (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1973: 191)
 Imperatives
Both Leech (1966:79-80, 110) and Myers (1994:47) regard imperatives as “the
generic sentence type” for advertisements. This can be explained by the inherent aim of
advertisements to urge consumers to act in a desired manner, commonly by purchasing the
products. According to Biber et al. (1999:219), imperatives usually lack a subject, modals
and tense as well as aspect markers. The omission of the subject is understandable since the
context contributes to making it apparent that the omitted subject refers to the listener or
the reader. Leech (1966: 79-80) also agrees that the frequency of imperative clauses is
considerably high in advertisements.

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Example 4:
Choose the Venus (Gillette)
 Interrogatives
Interrogatives give advertisements a conversational quality as well as establish an
interactive relationship between the advertiser and the audience based on the grounds that a
question presupposes an answer (Myers 1994: 49, Leech 1966: 111). This type of sentence
often contains presuppositions which convey implicit assumptions of power and gender
relations (Fairclough, 1995) and becomes a frequently -found feature in advertising
language as well.
Besides, another typical feature of interrogatives in advertising is that they are often
rhetorical. In other words, they require an answer that can either be apparent or provided
by the advertiser (Myers, 1994: 49). The answer usually justifies the purchase of the
product or affirms its dominance.
Example 5:
Is your skin thirsty? (Clinique)
 Declaratives
It can be said that declarative sentences widely appear in advertising language since
they are primarily used to convey information and the ultimate aim of advertising is to
inform customers of the quality of a certain product or the profit it may bring. Example 6:
The fun develops instantly (Polaroid)
 Exclamatory sentences
Exclamatory sentences also suggest personal and interactive communication, which
explains for its frequency in advertisements (Myers, 1994:50-51). They begin with either
what or how and continue with a subject-verb verb pattern. (Biber et al., 2002:254).
Example 7:
What a beautiful day it was!
However, Myers argues that exclamatory sentence in advertisements could actually
be seen as simple statements containing an exclamation mark. Example 8:

It is Miller time! (Miller beer)


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1.3.1.4 Multiple sentences
Based on inner complexity, all sentences can be divided into simple, consisting of a
single clause (see 1.3.1.3) and multiple, consisting of several clauses (Quirk et al.,
1985:40). Multiple sentences include complex sentence and compound sentence. (Quirk et
al, 1985:719).
 Complex sentence:
A complex sentence is a sentence which consists of a main clause and one or more
subordinate clauses.
Example 9:
When you make a great beer, you don‟t have to make a great fuss (Heineken)
 Compound sentence
A compound sentence comprises two or more simple sentences linked by coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but) and each clause is a main clause.
Example 10:
There‟s only one naughty thing in Dolmio and that‟s a Papa (DOLMIO Bolognese)

In advertising, the use of multiple sentences is limited because they can make an
opposite intention for its creators. Since long sentence structures would not be read for
their extent, it is also possible that readers may lose the interest in the slogan and in the
advertised product in the end.
1.3.2 Lexical Features of Advertising Language
This part of the work will be concerned with typical characteristics of the
vocabulary in advertising language including the usage of verbs, adjectives, brand names,
pronouns and possessive determiners as well as new words and phrases.
1.3.2.1 Verbal groups
In terms of voice and polarity of verbal groups, O’Donnell and Todd (1980) in

chapter VI – “English in advertising” of their book titled Variety in Contemporary