Advertising Language

Advertising is one of the most linguistically creative and manipulative forms of communication. Advertisements are designed to persuade — to make the audience buy a product, adopt a belief, or take an action. The study of advertising language is particularly relevant to AQA A-Level English Language because advertisements deploy the full range of language levels (lexis, grammar, phonology, graphology, pragmatics, discourse) and are rich in representation choices. This lesson examines the key persuasive techniques, analytical frameworks, and language features of advertising.

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Functions of Advertising Language

Advertising language serves multiple functions simultaneously:

Function	Description	Example
Informative	Providing factual information about the product	Specifications, ingredients, prices
Persuasive	Convincing the audience to buy or act	Emotional appeals, rhetorical techniques
Phatic	Establishing a relationship with the audience	Friendly tone, conversational register
Poetic	Drawing attention to the form of the language itself	Rhyme, alliteration, wordplay, unusual syntax
Conative	Directly addressing and influencing the audience	Imperatives, second person pronouns, direct appeals

The linguist Roman Jakobson's (1960) functions of communication are a useful framework for analysing which functions an advertisement prioritises.

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Persuasive Techniques in Advertising

Lexical Techniques

Technique	Description	Example
Positive adjectives	Accumulating favourable descriptors	"New," "improved," "incredible," "luxury," "natural," "pure"
Comparative and superlative forms	Claiming superiority over competitors	"Better than the rest," "the best you can get," "Britain's favourite"
Weasel words	Vague terms that imply claims without making them explicitly	"Helps fight germs" (does not claim to kill them), "up to 50% off" (could be 1%)
Neologisms	Invented words that are memorable and distinctive	"Beanz Meanz Heinz," "Tangoed"
Emotive lexis	Words chosen for their emotional connotations	"Home" rather than "house," "nourish" rather than "feed"
Prestige vocabulary	Words that confer status or sophistication	"Artisanal," "curated," "bespoke," "heritage"

Grammatical Techniques

Technique	Description	Example
Imperative mood	Direct commands to the audience	"Buy now," "Try the new..." "Don't miss out"
Interrogative mood	Questions that engage the reader and presuppose a desired answer	"Want whiter teeth?" (presupposes the reader does)
Minor sentences	Incomplete sentences for impact and memorability	"Pure. Simple. Beautiful."
Parallelism	Repeated grammatical structures	"See it. Want it. Buy it."
Present tense	Creates immediacy and permanence	"Coke is it" / "L'Oreal — because you're worth it"
First and second person	Creates involvement and personal connection	"We believe," "You deserve"

Phonological Techniques

Technique	Description	Example
Alliteration	Repetition of initial consonant sounds	"Kit Kat: Have a break, have a Kit Kat"
Rhyme	Repetition of final sounds	"A Mars a day helps you work, rest, and play"
Assonance	Repetition of vowel sounds	"No-one grows like M&S"
Rhythm	Regular metrical patterns	"A Diamond is Forever" (iambic tetrameter)
Onomatopoeia	Words that imitate sounds	"Snap! Crackle! Pop!" (Rice Krispies)

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Pragmatics in Advertising

Advertising makes extensive use of pragmatic strategies — it relies heavily on what is implied rather than what is explicitly stated.

Grice's Maxims and Advertising

The philosopher Paul Grice (1975) proposed four maxims of conversation. Advertisements routinely flout these maxims to generate implicature (implied meaning):

Maxim	Description	How Advertisements Flout It
Quantity	Give the right amount of information	Advertisements often give too little information (vague claims) or too much (information overload)
Quality	Be truthful	Hyperbole, exaggeration, and unverifiable claims — "the best pizza in the world"
Relation	Be relevant	Seemingly irrelevant imagery or scenarios that work through connotation — a car advert showing a mountain landscape
Manner	Be clear and orderly	Deliberate ambiguity, wordplay, and obscure language that rewards interpretation

Presupposition in Advertising

Advertisers routinely embed presuppositions — assumptions that the audience is expected to accept without question:

• "Switch to our service" — presupposes you are currently using a competitor
• "Don't miss the new flavour" — presupposes you would want to try it
• "The UK's favourite" — presupposes widespread preference without necessarily proving it
• "Rediscover your confidence" — presupposes you once had confidence and have lost it

Speech Acts in Advertising

Advertisements frequently use indirect speech acts — performing one function through the form of another:

• "Why not try our new range?" — grammatically a question, pragmatically a suggestion/command
• "You deserve the best" — grammatically a statement, pragmatically a justification for purchasing
• "Imagine a world where..." — grammatically an imperative, pragmatically an invitation to fantasise

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The Implied Reader

Every advertisement constructs an implied reader (or model reader, a concept from the semiotician Umberto Eco, 1979) — the ideal audience member that the text is designed for. The implied reader is constructed through: