关于英语广告的语言研究

刘　芳

【摘 要】广告在现代社会已变得日趋重要。在全球化的过程中,英语已成为国际性的语言。英语广告便走进了人们的生活,并且影响着人们的思维方式,价值观念以及生活方式。由于英语广告在我们的社会生活中有着很重要的地位,所以我们应该了解英语广告以怎样的方式将广告信息传达给消费者。广告的普遍使得一种特殊写作文体出现了-广告语。广告语是一种具有直接影响力和快速说服力的文体。不论广告采用哪种推销策略,语言的角色是最重要的。广告英语不仅丰富而且有特色。本文旨在通过对英语广告的语言分析总结出关告英语在语音、词汇、句法、修辞上的语言特点。

【关键词】英语广告语;语音学;词汇学;句法学;修辞

A Linguistic Analysis of English Advertising

[Abstract] Advertising is growing increasingly influential throughout the world. The wide use of advertising has created a special style of writing—advertising language. Advertising language is a style of immediate impact and rapid persuasion. Whatever the promotive strategies advertising takes, language is the main carrier of message all along. Advertising English has its own unique language feature and enduring charm. This paper aims to present an analytical study of the language features in terms of phonology, vocabulary, syntax and rhetorical devices.

[Key Words] English advertising language; phonological; morphology; syntax; rhetorical devices

1. Introduction

With the quick development of technology and commercial economy, the design and types of advertisement vary greatly. In the mean time, the social effect that advertisements play attracts more and more attentive eyes in the society. It is obviously seen that advertisement makers put great effort in the use of language, which becomes more and more delicate and offers much for thought. Advertising language, considered as having interactional function, does not merely inform the customers about what are sold, but also to attract the customers attention so that an act of purchasing will expectedly follow from the language expression. Thus, it is evident that the advertisers attempt to establish a good social relationship with the customers. Therefore, the charming specialty and exquisite form of advertising language contribute considerably to the selling of products. The study and analysis of advertising language, as well, becomes a new item for language learners.

2. The language of advertising

Language has a powerful influence over people and their behavior. This is especially true in the fields of marketing and advertising. The choice of language to convey specific messages with the intention of influencing people is vitally important. Visual content and design in advertising have a very great impact on the consumer, but it is language that helps people to identify a product and remember it. Advertising language as a special kind of language is very different from common language. The advertisers make artistic use of language to appeal to the aesthetic sense of the target audience. Advertising language has its own features in phonology, morphology, syntax, and rhetorical devices.

2.1 Phonology features of advertising language

Copywriters always fully exploit the sound effect of the English language to make their advertisement more appealing and memorable. The repetition of sounds is quite a favor for advertisers and copywriters. Alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia are techniques to create rhythmic beauty, achieve cohesion or reinforce the theme of the product. In addition, these phonology devices reinforce the sense of rhythm and language appeal.

2.1.1 Alliteration is frequently used

Alliteration is eye-catching and sweet-sounding in advertising language which can help the advertising language achieve the strong beating rhythm and achieve an emphatic effect of the meaning. It is one of the favorite phonological devices used in advertisement.

(1) Clean, Clear and under Control. --- Clean and Clear, Johnson& Johnson(强生)

In this advertisement, a consonant [k] was repeated for three times by the initial sound of clean, clear and control, so the advantage of this product is strongly reinforced by the triple alliteration which links clean with clear and control.

2.1.2 Assonance

An interesting sounding advertisement can be physically pleasing in and of itself, but sound might also contribute to the advertisements intellectual, emotional, or spiritual impact. Assonance and consonance are typically used by copywriters.

(2) The best a man can get. ---Gillette Razor (吉列剃须刀)

This is a razor advertisement of Gillette Company. The uses of the vowel sounds [æ] and [ε] in successive words are successful. Rhyming occurs in “best” and “get”, “man” and “can”, so people can feel the musical harmony and beautiful rhyme as reading it.

2.2 English morphology in advertising

The English language is known for its extensive vocabulary. Where many other languages have only one or two words which carry a particular meaning, English may have five or six. Moreover, the meanings of these five or six words may differ very slightly and in a very subtle way. It is important to understand the connotation of a word. Connotation is the feeling or ideas that are suggested by a word, rather than the actual meaning of the word. The target audience, of course, also puts its own meaning into certain words.

2.2.1 Compounds

One way in which advertisers adapt language to their own use is to take compound words and use them as adjectives. Perhaps the most conspicuous feature of advertising language is its abundance and variety of compounds. Leech (1966) suggests that in advertising English, lexical restraints on compound formation are less stringent than elsewhere. This helps them save space and achieve novelty. They have become part of the English language.

(3) Kodak Single-use-cameras take pictures where you wouldnt normally take your camera. ---Kodak camera (柯达相机)

2.2.2 Innovative Spelling

As a means of conveying information within a limited time and space, advertising English differs from other discourse types in that it is mainly succinct, vivid, imaginative, emotive, evocative and appealing. Readers attention is the first objective of any advertisement. Copywriters often rack their brains in order to present the reader with something unexpected. Sometimes they intentionally deviate from the normal ways of expression in the hope of enhancing the attention value of their writing. Many advertisers make use of misspellings, new prefixes and suffixes or even coin novel and grotesque words to draw our attention to what is advertised. These coinages are used to provoke the curiosity of the readers and help to imprint the message in their mind. For example,

(4) HelloMoto. --- Motorola (摩托罗拉)

“HelloMoto” in this mobile phone advertisement is a blend.Blends are bizarre in spelling, but they can easily secure readers attention. By making such kind of representation, copywriters lend uniqueness and charm to the products they advertise.

2.3 Syntactic features of Advertising English

The purpose of all advertising is to familiarize the consumers with the merits of particular products and services in order to promote sales. To be effective, the message should be easy to understand and easy to remember. The most reliable way to get this effect is to convey the message in the shortest, simplest and clearest way possible. This produces some special syntactic features at this level.

2.3.1 The predominance of simple present tense in advertising English

The simple present tense is always used to satisfy the customers desire to know the present state of the product he wants to buy. But there is another aspect of the simple present: its implication of universality and timelessness- a sort of “eternal truth”. When used in ads, it gives the customer the impression that the merits of the advertised product are universally true, independent of time and space. This psychological effect will certainly work to the benefit of the advertiser. For example,

(5) Coke adds life. ---Coca Cola (可口可乐)

It means that coke has added, is adding, and will continue to add life, because the simple present tense has the meaning of permanent truth.

2.3.2 Imperative sentences are frequently found

The imperative sentences are most suited for the conative function of language used in advertising— to prompt action. As imperative sentences always carry request, instructions, commands or persuasions, they serve the ultimate purpose of the advisers to urge potential customers to buy the advertised products or services. So they are widely in advertisements:

(6) Obey your thirst. ---Spirit (雪碧)

2.4 Rhetorical Devices in English Advertising

Advertising language often attracts attention to itself by being highly colorful, vivid and imaginative. The figurative use of advertising language can be found easily in the rhetorical devices such as play on words, personification, allusion, parallelism, simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole and so forth. Rhetorical devices are variations of literal or ordinary form of expressions. Their use is to make the thought more striking and effective, for they have the power to vivify and illustrate.

2.4.1 Parallelism

Parallelism enhances the rhythmical effect of an ad. It adds force and grace to the expression. That is why it is very much favored by copywriters in their attempt to appeal to the aesthetic sense of the mass audience:

(7) Buy it. Sell it. Love it. ---eBay

2.4.2 Personification

Personification is a figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form. The use of personification in advertising will endow the product with human emotion, and will make them amicable to consumers. Look at the following advertisement in which the watch is given human ability.

(8) Unlike me, my Rolex never needs a rest. ---Rolex Watch (劳力士手表)

By personification, lifeless objects are enlivened as they assume human traits. They tend to catch the attention of the readers and arouse their interest.

2.4.3 Parody

Parody uses the words, thought, or style of an author, but by a slight change adapting them to a new purpose or ridiculously inappropriate subject; the imitation or exaggeration of traits of style so as to make them appear ludicrous. Idioms, proverbs and literary quotations are familiar to most potential customers in a society and have no difficulty to be popularized. The creative use of the idioms, proverbs and literary quotations can give ads new meaning while making them memorable and companionable. For example,

(9) A Mars a day helps you work best and play. ---Mars chocolate (玛氏巧克力)

3. Conclusion

A major element of advertising is the words used to attract the readers attention, describe the product, and persuade the reader to buy. Advertising has its own way to achieve the sale goal, through the use of linguistic techniques in phonology, morphology, syntax, and rhetorical devices, and it “frequently stretches or breaks the rules or conventions of normal language” (Gillian Dyer, 1982: 152). This is neither good nor bad; it is advertising doing its job, selling products, under extreme restrictions in time, space, and lack of immediacy. However, knowing how advertising uses language makes it possible for the average consumer to make better, more informed, purchase decisions.

Work Cited

Albion, Mark S. (1981) The Advertising Controversy: Evidence on the Economic Effects of Advertising. Boston: Alburn House Publishing Company.

Barker, Chris. ( 2000) Cultural Studies. London: Sage Publications.

Cook, Guy (1992) The Discourse of Advertising. London: Routledge.

Dyer, Gillian (1982) Advertising as Communication. London: Methuen.

Leech, Geoffrey N. (1966) English in Advertising. London: Longmans.

Schudson, Michael. (1984) Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion. London: Routledge.

刘秀玉,《新编简明英语广告写作手册》,北京:知识出版社,2002.