4.2 FEATURES OF ADVERTISING

THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING

In order to advise consumers and induce them to purchase a product or use a specific service by showing them in their best light, advertising makes use of some typical linguistic features:

  • the use of the imperative tense and the second person to be more persuasive, direct and personal;
  • the use of ungradable 1 adjectives to reinforce the message;
  • the use of noun compounds 2 to associate creativity and innovation with the product;
  • the use of prefixes like super, hyper, ultra, or extra to increase the value, quality and importance of the product;
  • the use of figures of speech to enrich the message.
MORE 1

Gradable can show different levels of that quality (e.g., quite beautiful, very beautiful, extremely beautiful). Ungradable adjectives describe absolute qualities (e.g. awesome, terrible).

MORE 2

Combination of a noun + another noun, adjective or adverb to create a new word, for example: dream sensation.