Language and Business

215 11.1.4. Grammatical and syntactic features of advertising language 11.1.4.1. Syntactic features Sauer characterises the syntax typical of advertising language as follows: “An syntaktischen Erscheinungen sind zwei kontrastierende Tendenzen auffällig, nämlich Verkürzung und Ellipse einerseits, Parallelen und Wiederholungen andererseits.“299 Annikki Koskensalo speaks of "Hackbrettstil"300 and Geoffrey Leech uses the term "block language"301 for the syntactic structure of advertising language, referring to the kind of disjunctive and abbreviated grammar typical of advertising copy. Block language can be compared to the language characteristic of headlines, providing only lexical words conveying meaning and omitting grammatical function words of low information value. Typical features of abbreviated grammar are the use of the infinitive with future meaning, the use of the past participle as an indicator of the passive (the auxiliary form as a mere function word being omitted) and the use of the present participle denoting the present continuous (again omitting the auxiliary verb form for the sake of shortness). From a syntactic point of view, the omission of function words and determiners results in incomplete sentences, also referred to as ellipses. Both Leech and Goddard identify ellipses as typical of impromptu speech302. Downing and Locke note that "in conversational exchanges in English, minor clauses and abbreviated clauses play an important part in their ability to realise initiations (offers, commands, statements or questions) and responses to initiations."303 Goddard compares ellipses to a kind of "shorthand" and claims that "advertising language often attempts to reproduce the elliptical nature of spoken language in order to establish closeness with the reader."304 [...]

214 This process of semantic changes due to an advertising discourse is nothing new.291 One of the keywords of modern advertising, luxury, has undergone a significant process of semantic amelioration. In its earliest sense after having been borrowed into the English language in the fourteenth century, the word luxury had the predominant meaning of sinful self-indulgence292, usually sexual in nature, and was associated with lasciviousness and lust. Against the background of the hedonistic culture of Western society, these formerly negative connotations have adopted a favourable flavour, and "luxuries have been converted into necessities"293. Thus, semantic change reflects the morale and attitudes of society. Euphemisms are particularly prone to semantic change, especially when used in the fast-living world of advertising. Whereas blend, scent and flavour are the preferred synonyms for mixture, smell and taste today, their latter profane counterparts were used in a positive meaning only some decades ago.294 Especially with the marketing of products that require a certain level of explanation, such as computers or other electronic and technical devices, advertisers increasingly make use of a new style hybrid termed "advermation style",295 defined as a blend of advertising and information. "Claims made in such discourse may relate to desirable aspects which encourage purchase…as much as the dissemination of information."296 In this jargon, specialist terms feature particularly frequently. The language is largely descriptive and it uses "a rhetoric of numbers applied to complex specialist terminology"297 that may well be not understood by the non-expert recipient. "Neben der Information kann diese Art des Fachwortgebrauchs auch eine Autoritätswirkung ausüben. Der Autor kann durch das Einfügen von Fachwörtern einen vorhandenen oder vorgetäuschten Wissensvorsprung … ausspielen und so seinem Urteil oder seinen Anregungen einen größeren Nachdruck verleihen."298 To balance this effect, the descriptive elements of language are often sizzled up with evaluative adverbs, comparative and superlative forms, informal style of speech as well as metaphoric language and personification. [...]

210 11.1.2. Functional and practical stylistics of advertising language These functional requirements described above result in a functional advertising style, which is determined by the correlation of exophoric determinants such as the fields of application, the relationship between sender and recipient, the modes of communication and the social functions of this text type on the one hand and typical modes of use on the other. Against the background of a "discourse of advertising"275, it becomes obvious that the linguistic features of advertising cannot be described without reference to the situation in which this text type occurs. Thus, the heavy use of the pronoun you276 cannot be seen in isolation from the appellative character of adverts, with the sender trying to present a personal appeal to the recipients in order to persuade them to ultimately buy their product277. The pseudo-personal appeal of the pronoun you must be considered in conjunction with the media of mass communication, which are the major mode of distributing advertising messages. Although every recipient knows that you actually refers to an audience of many millions of people, they are still inclined to believe that they are personally being addressed. Furthermore, the predominance of positive grammatical forms and lexical items with a favourable meaning can be traced back to the social function of motivating the recipient to follow the instructions of the sender and to go and buy these products. This peculiarity can also be seen in relation to the pragmatic nature of advertising texts as acts of persuasion, which naturally focus on a favourable way of presentation. Thus, the functional style of advertising language, whose characteristic features are outlined below, sets the guidelines for practical stylistics, describing – rather than prescribing – what advertising language should be like. It is a matter of fact that, in spite of the much-appraised creativity of the text type of advertising language, it follows a fairly narrow scheme of linguistic features which make advertising copy easily recognisable as such and provide the recipient with a guideline of how to interpret the statements and how to deal with such texts. By not adhering to these [...]