【英语专业论文】Linguistic Features of English Advertisements

【英语专业论文】Linguistic Features of English Advertisements 淮北师范大学外国语学院 2012 届学士学位论文 Linguistic Features of English Advertisements系 别: 外 语 系 专 业: 英 语 学 号: 20080501143 姓 名: 燕 波 指 导 教 师: 陆 阳 指导教师职称: 讲 师 2011年 9 月 1 日Linguistic Features of English AdvertisementsAbstract: Along with the rapid development of global economy, the deepening and development of international division, and the strengthening of the trend of global economic integration, international commodity circulation is becoming increasingly frequent day by day. Under this trend，advertisements written in the global language of English has become an important method to promote the global economic development and the informatization revolution. But it is not easy to write good advertisements or to translate Chinese advertisements into English. An English advertisement with high quality must comply with the AIDMA advertising law, namely, attention attract the attention of readers , interest arouse readers interests , desire evoke our readers desire , memory let readers memorize at the first sight , and action make readers take action . The law required creators must understand and know the mind of readers or listeners, showing their own ingenuity on the handling of language alone. In order to make English advertisements meet the requirements of the AIDMA law, creators must work hard on advertising language. Through careful analysis we can find that English advertisements have formed their own linguistic features. The designers usually employ the special lexis, syntax and rhetorical devices to make their advertisement a concise, lively and appealing one. This paper tries to expound the linguistic features of English advertisements in these aspects.Key words: English advertisements; linguistic features; special lexis; Syntactic features; rhetorical devices.英语广告的语言特征摘要：随着全球经济的高速发展、国际分工的逐渐深入和发展、全球经济一体化趋势的加强，国际间商品流通正日益频繁。在这种趋势下，用全球性语言英语写成的广告已成为促进全球经济发展和信息化革命的重要手段。但写好英语广告和英译汉语广告都不是简单的事。一则高质量的英语广告必须符合AIDMA 法则,即:Attention 引起读者注意 、Interest 激起读者兴趣 、Desire 唤起读者欲望 、Memory 让读者过目不忘 、Action 使读者采取行动 。这一法则要求创作者必须掌握读者或听者的心，从语言上匠心独运。英文广告要想达到AIDMA 法则的要求,创作者必须从广告语言上下工夫。通过认真地分析我们可以发现英语广告已经形成了自己独特的语言特征。创作者通常采用特殊的词法、句法和修辞方法使广告简洁生动，富有吸引力。本文试从这些方面详细介绍英语广告的语言特征。Contents1. Introduction12. Lexical Features in English Advertisements12.1 Extensive Use of Adjectives and Their Comparative and Superlative Forms12.2 Innovation in Spelling32.3 Magical Use of Personal Pronouns42.4 Repeating Key Words52.5 Using Dynamic Verbs52.6 Using Alien Words63. Syntactic Construction of English Advertisements73.1 Using Simple Sentences73.2 Frequent Use of Imperative and Interrogative Clauses83.3 Using Simple Present Tense and Separable Clauses93.4 High Occurrence Rate of Possessive Nouns104. Rhetorical Devices in English Advertisements104.1 Metaphor114.2 Parallelism114.3 Personification134.4 Pun134.5 Hyperbole144.6 Rhyme145. Conclusion15References15 Linguistic Features of English Advertisements1. IntroductionNow China is in an era of opening-up and it has been urgent for enterprises to engage in the international market. So English advertisement plays a decisive role in establishing a good corporate image in the international community, as well as promotes the selling of products of enterprises. Therefore, it is very meaningful to probe into the linguistic features of English advertisements for the promotion of Chinas enterprises product advertising to go into the world. Although advertisements are different, they all have one thing in common, that is, to persuade others to buy the goods or services, or to do something. Therefore, advertising is loaded language and has a strong persuasive power. It can affect peoples values, change peoples way of life, and has a very clear physical target. This paper discusses three aspects of linguistic features of English advertisements, the lexical characteristics, syntactic construction, and rhetorical devices. These special linguistic features make advertisements concise, lively and appealing.2. Lexical Features in English Advertisements2.1 Extensive Use of Adjectives and Their Comparative and Superlative FormsIn order to promote the selling of their products, it is difficult for advertisers to avoid describing the nature and the quality of them. There is always the need for advertisers to praise and over describe their commodities, so they need to use a large number of adjectives such as beautiful, good, new, fresh, big, etc. For example, 1 “The clean look: Its the fresh, natural look of clean make-up.”This is an ad of a very popular American cosmetics , Cover Girl. This advertisement with 4 adjectives uses natural and clean as the theme for the advertisement. It dose not lay emphasis on heavy make-up and makes the product appear as plain as an old shoe and not too expensive to be reached. Thus, we can see from it that the use of adjectives plays a really important role in English advertisements. Although there are so many adjectives used in English advertisements, we can find out some of the highest frequently-used adjectives. According to the statistics made by the famous linguist G?H Leech of Great Britain, the most frequently-used twenty adjectives, ranked in terms of the sequence of their use, are new , good/ better/ best , free , fresh , delicious , full , sure , clean , wonderful , special , crisp , fine , 13 big , great , real , easy , bright , extra , safe , rich. Whats more, the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are also used by advertisers very frequently. This is because advertisers always compare their commodities with others. They want people to know that their commodities are not the best, but a little better than the others. Lets look at the examples to illustrate this point as follow: 2 “And along the way, youll enjoy the warmest, most personal service in the sky.” This is the advertisement of an airline company, which uses two successive superlatives and manages to show its excellent service. 3 “Tastes richer . . . mellower . . . more satisfying.”This sentence is taken from the advertisement of REAL cigarette. There is a famous saying “The right can be made only through comparison.” While promoting the sales of their products, advertisers always try to make a comparison between their products and the similar or previous products.2.2 Innovation in SpellingThe advertisement language itself is abundant in creativeness and imagination for the sake of consumers desire for fashion, some new and seemingly strange words are made up to show how novel the product is.Advertisers are good at using a word game or spelling change, such as deliberately misspelling those words familiar to people or adding a prefix or a suffix to create a new Word. Although the new words are different from the original words in the form, they still do not break the original intentions, but add new meanings and endow advertising with great charm.These words are easy to arouse the readerscuriosity and attention and in turn successfully promote the selling of the products. For example, 4 “Cooool! A fabulous sort of soft drink! Thats light with Kahlua, fresh with cream and milk.” There is a popular word “cool” in the original text which is deliberately misspelled. By repeating the letters on purpose, the ad is meant to attract the audience, especially those young peoples attention. The word “Cooool” was translated into Chinese character “酷（means cool in English）, one of extremely high popularity and quite frequently used by Chinese young people. It caters to the consumption psychology of teenagers and helps to achieve the presupposed purpose of the advertising. Another example of soft drink goes as follows： 5 “The Orangemostest Drink in the world.”, In the Ad Orangemostest, in effect, is composed of “orange” plus “most” and “-est”, “most” and “-est” are put behind orange to indicate that the drink is the best drink without any doubt.In English advertisements, compound words also appear in a high frequency and there are many innovations in the composing of words. Lets take the following Ad as an example: 6 “When your taste grows up, Winston out-tastes them all.” This is the Ad of Winston cigarettes. The compound out-taste is used here. In terms of the meaning of out- when it is collocated with other words, we can translate this sentence into “当你的鉴赏力提高后,你会发现温斯顿香烟味道最佳”ome synthetic adjectives often appear in English Advertisements and the adjectives can be translated into Chinese four-word structure such as bright-colored 色泽鲜艳 ,well-chosen 精心挑选 .However, when creating a new word, advertisers must carefully consider its sound and its formation and make it clear and easy to understand. The new words should be made more conspicuous and lively than the original ones. Unreasonable and careless creation of words must be averted in case of getting the opposite result to advertisers wishes.2.3 Magical Use of Personal Pronouns After watching or listening to the Ad message, consumers canbe given the feeling of experiencing it by themselves. This is a key step to an Ads success and the success can be achieved by the unexpected use of personal pronouns. Usually the first person is used to refer to the supplier, the second person to the consumers and the third person to those persons or objects which are well-known or admired or favored by people. The magical use of personal pronouns is often reflected in the use of the first person and the second person, which can diminish the distance between the readers and the advertisers. The businessmen usually make Ads as the intimacy of the audience and communicate with them in a natural and relaxed tune, which increases the infinity of the Ad. For example, 7 “ we integrate, you communicate.”This is a classic Ad copy of Mitsubishi, a famous corporation in Japan. In the Ad, we and you respectively refer to the manufacturers and consumers of Mitsubishi. The design makes the Ad sound like a direct dialogue between manufacturers and consumers and gives people a feeling of intimacy. And for another example, 8 “Just because you brush your teeth doesnt mean you do it right！”. It is an Ad of an electric toothbrush that uses the second person. It has adopted the colloquial style and seems to be that the producer is talking with his customers confidently. In this way the infectivity of the Ad is strengthened.2.4 Repeating Key Words In order to emphasize the advertisements key message and increase the vigor and strength of advertising, advertisers try to creatively repeat some key word or some common sentence structure in the Ad. This kind of repeated English Ads attract the audiences attention to the theme of the Ad and strengthen their memory about it. For example, 9 “Deliciously simple! Simply delicious! a delicious simple and very simple beauty taste! ”The Ad uses the repetition of a few words, which make the Ad readable and catchy. In addition, the skillfully-designed sentence is popular and easy to keep in mind and makes people know that it is a food advertisement at the first hearing.2.5 Using Dynamic Verbs The using of dynamic verbs is another outstanding lexical feature of the English advertisements because dynamic verbs can produce better effect on peoples feeling. But this kind of verbs like buy and spend need not and should not appear directly. But other verbs are needed to be used to influence the customers, make them have the desire to buy and buy the product on their own initiative. Lets look at the following example: 10 “We finance. We lease them. We upgrade them. We configure them. We improve them. We customize them. We assert them. We package them. We store them. We deliver them. We protect them. We install them. We network them. We integrate them. We support them. We serve them.” This is a computer ad. There are more than ten verbs used in the advertisement, each of which stands for a measure taken by the businessman and shows the sincerity of his service. He seems to be using the Ad to tell the customers that: we have done so much of these for you so well and so considerably. What reason do you have for not buying? Come on and buy our computers right now. Why dont you tell the people around you about our fantastic computers? By using these paratactic dynamic verbs, the advertisements descriptive, persuasive, incendiary effect has been exerted incisively and vividly. The following verbs are most frequently used in English advertisements: make , get ,give , have , see , buy , come , go , know , keep , look ,need , love , like , use , feel , take , start , taste , help ,meet , save , bring , last , serve , choose.2.6 Using Alien WordsAs the exchange the merchandise trade between countries is being strengthened day by day, a product can be sold in many countries and regions. Therefore, we can often see that foreign words are used in English advertisements with the aim to show the products special flavor or excellent quality or its identity of authentic foreign product, thus attract the attention of consumers. For example, 11 “Order it in bottles or in cans. Order Perrier III with added je ne sais quoi.”This is an ad of a soft drink. There is a French sentence “je ne sais quoi” in the ad, which means “I dont know what”. The use of this simple French sentence not only strengthens the peoples curiosity to this beverage, but also manifests its authentic French flavor. France has always been renowned in the world because of the production of wine, food, cosmetics and clothing. A few French words added to ads of these products can improve the value and attractiveness of the products. While translating this kind of advertisements, in order to show exotic features of the original work, we can transliterate it or choose not to translate it.3. Syntactic Construction of English Advertisements 3.1 Using Simple Sentences Most wonderful advertisements use simple sentences, which have the succinct form, unique style and abundant content. The structure of the sentences in English Advertisements must be concise and potent because the concise sentences can send a striking and brisk feeling to the consumers and are convenient to remember. Many of sentences in English Advertisements are not only simple, but also colloquial, which is the need of practical application because simple and colloquial words are easily-understood. We can always see English Advertisers use short sentences and simple sentence structure to make the Ads concise and potent. The following are some outstanding examples of this character: 1 GOOD TASTE. KENT STYLEKENT Cigarette 2 No business too small, no problem too bigIBM 3 Feel the new spaceSamsung Electronics 4 Obey your thirstSpriteIn the four examples, the sentences are so simple that people can finish reading them in a very short period of time, and the colloquial English makes people feel warm, keeps them at ease and wins their favor.Furthermore, there are some people think that one of the principles of English Advertisements is the required KISS principle, that is, keep it short and sweet .The principle is used to achieve the sound effect of conveying the most content with the fewest words. As is known to us, the cost in modern advertising is extremely high and keeps rising, which requires advertising to use the least amount of layout and the most concise language to deliver the most information, most effectively arouse readers or audiences desire to buy, finally increase the sales volume of a product. The advertiser uses try to achieve the goal of making simple and colloquial Ads in many ways, including the use of abbreviations. Lets take a house rent or sell advertising as an example: 5 TO L ET OR FOR SAL EFurnished Edinburgh Court, 426 Argyle st, 2nd floor, 1,630 sq. ft, 4 bedrooms with dining and living room, private garage. Sale at 130 , 000. Rent 1,400.Tel. 38954 office time or 823784.This Advertisement uses the typical English concise type. If it uses full sentences and words, the advertising space and fee would be increased. 3.2 Frequent Use of Imperative and Interrogative ClausesThe imperative sentence is itself a kind of sentence that is used for a certain request, consultation, command, advice, dissuading or warning. And these functions just coincide with the purpose of advertising. Therefore, brief and imperative sentences are often used in advertisement writing, on the purpose of advising people to take action to buy the advertised products. 6 Get Met Metropolitan Life Insurance . It paysMetropolitan Life Insurance 7 So come into McDonalds and enjoy BigMac SandwichMcDonaldsIn the ads above, the purposes are not to command consumers to do something, but to sincerely suggest and to guide them undemonstratively, having the function to persuade and urge.The imperative sentences in advertisement can provoke consumersinterest to purchase. The imperative sentence can be used in the beginning of an advertisement to show its forceful sense. But usually it appears in the end to persuade the audience to make their final decision. Sometimes only an intense imperative sentence can form a successful and persuasive advertisement. Lets look at some excellent examples: 8 Come to where the flavor is, Marlboro Country.Marlboro Cigarette 9 Take TOSHIBA, take the world.TOSHIBA Electronics 10 Give Dirt The Brush!Hoover Dust Cleaner 11 Put it all behind you.Honda Civic Wagon 12 So go ahead, get close. You have got the fresh breath Freedent gum gives. Freedent GumA sentence that begins with an interrogative clause has strong expressive force, being able to create suspense effect and enlightening the readers. It seizes peoples attention at the beginning, and leads them to think actively about the interrogated question, so as to deepen their impression and arouse their sympathy. Lets see the following example: “ A. Wouldnt you really rather have a Buick?” 3.3 Using Simple Present Tense and Separable ClausesThere are two main usages of simple present tense: one is to stand for an action or a state that is simultaneous to the utterance and the other is to stand for a conventional or permanent action or state. The application of simple present tense in advertising makes the characteristics of the commodity, in the eyes of the people, become characteristics that are as lasting as nature. It is an effectiveness that can not be brought about by any other tense. For examples: 13 The taste is great-Nestle coffee 14 Things go better with Coca-Cola- Coca-Cola.English ads often use simple sentences, but in some cases advertisers have to use long and complex sentences to express its meaning. Because long sentences will bring about difficulty in the readers understanding, they often divide long sentences into clauses or phrases. In Such way information quantity of the product is increased. And also, the separated parts are always about the product characteristics or put emphasis on the performance of the product, so they are easy to attract the attention of consumers.3.4 High Occurrence Rate of Possessive Nouns In English, there are three main ways to show possessive relations: possessive pronouns, s and of. In accordance with the general rule of English, we often use s when the possessor is a person or some persons, and use of when the possessor is an object or some objects. However, in the ad