Manipulative language use in advertisement.

Advertising… to draw you in to particular products or services through announcement's paid for by an individual or a group wishing to inform or influence a particular audience.

 

How do they manage this? Through the clever and concealed use of manipulative language I would say.

 

Just the organisation of sentences purposely uses grammatical patterning (marked themes, end focus and passive voice) to rearrange the elements of a sentence in order to draw attention to key information, allowing the advertisers to control the order in which we perceive information. In turn, this allows them to alter and affect the way in which the reader would perceive the information in the advertisement and this possibly helps to control what we would feel when reading or hearing this.

 

The grammar of advertisements is also similar to informal spoken language, the informality builds a rapport with the audience/reader, this will improve the chances of the advertisement meeting the purpose as the audience can understand and relate to the advertisement. The pronouns, I, you, me, and we etc... Help create a personal relationship with the costumers, the directivity gives the illusion of making them feel special.

 

The slogans of advertisements are crucial as they sell the advert; aiming to stick into people's minds. A good strategy is to use sayings or situations that are already well known – the tone is often very tongue-in-cheek, a good example is the RAC's slogan 'Your knight in shining viscose' taking a twist of the extremely typical phrase 'Your knight in shining armour'.

 

The lexis of advertisements are critical to make an effect on the advertisement as a whole. For instants, neologisms are commonly used in advertisements as the invented words or phrases can make an advert memorable because it manipulates the use of language.

 

Let's take charity advertisements for example, their aim is collecting funds, attracting support, raising awareness and voluntary helpers. These advertisements purposely use emotive language, shocking statistics and strong adjectives, making the audience feel emotional about the subject, guilty or giving them a reason that they should be helping. When we see or watch these advertisements you don't realise that what is being said or shown was used purposely to persuade you to do something.

 

Clever and well hidden, right?

 

Sarah Hennebry