Discourse strategies in advertising language: a case of selected radio and newspaper advertisements in Ghana
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Date
2023-02
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KNUST
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Newspaper and Radio advertisements still provide an impressive return on investment
for businesses. Aware of this, advertisers use language, actions and strategies to create
a common ground with their audience. This study examines how advertisers, relying
on cultural ideologies, use several discourse strategies of language to persuade their
target audience. Classical Conditioning theory, the study primarily discusses how
advertisers use both linguistic strategies and elements in the target culture to persuade
their audience, with the view to unravelling how meaning is embedded in the
advertising texts. Data is collected through general observation of how buyers are
influenced by strategies such as persuasions, implicature, honorifics, conversational
tone and verbal descriptions (rather than numerical measure/hard data), in
advertisements on radio stations including Peace FM, Joy FM, Adom FM, Citi FM
and Star FM, and advertisements in newspaper outlets including Daily Graphic and
Ghanaian Times.
This study reveals among other things that:
Advertisers tend to employ endearment forms and familiar expressions to
influence the buying behaviour of their audience.
Linguistic devices such as repetition, apposition, implicature, hedges,
honorifics, and conversational tone normally characterize spoken and written
advertisements.
Advertisers adapt linguistic features of communication to dominant ideologies
in the indigenous culture so as to persuade the target audience.
Many advertising authorities have come to believe that advertising works best
when it most closely approximates a dialogue between two human beings.
Description
This thesis is submitted to the Kwame Nkrumah University Science and technology, Kumasi in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the degree of master of philosophy in English language.