Linguistics, Vol. 3 No. 1-2, 2002.
Original scientific paper
Hypothesis and deduction in the studies of the discourse of advertising
Piotr Cap
; University of Łódź
Abstract
The paper is an attempt to show that a discourse type can in itself be an
analytic determinant, i.e. that it can effectively dictate methods of investigating
it. This claim is illustrated by a study of the discourse of advertising,
or rather, of how the discourse of advertising motivates an analyst
to adopt a specific track of analysis. In the paper, the discourse of
advertising is shown to possess certain properties which favor a deduction-
based approach to analysis, whereby an analyst is likely to postulate
about a given text’s function a priori, that is before an inquiry into
particular samples of textual data takes place. This approach may lead to
a number of analytic fallacies such as, for instance, underspecification
of data supporting the thesis or illustration of thesis with atypical or
even irrelevant data.
Keywords
discourse analysis; linguistic pragmatics; advertising; linguistic methodology; deduction; ‘top-down’ analysis; induction; ‘bottom-up’ analysis; persuasion; rhetoric
Hrčak ID:
31345
URI
Publication date:
13.12.2002.
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