Filologija, No. 73, 2019.
Original scientific paper
Dad, Buy Me a Car and the Nivea Body Milk for there is no Better for Skin Care
Tea Šegić
; Odjel za germanistiku Sveučilišta u Zadru
Abstract
The main task of a text type such as an advertisement is to present a certin object, being or phenomenon in its best and in that create a positive image of the advertised in the reader’s mind. Furthermore, the advertisement’s aim is to accomplish its persuading function and to bring the reader to a specific reaction – integration of the advertised in hers/his everyday life. By performing its function, the advertisement consciously manipulates the languagedimension in order to influence the psychological profile of the potential receivers and to bring them to a specific reaction (Stolac–Vlastelić 2014). Receivers, on the other hand, by means of the language context as well as their outerlanguage knowledge and experience make certain mental effort to reveal the communication purpose of the received message (Udier 2006). Above mentioned confirmes the Speech Acts Theory founded by John Searle long ago. According to it, a sender performs a certain speech activity each time (s)he utters a word or a sentence only to achieve a certain communication purpose (cf. Searle 1976). The very Searle’s theory along with Paul Grice’s Conversational Maximes shall provide the theoretical frame for analysing the chosen directive texts. The corpus is based on four advertising texts written in German: a car advertisement, a cosmetic product advertisement, a job advertisement and a political party advertising leaflet. The goal of the analysis is to show how advertisements manipulate the reader’s mind, values and interests, provoke a certain reaction and perform their persuading function all by means of a carefully worked out language strategy. The analysis will include the language indicators, especially their semantic characteristics, which directly and/or indirectly express the communication purpose. The analysis and mutual comparison of the examples taken from all four texts will bring to a conclusion about pragmatic peculiarities of advertising texts.
Keywords
advertising text; communication purpose; language strategy; speech acts; conversational maximes
Hrčak ID:
230916
URI
Publication date:
23.12.2019.
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