Language Style in Advertising: A Study of the Print Media

Abstract

This study investigates the language style of English commercial advertisements in the print media. The study seeks to find out the kinds of language and style mostly used in English advertisement; this is because previous studies in stylistics have concentrated on the literary approach to stylistics. This study finds this technique very one-sided and subsequently proposes a dual approach to the analysis of the language style of advertisement. The research employs William Well’s stylistic theory as a theoretical construct. The analyses used the descriptive approach. The research used note taking as the instrument to elicit data. We found out that the personification style is mostly used and the occurrence in our corpus is about four times; it is followed by alliteration style which occurs in three advertisements and assonance style which occurs twice in our corpora. The next is the use of simile, anastrophe, apostrophes, asyndeton, poly-asyndeton, and chiasmus styles which appeared once in the advertisements. The advertisements also used narrative style, dramatic style, newsy style, dialogue style, and humorous style. The study concludes that in the use of personification and alliteration styles, the creators of the advertisements mostly seek to use simple and interesting style to create pleasant, mellifluous, captivating sentences, which will persuade, influence, and capture the readers’ attention to patronize their products.