Language in Advertising

The wide use of advertising has created a special style of English--advertising English. Its unique features, simple language and immense attraction separate it from other kind of language. In the development of advertising English, this kind of language has formed its own features in several aspects.

As a means to disseminate information, advertising English must be compact, vivid, visual, emotional and attractive. Therefore, morphology in advertising is quite different from common English.

The function of advertising is to provide information, attract consumer, exploit market, and promise the quality. Therefore, advertisement must pay attention to its impelling language, and the first step is to use popular and oral language to make it easy to understand and memorize.

In some advertisements, the advertising copywriter misspells some words on purpose, or adds some suffix or prefix to the common words. Although the new words still keep the original meanings, they are quite different from the original words in spelling, which will make the advertisement more vivid, interesting and attractive.

The meaning of "je ne sais quoi" is "I don't know what". The purpose to use this simple French is to show the French flavor of this drink. The loanwords in some advertisement are good methods to express the exoticism of the products.

Because the advertisement fees are so high that it's essential to use some contraction to cut short the length, and reduce the cost.

Although the ultimate purpose of advertising is to persuade consumers to buy its products, advertisements seldom use the word "buy" in it. Statistics show only two out of ten advertisements use the verb "buy" directly. On one hand, the advertisers try their best to promote their product; on the other hand, they don't want to give the consumers a feeling of spending their money. Therefore, the choice of...