Scholarly record

LANGUAGE IN THE SERVICE OF ADVERTISING IMAGES: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

M. Loncar, Z.S. Vucica, M. Nigoevic

Abstract

In terms of linguistic exploration, the language of advertising has been thoroughly studied. Advertising as a form of communication in contemporary societies is discussed in its social and cultural context which is inseparable from the language itself. Although the visual in advertising has gained the supremacy nowadays, the language still has the important part as far as the impact of the advertisement’s message on the consumers is concerned. Regarding that, the research objective in this textual analysis is to outline the most commonly used linguistic features in text messages and to analyse the effectiveness of those linguistic features used in advertisements. The specific interest is put on the language creativity and alteration of the conventional language use. Our research sample includes advertisements published in lifestyle magazines in Croatia – Playboy, Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan – covering both female and male audience. All advertisements contain text messages, images of product/service/object as well as male/female body images that are the most present visual characteristic of the contemporary advertising. The object of research interest – text messages are defined as those accompanying the product/service/object and relating to it. The purpose of the analysis is to identify the role of language in advertising regarding relationship between the product/service/object and text messages as an integral component of the advertised items taken in consideration. In selected advertisements, we focused on the lexical and semantic features of the text messages as well as on the use of figurative language. The analysis of the most prominent linguistic features in text messages and their interactions with the advertising products could contribute to understanding the main issues related to the creation process of the advertising text message.

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