Stylistic Analysis of an Advertisement(文体学广告分析)
Stylistic Analysis of an Advertisement
Introduction
Advertising has resorted to all kinds of techniques--audio and visual, sound and light, photographs and drawings, ect. But the most basic is the language. According to the target audience, the functional tenor of advertising language is mainly persuasive or mainly informative. But all advertising language must have its appeal to target audience. The personal tenor is reflected in its characteristic warm, plain speech used in daily life and the various language tricks to impress and move the audience.
The sample ad that I chose to analysis is a magazine ad about CAMEL, a kind of cigarette. The advertiser invites two actors as the spokesman for the product. Since the main channel for information transformation of advertising in magazine is visual, the study is undertaken based on the graphological level, the lexical level, the syntactic level and the semantic level.
I. At the Graphological level
1. Full use of graphological contrasts
Most ads have a well-thought-out manipulation of sharp graphological contrasts to achieve the best possible eye-catching effect. As the sample shows, the ads makes full use of variety of typing forms. When i see this ad, the huge red title catch my eye
immediately. Under it is the sub-title in lager and boldfaced lettering. Also, some places in this ad employed the boldfaced lettering such as...... Besides, italics is also widely used in this ad, such as 第二处还有地四处。. What’s more, some words or pharases in the body parts are capitalized for its function of emphasis, such as 第七和第
八.
2. Prominent use of illustration
Illustration are most attractive. So nowadays the general practice is combining sharp graphological contrasts with a picture of the advertised product, or the potential customer, or the service being offered. A brief look at the sample ad tells us that it makes use of the following three illustrations, which occupies more than half space.
（1）a chart that shows “your energy varies during the day”, from which we know that the energy of a person is changing through a day. The advertiser put the chart here means that when you is in your low energy status, just lighten the Camel and it can restored your energy.
（2）There are two pictures show the same person, different expression. From the first one, we know that the lady is irritable, cross and fussy as she is tired. But in the second picture, the lady is smile with a cigarette. Why? From the words across the two
pictures we know that is because she smoke the Camel cigarette, powerful and thoughtful.
（3）A picture of a box of Camel. It it put here to let the potential customer know what’s the Camel looks like.
3. The variety use of punctuation
Punctuation is very important to show expression and feelings. In this ad, many kinds of punctuation are employed, such as exclamation marks which show feelings of the advertiser. Such as “A FACT!”“the ”Question marks which used to aroused the potential buyer’s curiosity, such as “KNOW THIS FEELINGS?”“......”Another typical feature here is the frequent use of full stop, which aims at achieving emphasis. In this ad, there are total 19 sentences and 13 of which is ended with full stop.
II. At the Lexical Level
1. Wide use of affirmative and commendatory words and expression
The purpose of advertising is to impress the potential buyers with the quality of product or service, so it often uses affirmative and commendatory words and expression in describe the product. In this ad, we have......
2. Frequent use of active, favorable adjectives.
The most conspicuous lexical feature of advertisement is the
frequent use of active、favorable words can impress the potential buyers with good quality of product. In this ad, you can find the words like delightful, pleasure, cool, rich, flavor......
3. The use of verbs
Compared with adjective, verbs seem few. These few verbs are very short, yet powerful and persuasive. In this ad, the verb like light, get, smoke, do, face, like.
4. Use of personal pronouns
The use of personal is also very common in this advertisement, especially “you”and“your”. This is because the advertiser want to make the language more friendly in tone and more thoughtful for the potential buyers, so as to lure them to buy the products.
5. The use of comparative words
Comparative words are used in this ad to show that the product is better than other of the sam type. Such as, “Camel ......brand”to show the quality of Camel is better than any cigarette.
III. At the Syntactic Level
1. Use of interrogative sentences
The use of questions in advertising discourse is a powerful way to arouse readers’attention, since questions do not usually occur without a potential answer. As is shown in the sample, this sentence “are you irritable......”
Is an interrogative sentence. Following it is an imperative sentence, their collocation can make the potential buyers want to tried the Camel when they are tired next time. Another interrogative sentence is “KNOW THE ......crowd?”this two sentences describe a kind of situation that you will get tired. So the following sentence said “this one of the ......”their collocation can reach the expectation of the advertiser that persuade the people to buy the products.
2. Wide use of imperative sentences
Compare with other types of sentences, direct imperative sentences are persuasive in nature--urging the potential buyers to buy the product. In this ad, the use of imperative is very distinct, such as “then light a Camel”......
3. Use of simple present tense
Advertising mostly uses the present tense to imply a universal timlessness. This is to show the realistic features of the products and to satisfy the readers’ curiosity about the present status quo of the advertised product or service. As is shown in the sample ad, the advertiser use a succession of simple present verbs, such as “as you enjoy its cool”......
4. The use of active voice
Active voice is simpler in the structure tahn the passive voice and it
accords with the purchasing mentality of the consumer. Passive vice often places the consumers in the position of “being forced to buy”while active voice seems to give consumers the “right”to choose. This ad used the active voice all th time, such as ......
5. The use of negation
Negation is rarely used, since no advertiser wants to say NO to his products. But this does not means negation has no place in advertisement. It is usually used to compare with other products, such as ......
6. the variety length of sentences
Long sentence is used for illustrated and the short sentence is used for emphasis. So the mix use of long and short sentence can make advertisement more persuasive. In this ad, there are 19 sentences in body parts, the longest sentence has 25 words, it is “......”，the shortest sentence just has 3 words , it is “......”
IV. At the Semantic Level
Repetition
In this ad, “light a camel”has been mentioned 3 times,it is an imperative sentence and occur in ad very often because the advertiser want people to buy the cigarette and then lighten the camel. “get a lift......”has been mentioned twice, put emphasis on the function that the camel can play after you smoke it.“camel
never......”has been mentioned 3 times, it is says this kind of cigarette won’t do harm to your nerves so the consumers can smoke it as much as they want.“camel’s coetlier......”has been mentioned 3 times, it it repeated because the advertiser want to tell the consumer the quality of this kind of cigarette is the best among the tobacco.
Conclusion
7. From the above analysis, we can see the sample ad possesses many stylistic features of advertising, among which are full use of graphological contrasts, prominent use of illustration, the variety use of punctuation at the level of graphological level; Wide use of affirmative and commendatory words and expression, Frequent use of active, favorable adjectives, The use of verbs, Use of personal pronouns, The use of comparative words at the lexical level; Use of interrogative sentences, Wide use of imperative sentences, Use of simple present tense, The use of active voice, The use of negation, the variety length of sentences At the Syntactic Level; and repetition at the semantical level.