The Language of Advertising

Whenever we pick up a newspaper or magazine, turn on the television or look at the heardings on roadsides, we are confronted with advertisements. These do more than simply sell a product – they work in subtle ways to persuade us to accept the way of life and pattern of our needs that they depict. This book is a revealing study of the strategies of persuasion advertisers use and of the crucial underlying assupmtions advertising makes. Focusing on magazien and newspaper advertising, the authors illustrate the reange of linguistic and visual techniques advertisers use to achieve emphasis and special effects. They consider how advertisements single out specific audiences for their address, and reveal the ways in which the advertiser preys on beliefs about sex roles and prejudices about social groups. The Language of Advertising is not a book which simply presents the results of an analysis of modern advertising. It seeks throughout to equip the reader with the techniques for his or her own examination of advertising ideology and of the social functions of advertising today.

Torben Vestergaard is Professor of English at the University of Aalborg, Denmark Kim Schrode is Research Associate in English at the University of Aarhuss, Denmark, and (1984–5) Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California.