Has the Syntax of Advertising changed? A Syntactic Analysis of Slogans on the basis of Leech's Concept of Standard Advertising Language

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics grade: 13 University of Mannheim (Anglistische Linguistik (A1)) language: English abstract: This paper investigates whether the syntactic features of current advertising slogans are still congruent with Leech's concept of Standard Advertising Language (established in 1966) since it is a linguistic framework still widely accepted among scholars. But more importantly because it can provide an answer to a more far-reaching question lying behind the issue of the applicability of Leech's claims to advertising slogans today: in the course of almost half a century has advertising language changed and does a new syntactic framework need to be established? The syntactic analysis is based on syntactic features such as sentence force number of adjuncts finiteness of verbs tense and aspect voice type of co-ordination and number of adjectives. The findings suggest that the majority of the syntactic features of current advertising slogans are still congruent with Leech's findings. As a result the applicability of Standard Advertising English can be extended to current advertising slogans. However certain deviations from Leech's concept have been detected in the sample and they suggest a significant development: advertising slogans have changed in certain respects since the 1960s. In Linguistics four different types of sentence force can be distinguished denoted as mood by Leech: declarative imperative interrogative and exclamative. The one occurring most frequently in Leech's sample is the imperative force: in his sample ...over one in four major independent clauses were imperative. However only very few imperative clauses are accompanied by a negative form since advertising aims at inciting actions instead of prohibiting them. The infrequency of negative forms thus represents a general principle of advertising language. Likewise interrogative clauses a