Ambiguity in Written Advertising Language

Abstract

Advertising, as an important social phenomenon in the global-economic time and information age, plays a significant role in people's daily life. People in today's world are living in the sea of advertisements. No one would deny the fact that the advertisements provide us with information about the fast – changing world as much as we need. As more and more people realize the importance and necessity of advertisement. Economists, artist and psychologist all pay much attention to the study of advertisement. Linguists, too, attach great importance to the language of advertisement. 

Advertising language is a kind of persuasive language. Its final goal is to transmit the information of products and services to consumers, and persuade them to take purchase action. In order to sever this purpose, pragmatics is often used as a linguistic tool to enhance the persuasive effect of advertising language.

In advertising communication, the advertiser deliberately exploits ambiguity to provide the audience with two or more layers of meanings, whereas the audience will figure out the implied meaning intended by the advertiser which will ultimately lead to successful communication.

This study put the focuses on the advertising language, it consists of four sections, section one includes short introduction about the study, and the problem, hypothesis, aims and value of the study. Section two deals with the importance of language, text and context and the functions of language. It deals also with advertising, its roles, functions, and elements of advertisement. Section three concerns about advertising features which includes lexical, syntactical, and rhetorical features. Section four is devoted to the conclusion of the study.