A Stylistic Analysis Of Language Use In Advertising: A Study Of Advertisements Of Selected Small To Medium Entrepreneurs In The Oshana Region

ABSTRACT

This thesis was a stylistic analysis of language use in advertising, a study of advertisements of selected Small to Medium Entrepreneurs in the Oshana region. The main purpose of the study was to explore and discuss the most common stylistic devices used in advertisements by SMEs in the Oshana region and to analyse the stylistic features used in advertisements by SMEs. The study examined how the English language used in selected advertisements reflects the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Attention) principle of advertising, and it also proposed suitable linguistic styles that can be used by SMEs in advertising. A qualitative research design and an explorative research design were chosen because of the nature of the study. The researcher used a content analysis to analyse the language used in the selected advertising texts. Judgemental and convenient sampling techniques were used to select a sample of 20 SMEs’ advertisements in Oshana region. The study was informed by the Textual Conceptual Functions (TCFs), it was also informed by the linguistic- stylistics theory, the critical discourse analysis theory, and the use of AIDA principles in advertising, that focused on exploring and analysing stylistic and linguistic devices that were employed in the advertisements. The study revealed that advertisers of the selected advertisements used linguistic devices like adjectives, adverbs, nouns, pronouns and verbs, and they also used different designs, colours, slogans, font sizes, font faces, images and others. The advertisements employed the use of stylistic levels such as grammatical, phonology, graphology, lexicology and semantics. The study revealed that advertisers attract the attention of potential customers through the incorporation of the AIDA principles to increase sales through the use of allusion, metaphor, graphic onomatopoeia, allusion, assonance, alliteration, imagery, neologism, ii affixation, synecdoche, and others. This study is a great contribution to the field of research in the language used in advertising by SMEs in Oshana region in Namibia.