The Language of Press Advertising in the UK

Abstract

This exploratory study provides the first multi-dimensional (MD) analysis of textual variation in modern British press advertising, using Biber’s (1988) methodology. The 364 texts used in the study are systematically sampled to include both commercial advertisements sub-categorized by various types of goods and services, and non-commercial advertisements sponsored by charities and the government. Six dimensions of variation in advertising discourse are identified through a factor analysis, on the basis of linguistic co-occurrence patterns. In particular, several different mechanisms of persuasion are identified and compared. The proposed MD model is then applied to analyze gender-specific advertising strategies. Focusing on one product type, I show that advertisements targeting females tend to use elaborate product descriptions with a semi-scientific focus, while adverts aimed at males are characterized by a terse description dominated by disjunctive grammatical structure. Possible causes of the observed variation are critically discussed, and further research issues amenable to the proposed model are briefly outlined.