9 Glamorization
The words employed in advertisements are modified in such a way by combining the words which are uncommonly used in daily speaking is one way to
give glamorization touch in advertisements. Grey 2008 gives an example of glamorization, like old house becomes charming, characterful, olde, worlde or
unique house. The use of those words will make the house become more interesting. It will be interesting to say charming house instead of old house.
10 Potency
Grey 2008 suggests that potential words are those which are able to give new value, novelty or immediacy. Potential words can influence the audience.
Ogilvy as is quoted by Grey 2008 identifies the words free, now, how to, suddenly, announcing, introducing, it’s here, just arrived, important development,
improvement, amazing, sensational, remarkable, revolutionary startling, miracle, magic, and offer as the potential words.
b. Syntactic Features
Syntactic features deal with the categories of words having the same grammatical properties. Grey 2008 classifies syntactic features of advertisement
based on the emergence of similar grammatical structure in the form of phrase. The simplicity of advertising language can be easily seen from the syntactic
features of advertisement.
1 Short Sentence
A short sentence gives a clearness impact for the audience when they hear the utterances in advertisements. The purpose of this is to capture the audience
‟s attention. For example, a tagline of insurance company is Arrange your insurance
with NFU. That tagline uses short sentences but it has clear and complete information as the consumers want to know.
2 Long Noun Phrase
According to Grey 2008, a long noun phrase describes the advertised products in three or more words or two or more independent phrases to impress
the audience. For example, a description of a product says First automatic chronograph with a 72-hour power-reserve and patented compression push-
buttons. From that description, the audience notices the specialty of the automatic chronograph. Long noun phrases can make consumers feel that the advertised
product has many special qualities if it is compared to other similar types of product.
3 Ambiguity
There is a phrase or a sentence which has more than one cognitive meaning. It is called an ambiguous phrase or sentence. Leech 1972 differentiates
between lexical ambiguity, which consists of lexical homonymy and lexical polysemy, and grammatical ambiguity, which consists of grammatical homonymy
and grammatical polysemy. The example of lexical homonymy is the word mole. It has three different meaning. They are a small mammal which is nearly blind,
has dark fur and lives in passages that it digs under the ground, a small dark spot
or lump on a persons skin or a person who works for an organization or government and secretly gives information to its competitors. Besides, the
example of lexical polysemy is in the sentence Gentlemen prefer blondes. Prefer has the meaning of like better or promote. The sentence I like moving gates is the
example of grammatical homonymy because it is ambiguous whether moving gates is gates that move or causing gates to move. Grammatical polysemy appears
in the sentence He eats bread. The use of present tense in that sentence makes people doubtful whether it is happening now or a habitually repeated activity.
4 Use of Imperative
An imperative can be used to make an order. Advertisers use an imperative to make the audience act or do something, including buy or use the
advertised product. For example, the imperative used in a poster of newly launched cassette album, Grab it now. That imperative suggest the audience to
buy the cassette album.
5 Simple and Colloquial Language
This kind of language is only used in informal expressions. Grey 2008 assumes that colloquial expressions do not bear the meaning they normally have.
For example, It ain’t half good. That sentence looks very informal because of the
use of ain’t which can indicate the presence of simple and colloquial language.
6 Present Tense
A present tense gives as if the condition is real whenever the audience sees or hears the advertisements. Grey 2008 says that a present tense implies a
universal timelessness. For example, Time always follows me is the slogan of
Rossini. When the audience sees or hears that sentence, they will feel like in the real time.
7 Syntactic Parallelism
Leech 1972 defines parallelism as a repetition of formal patterns of two or more similar ideas in similar structural forms. For example, stay dry, stay
happy. The word stay is repeated to make the sentence more interesting for the audience because of the similar pattern.
8 Association
Advertisements should associate the positive side of the product to something else. It is sometimes indicated by the words like and as. For example,
fresh as a mountain stream. The freshness is associated with a mountain stream although they are two different things.
9 Ellipsis
Goddard 2002: 123 defines ellipsis as “the omission of part of a
structure. ” Cook 1996 says one of its aims is to create the sense of informality.
For example, the utterance “Nespresso, what else?” when follows the
grammatical rules should be “You’ll take Nespresso. What else would you like to drink?” However, it needs too many words and looks too formal.
10 Incomplete Sentence
The audience rarely pays attention to the sentences of advertisements very carefully. Even in visualized advertisements, the audience will pay attention more
to the visualization of the advertisements. Therefore, Grey 2008 identifies an incomplete sentence as one of the linguistic features of advertisements. Using an
incomplete sentence helps the audience to catch the main point of advertisements. For example, “Revolutionary lift. Revolutionary results. REVITALIFT DOUBLE
LIFTING.” is more interesting in an advertisement instead of “If you want a revolutionary lift of your skin and to see revolutionary results, buy Revitalift
Double Lifting.” The complete version of the utterances
3. Persuasion
