In most cases, it is the visual content and design of an advertisement that makes the initial impact and causes us to take note of it. But in order to get people to identify the product, remember its name (or at least make them feel that it is familiar), and persuade them that it is worth buying, advertisements rely almost totally on the use of language. Both elements, psychological and linguistic, are essential: they combine to produce a single "brand image- of a product. .
It is quite understandable that very thorough and precise work is to be done before an advertisement is presented to the reader. When millions of dollars worth of business depend on the success of a single advertisement, then it is natural that the person making an advertisement should weigh thewords and the ways in which they are arranged in the text just as carefully as any poet does.As Nilsen puts it in the book Language Play. An Introduction to Linguistics "in many ways advertisers are today's pop cultural poets- .
The text of an advertisement should be understandable, memorable and persuasive. For this purpose there is a variety of linguistic means of advertising. According to traditionally distinguished levels of language they can be divided into three groups: phonetic, lexical and syntactic .
Let us have a look at each group in detail.
Phonetic means.
In the texts of advertisements one can often notice exclamatory intonations. We can even say that exclamation is a typical intonation in advertising as it attracts the attention. Exclamatory sentences have a function of signals, of a call for action: Do it!; Buy Brown's Boots Now!.
Apart from that in many texts advertisers use the following phonetic devices:.
o Alliteration - commencing of successive words with the same letter or syllable for effect (The best four by four by far);.
o Assonance - resemblance of sound between two syllables usually dependent on the vowels (Chaste makes waste);.
