Language and advertising

Advertising is omnipresent in our everyday life. Such is its power that a great many
studies have tried to unveil the mechanisms of advertising: the linguistic dimension
of the message, the use of image and sound, the processes of coding and decoding,
the interaction between message and audience, etc
I would like to start this essay giving a definition of what advertising is according tobusiness dictionary: it is a communication that is paid for by an identified sponsor with the object of promoting ideas, goods, or services. It is intended to persuade and sometimes to inform. The two basic aspects of advertising are the message and the medium. The media that carry advertising range from the press, television, cinema, radio, and posters to company logos on apparel. Advertising createsawareness of a product, extensive advertising creates confidence in the product, and good advertising creates a desire to buy the product. Advertising is a part of an organization's total marketing communications programme (i.e. its promotion mix.)
As Fairclough defines the discourse of advertising is basically strategic because it is oriented to instrumental goals, to getting the results.Goddard introduces a very interesting element which she considers central to advertising discourse: the factor of conscious intention behind the text. It can be stated then that discourse of advertising is characterised by two main communicative elements: information and persuasion.
This essay will be focused on printed advertisement, hence they are images able to transmit a complete meaning,sensations and, what is more important, persuade people, sometimes without using even a word. In this way, nowadays the combination of verbal and visual elements to constitute texts is getting more and more important, and advertising is at the forefront of it.
Nowadays one of the most developed things has been mobile phones, which included a really wide range of variety. This essay will focused on theSwedish brand called Ericsson, which has had a great development in the entire world.

AD1
In this advertisement the mobile phone Sony Ericsson is being promoted by means of nightlife, intending to emphasize the light effects of the New Sony Ericsson. This means that the main advertisement’s aim is to make us perceive the difference of lighting of this mobile phone in relation to all the rest.As it has been studied in this module the structure of the printed advertisement is headline (which must catch viewers’ attention), body copy (whose main aim is persuade about buying the product), signature (that is often a graphic with the trade name) and a slogan (which accompanies signature).

In this case the headline would be “I the light of my life”, the body copy “never miss a callwith the eye-catching light effects on the new Sony Ericsson T707. Give your closest contacts their own pulsation setting – so whether it’s the latest goss, fashion or party, you’re never left in the dark” and the signature “Sony Ericsson”.
Otherwise if we analyse the advertisement according to the principles of the rethoric, it would be divided in two parts (because there is no slogan): argument(all the main body) and a summary of the main idea of the advertisement (the headline).

In this advertisement, the headline, which is supposed to be the first copy the potential customer reads, hides an implicature, as since the symbol used for Sony Ericsson brand is used as a heart symbol (♥), meaning “love”. It is used in his way in English as well as in French. We can perceive that inadvertisement number 3, which is in French and even apostrophizing the subject “J’” as meaning the next word will be a word starting by vowel. In this case we can clearly perceive that the next thing is not a word but a symbol being the equivalent to the verb “aimer” (love). So there is an intertextual relation between the image and what actually means. This image is called “logo” since as represent...