Филологические науки/7. Язык, речь, речевая коммуникация

Balanbayeva Dana Serikovna

student of KazGUU University

Linguistic peculiarities of English and Russian advertising texts

Abstract

The current paper presents the analysis of linguistic characteristics of English and Russian advertisements. The study will be conducted through the use of the theoretical analysis with examples. Its goal is to increase the amount of knowledge regarding linguistic peculiarities of English and Russian advertizing texts in order to achieve a proper translation. The study is well structured. It consists of an introduction, main body, conclusion and bibliography.

Key words: advertisement, linguistic features

Definition of advertisement and background

The importance of advertisements is needless to mention, as it is an indispensable component of modern society. Advertising provides a valuable service to society and its members, because it defines for consumers the meaning and the role of products, services, and institutions. Naturally, language of advertising has a powerful influence on people and their behavior. This paper assignment is devoted to investigation of linguistic peculiarities of English and Russian advertising texts. Actuality of this subject is determined by the fact that the lack of knowledge in advertisement translation leads to incorrect translation, for this reason translator should be aware of the main lexical, stylistic and syntactic characteristics of advertising texts to avoid mistakes during translation. G. Cook defines an advertisement “as a piece of information in a newspaper, on television, on a poster that tries to persuade people to buy something or apply for a job”.[1] P. Skorupa and T. Dubovičienė in the article “The Analysis of Some Stylistic Features of English Advertising Slogans” describe advertising as a means of communication that informs the prospective customer about products or services in a visually or verbally attractive way and helps them to make the informed decision.[2] Advertising uses persuasive techniques to explain potential customers what is the best for them.

The Importance of the linguistic features of English and Russian advertising

Zhu Linghong in his article “The linguistic features of English advertising” maintains the fact that advertisers try to make their advertisements as effective as possible in order to attach reader’s attention and to compete with many other similar advertisements. They use various linguistic devices to secure number of readers, arouse desire, induce action, and contribute towards satisfaction.[3] Today, linguistic features of advertisements are actively studied in the linguistic, linguopragmatic and psychological aspects (V. V. Vinogradov, G. G. Pocheptsov, O. A. Lapteva, J. Catford, G.Cook N. Ryabkova). Linguistic features can be considered as lexical, syntactic and stylistic.[4] In order to better understand how those linguistic features are used by advertisers to affect a consumer's response to an ad, it is important to understand exactly what each feature entails.

Lexical features

An important role in advertizing texts is played by morphological aspect. Such parts of speech as nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns due to the stylistic functions are an invaluable source of expressiveness. A noun occupies one of the major places as a part of morphological resources of advertisements language. The informative role of nouns is that in this part of speech the main contents of the text are usually focused. For example: «Ипотека. Первоначальный взнос 15%. Без подтверждения доходов», “NIVEA body. Enticing beauty of your skin”, in two examples there is no verb which would call the consumer for action; almost all words in examples – nouns due to which the advertiser conveys all necessary information to the consumer. The adjective as the most emotional and expressional part of speech is in the second place in system of morphological resources of language of advertizing texts. For example: “dynamic design” (Toyota), «белоснежная улыбка». R. Kannan and S. Tyagi in the article “Use of Language in Advertisements” claim that the mass media have to consider the emotive power of the words they use. First, they make a decision about what to communicate and what to withhold. One way in which advertisers adapt language to their own use is to take compound words and use them as adjectives. These compounds often later become widely used in normal situations. The authors give the examples of these compounds which have become part of the English language. For example: top-quality, economy-size, chocolate flavoured, feather-light and longer-lasting.[5] Such parts of speech as an adverb, a verb, a numeral in language of advertizing are used seldom in English and Russian advertizing texts though can be a bright source of expressiveness.

Syntactic features

English advertisements should be dynamic, call for action as well as Russian. For this reason one of the main characteristics of advertisements language is the lack of difficult syntactic structures. Zhu Linghong supports this idea. Advertising texts should be simple in structure. Moreover, the author considers the different kinds of sentences, including declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory sentences. He claims that English advertising uses short sentences with simple structure to be easily comprehensible.[6] For example: «Мой мир; мой стиль; мой ECCO», “Our mission – Zero emission. Toyota Prius”. N. Ryabkova in her article “Language features of the modern Russian advertisement” supports the same idea for Russian advertisement. For example: “Your fragrance – your rules”, «Твой аромат – твои правила».[7] Kannan and Tyagi argue that as the advertising message is usually limited by space and time, it is very important to advertisers to use effective language to attract their target audiences and make them react to the advertisement in a positive way, as “language has a powerful influence over people and their behaviour”.[8]

Stylistic features

The next point of analysis is stylistic aspect of advertisements. P. Skorupa and T. Dubovičienė describe the usage of stylistic figures in English and Russian advertisements. They report that the aim of stylistic features is to highlight the basic purport, advertising motive, image or object. The most widespread figures of speech in both languages are metaphor, anaphora, antithesis, gradation, inversion, parallelism, rhetorical question, ellipse, epiphor. Metaphor is another feature that falls under the semantic category. In linguistics metaphor is considered the application of a word, phrase or concept to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance. For example: “The health care system is a beast. We can help doctors tame it”; “faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase”.[9] The use of metaphors in Russian advertisements: “Чтобы сокрушить боль, нанесите ответный удар! «Солпадеин» - мощное оружие, бьющее точно в цель!”. Another semantic feature is simile. Simile is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared using the words "like" or "as". This can be seen in the Turbo Tax advertisement “Turbo Tax guides you like a GPS to your maximum refund.” Another example of simile is found in the Starbucks Coffee ad: “May your day be as smooth as your coffee.” Bushra Ni'ma Rashid and Huda Abed Ali Hattab in the article “Linguistic and Stylistic Features of the Advertisements Language and their Effects on Customers” claims that simile and metaphor are techniques used to attract and encourage the customers to buy the products either with the use of “effective” expressions or with the use of figures and images. An antithesis is a turn of speech in which for strengthening expressiveness, concepts, images are distinctly opposed, and that allows to underline advantages of an advertised subject and to distinguish its merits. For example: “Where land ends, life deigns”, «Где кончается земля, начинается жизнь», “We create. You cook”, «Мы придумываем. Вы готовите», «Tiguan подарит безграничную свободу как в каменных джунглях, так и на бездорожье».

A parallelism is identical syntactic construction of the adjacent sentences or speech segments. In a following example parallelism is constructed on lexical opposition: “One small cup for man. One giant leap for mankind”, «Одна небольшая чашка для человека. Одно огромное изобретение для всего человечества» (Nescafe company). An anaphor and epiphor is a repetition of an initial or final word or a word combination in each parallel element of speech. “Your own car. Your own phone. Your own place. Your dad’s insurance”.[10] The stylistic figure that frequently used in the English and Russian advertizing texts is hyperbole. Hyperbole is a figure of speech which contains an exaggeration for emphasis. In the following examples hyperbole is used to emphasize the best features of the advertised objects and dramatize the selling point: “Fight wrinkles! Renew collagen in just 48 hours” (Lancôme), “Takes You Miles Away in Seconds” (Lexus), «Бар в бутылке» (Bacardi Superior).[11] The vivid example of alliteration that was incorporated into the brand name itself is Coca-Cola. Instances of the advertising slogan with alliteration can be found in Jaguar slogans “Grace, Space, Pace” or “Don’t dream it. Drive it!” and in Toyota slogan “Today, Tomorrow, Toyota”. The repetition of the first consonant sounds of the words makes the information conveyed attractive to receiver. To sum up, often use a variety of figures of speech in the advertising texts draws the audience’s attention to the advertisement and makes it stand out from other forms of writing.

Conclusion

To conclude, the linguistic analysis of advertisements demonstrates that figurative means as metaphors, hyperboles, simile, alliteration; short and simple sentences; the frequent use in advertising texts of such parts of speech as nouns and adjectives make advertising messages memorable and emotionally coloured. Always it is necessary to remember a main purpose of the advertising text – to draw attention and to raise interest. For this reason the English and Russian advertising texts includes variety of linguistic peculiarities, neglecting of which will not be possible to translate the advertising text with the great efficiency. A distinctive sign of successful advertisement is harmonious unification of the basic advertising idea with those means of expressiveness which most correspond to the given idea. The object of the translator is to use all knowledge of theoretical bases of translation for transfer of communicative function of the original and to observe such criteria of the advertising text as compactness, laconicism, brevity, accuracy, concreteness.

Bibliography

1. Catford, John. A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.

2. Cook, Guy. The Discourse of Advertising. London & New York: Routledge, 1992.

3. Halliday, Mak. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold, 1985.

4. Kaynak, Erdener. The Management of International Advertising: A Handbook and Guide for Professionals. New York: Quorum Books, 1989.

5. Kannan, Ramaswamy and Tyagi, Sarika. “Use of Language in Advertisements.” English for Specific Purposes World, Vol.13, No.37 (2013): 1-10.

6. Kulikova, Yelena. “Advertisements: stylistic features of expressiveness.” Linguistics, Vol.6, No.2 (2009): 276-282.

7. Latishev, Leo and Semenov, Arkadiy. The Translation: Theory, Practice and Methods of Teaching. М.: Academia, 2005.

8. Linghong, Zhu. “The Linguistic Features of English Advertising.” Celea Journal, Vol.29, No.11997 (2006): 71-78.

9. Nazajkin, Alexandr. The Practice of Advertisement Text. Мoscow: Berator-Press, 2003.

10. Ni'ma Rashid, Bushra and Ali Hattab, Huda Abed. “Linguistic and Stylistic Features of the Advertisements Language and their Effects on Customers.” Special Issue Third Scientific Conference for the year, Vol.14 (2015): 13-30.

11. Ryabkova,Natalia. “Language Features of the Modern Russian Advertisement.” Communicative strategies of XXI, Vol.2 (2009): 73-81.

12. Skorupa, Pavel and Dubovičienė, Tatjana. “The Analysis of Some Stylistic Features of English Advertising Slogans.” Man and the Word, Vol.16, No.3 (2014): 61–75. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/zz.2014.013

13. Skorupa, Pavel and Dubovičienė, Tatjana. “Linguistic Characteristics of Commercial and Social Advertising Slogans.” Coactivity: Philology, Educology, Vol.23, No.2 (2015): 108-118. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3846/cpe.2015.275

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[1] Guy Cook, The Discourse of Advertising (London & New York: Routledge, 1992), 25.

[2] Pavel Skorupa and Tatjana Dubovičienė, “The Analysis of Some Stylistic Features of English Advertising Slogans,” Man and the Word, Vol.16, No.3 (2014): 66.

[3] Zhu Linghong, “The Linguistic Features of English Advertising,” Celea Journal, Vol.29, No.11997 (2006): 72.

[4]Natalia Ryabkova, “Language Features of the Modern Russian Advertisement,” Communicative strategies of XXI, Vol.2 (2009): 76.

[5] Ramaswamy Kannan and Sarika Tyagi, “Use of Language in Advertisements,” English for Specific Purposes World, Vol.13, No.37 (2013): 7.

[6] Zhu Linghong, “The Linguistic Features of English Advertising,” Celea Journal, Vol.29, No.11997 (2006): 76.

[7] Natalia Ryabkova, “Language Features of the Modern Russian Advertisement,” Communicative strategies of XXI Vol.2 (2009): 80.

[8] Ramaswamy Kannan and Sarika Tyagi, “Use of Language in Advertisements,” English for Specific Purposes World, Vol.13, No.37 (2013): 3.

[9] Bushra Ni'ma Rashid and Huda Abed Ali Hattab, “Linguistic and Stylistic Features of the Advertisements Language and their Effects on Customers,” Special Issue Third Scientific Conference for the year, Vol.14 (2015): 23.

[10] Pavel Skorupa and Tatjana Dubovičienė, “Linguistic Characteristics of Commercial and Social Advertising Slogans,” Coactivity: Philology, Educology, Vol.23, No.2 (2015): 112.

[11] Pavel Skorupa and Tatjana Dubovičienė, “Linguistic Characteristics of Commercial and Social Advertising Slogans,” Coactivity: Philology, Educology, Vol.23, No.2 (2015): 115.