AN INVESTIGATION OF THE USAGE OF PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE IN THE ADVERTISEMENT GENRE

Abstract

Advertisements discourse is a kind of persuasive way of conveying the message. Persuasive language deals with persuasion of any type of individual. The persuasive mode of communication is so effective that it attracts large form of peoples to use any given service. The aim of study is to investigate the persuasive language in various magazines advertisements of Pakistan. The present study deals with the corpus method. The researcher has collected corpora from two editions of Aurora Magazine. The total corpus of the study is 29 advertisements. The Bhatia’s model of genre analysis was used in this study. The researcher manually analyzes the corpus. The finding shows that in advertisements; present tense, declarative and imperatives sentences, adjectives with intensifiers, imperatives, and numbers and digits are used to persuade the consumers. These features help to change the person's decision-making behavior. These features can play an important role in manipulating the buyers. The use of present tense in advertisements helps to show the importance of product in present or in the real life. The use of declarative sentence shows the facts and figures of product in advertisement. While imperatives are used to do direct commands to the consumer. The use of imperatives in advertisements gives less time to buyer to think about the pros and cons of the product. Adjectives are the heart of the advertisements because they are used to explain the properties of the products but when adjectives are used with intensifiers, it become more powerful and more persuasive. Similarly, numbers and digits are used to provide more information regarding the ads. It can provide contact numbers, address, and much more information.