Stylistic Analysis in Advertising Discourse:

How Old Spice Never Gets Old

Janwillen Sarbida Gamus

Master of Arts in Education major in English Language Teaching
Introduction
There are a lot of purposes for language usage which determine how a writer or a speaker

picks and arranges his or her words, figurative language and syntactic expressions to convey

their message to their reader. This is profoundly because of the fact that language has a very

powerful effect to people which consequently influences their actions, thoughts and even

individual perception on life. This very powerful effect is seen in different discourse type such as

advertisements, lectures, campaign speeches and the list goes on. These discourse types are of

different purposes and situations. Advertisements, for instance, has a primary goal on persuading

its target customers to patronize a product. Therefore, one of the purposes of language is to

persuade.

According to Fomukong (2016), in using the persuasive language, the speaker or writer

convinces the listener or reader to carry out an action or buy an idea. Consequently, this is true in

the language of advertisement “where the encoder of the advertisement makes choices of

language that will manipulate the minds of the readers or consumers, urging them to buy the

product.” She added that to achieve this effect, advertisers take into consideration the

connotative and emotive power of the lexical and syntactic structures they use. Since language

has a powerful influence on people, advertisers are naturally picky and they make the language

of advertisements “positive and emphasize on the superiority of their products; they use

techniques that are deviant and catchy.”

Crystal (2003) in Fomukong (2016), argues that these advertisements stand out

stylistically on several on several counts. He explains that the language in advertisement are

lexically vivid, concrete, positive and unreserved. He even emphasized that the choice of words

and its arrangements are “grammatically and typically conversational and elliptical, and they also
have highly figurative expressions, deviant graphology and strong effects” which may retain and

absorb in the minds of its audiences, making the product effective in every way possible. This is

supported by what Linghong (2006) stated that advertisers use various linguistic devices to catch

attention, arouse desire, induce action and even contribute towards satisfaction. Hence, it can be

drawn that advertising texts are “distinctive, with an unusual and indirect language.”