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A Survey Of The Language Of Newspaper Advertisement
[A CASE STUDY OF THE VANGUARD NEWSPAPER]
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CHAPTER ONE
Background to the Study
Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade on audience (viewer, reader or listeners) to continue to take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to influence consumers’ behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although, political and ideological advertising is also common. The purpose of advertising may also be to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful. Advertising messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various traditional media: including mass media such as: newspaper, magazines, television commercials, radio advertisement, outdoor advertising or direct mail, or new media such as websites and text-messages.
Advertising has been defined as “a powerful communication force and a vital marketing tool helping to sell goods and services, images and ideasâ€â€¦. (Wright, 2003:8). Similarly, Roderick (1980:4) defines advertising as “a message specified by its originator, carried by a communication system and intended to influence and/or inform an unknown audience.†Advertising may also be seen as “a group of activities aiming at and including dissemination of information in any paid product or service to compel actions in accordance with the intent of an identifiable sponsor†(Doughuge, 1985:8).
Advertising has a long history, with some options tracing its origin to the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent in the Bible (Okigbo, 1985:10 and Weffer, 1985:6). Wright (2000:4) however, opines that advertising started in ancient Babylon at about 3000BC when inscription for an ointment dealer, a scribe and a shoe maker were made on clay tablets. Sandage and Fryburger (1963) argue that Egyptians first wrote runaway-slave announcements on papyrus at about 3200BC. In Africa, town crying and hawking were the earliest forms of advertising. These have survived in many Nigerian villages till date. With respect to media advertising, which is the focus of this paper Sandage and Fryburger (cited in Okeke, 2006:24) suggest that the first media advertising was done in London in 1477 when a prayer book was announced for sale, while the first newspaper advertising appeared in the Boston Newsletter in 1704
The print media came into Nigeria in 1859 with the appearance of a Yoruba language newspaper “Iwe Iroyin†published by Reverend Henry Townsend at Abeokuta. The publication carried an advert in form of an announcement for the Anglican Church.
It is noteworthy that the earliest forms of newspaper advertising were crude and unsophisticated. But they not only help the local merchants to sell of his goods, or services, but also set a pace for the modern methods of advertising, which have over a long period of time undergone tremendous changes such that today, a lot can be written on the language of advertising in Nigeria. This is possible because advertising has become more professional, involving copywriters who exploit all the available linguistic devices to make their adverts not only persuasive, but also aesthetically appealing. This paper therefore, attempts a linguistic analysis of the language of newspaper advertising in Nigeria, highlighting the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic features that make them attractive and persuasive.
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