CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
Nowadays, in a developed world, thousands of new products and services are introduced
each day, which makes advertising become a real art - the art of informing and persuading
customers. Slogans can be considered the heart of advertisements wherever they appear.
Slogans are the most important and condensed messages advertisers would like to send to
their customers. Sharp and intelligent slogans can help advertisers leave unforgettable
impressions on their potential customers’ minds. However, creating a successful slogan is
never an easy task. The use of just a few words in a slogan proves to be harder than it
appears. It requires a sophisticated linguistic insight of phonology, lexicology, syntax as
well as semantics and pragmatics. Hence, the study on some successful slogans promises a
lot of interesting facts in the art of using language among advertisers.
On the other hand, what can be called a successful slogan is still a question. The answer
depends on the area of products and services the slogan is used for, the country or
geographical regions it is used in and maybe the population of its target customers.
Therefore, choosing one kind of products or services to study the slogans used in it should
bring more thorough and detailed results of aspects of language exploited.
The advertising slogans of some world-famous airlines are chosen to investigate in this
study for two main reasons. First of all, when the airlines can be called famous, they must
be successful in many aspects. They may provide services of elegant quality. Or they may
have a long history of building their own prestige and class. But one thing that can be
ensured is their successful advertising campaigns in which slogans play a vital part. The
investigation into those slogans will hopefully reveal interesting features in language used
in slogans in general and airline slogans in particular. Second, world-famous airlines have
a wide scope of activities with customers coming from all over the world and. Thus, the
language they use must be of common values and highly appreciated by many customers.
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There is no case of “accident slogans” which cause failure in advertising campaigns due to
differences in cultural values and perceptions.
1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

Chapter 4 is called MAIN FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS, in which the author
summarizes her findings in the characteristics of the English language used in airlines’
advertising slogans and also her conclusions on the percentage of slogans employing those
characteristics.
The last chapter is Chapter 5 – CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS, which provides the
recapitulations, implications of the study to the creating process of advertising slogans in
general and airlines’ slogans in particular, and suggestions for further studies.
The study ends with the “BIBLIOGRAPHY”.
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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Review of Previous Researches
Advertising activities in Vietnam can be considered young and inexperienced compared to
the long-built industry of advertising in the USA and European countries. This economic
and social fact has led to the difference in the quantity of researches on this field in
Vietnam and other countries.
As a result, there are quite a few researches which have been carried out in every aspect of
the same matter in English, many of which cover the features of advertising language.
Some famous titles that can be mentioned here are “English in advertising: A linguistic
study of advertising in Great Britain” by Geoffrey N.Leech (1996), “Advertising as
communication” by Gillian Dyer (1982), “English for sale: A study of the language of
advertising” by Lars Hermeren (1999), or “The discourse of advertising” by Guy Cook
(2001). There are also some researches which only focus on some certain features in
advertising language. Typical examples are “Selling America: Puns, language and
adverting” by Michel Monnot (1982), “Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising” by Char
Forceville (1998). There are also some contrastive studies which compare the advertising
language in English and that in other languages, e.g. “Advertising language: A pragmatic
approach to advertisements in Britain and Japan” by Keiko Tanaka (1994).
In Vietnam, some notable researches on the language of advertising include two PhD
theses done by Mai Xuan Huy (2001) on “Các đặc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới

Basing on this definition, advertisements and advertising slogans are undeniably discourses
because they do communicate and they are recognized by their potential customers to be
coherent. This is because advertisements themselves are messages from manufacturers or
service providers to their customers and slogans are those messages in the most concise
ways.
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2.2.2 Discourse Analysis
2.2.2.1 Context
Guy Cook (1989:39) considered context as “knowledge of the world outside language”
which helps us to understand and use it to interpret the messages both in spoken and
written form. According to Nunan (1993: 10), “context refers to the situation giving rise to
the discourse and within which discourse is embedded”. From the two ways of defining
context, it can be concluded that context is something that we need to understand the
discourse and there is no discourse without context.
2.2.2.2 Role of context in discourse analysis
Discourse analysis studies language in use: both written texts of all kinds and spoken data
from informal to formal speech and it also studies the language phenomena above the
sentence level that are influenced by contexts, social phenomena, social relationships as
well as cultural factors.
Hymes (1962) sees contexts as a limit of the range of possible interpretations, and on the
other hand, a supporter of the intended interpretation. He states as follows:
“The use of linguistic form identifies a range of meanings. A context can support a range
of meanings. When a form is used in a context, it eliminates the meanings possible to that
context other than those the form can signal; the context eliminates from consideration the
meanings possible in the form other than those the context can support. ”
(Hymes, 1962 quoted in Brown and Yules, 1983:38)
Hymes (1962) focuses on the features of context in which it is thought to be relevant to the
reading and interpretation of discourse. These features are mentioned by him:
1. Addresser and addressee
2. Audience

In the realm of language, linguists have put forward quite a few concepts of genre. Among
them, the following ones seem the most detailed and convincing.
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“A genre is a socially sanctioned type of communicative event, either spoken-like a
sermon, a joke, a lecture – or printed, like a press report, a novel, or a political
manifesto” (Kramsch, 1998:62)
and
“Genres are how things get done, when language is used to accomplish them. They range
them from literary to far from literary forms: poems, narratives, expositions, lectures,
seminars, recipes, manuals, appointment making, service encounters, news broadcast and
so on. The term “genre” is used here to embrace each of the linguistically realized activity
types which comprise so much of our culture”. (Martin, 1985:250)
It can be easily seen that linguists, though contradicting in their concepts of others, seem to
reach a relative agreement here as it can be concluded by Bhatia (1993 as cited in Holland
and Lewis 2000: 76), “genre is recognizable and mutually understood by the number of
professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs.”
2.2.4 Grice’s maxims
Grice (1975), in his book, makes an attempt to develop the inferential model into an
adequate explanatory account of communication. He suggests that communication is
governed by a cooperative principle and maxims of conversation.
Grice’s fundamental idea is that the communicators are trying to meet certain standards in
their conversation. From knowledge of these standards, observation of the communicator’s
behavior, and the context, it is possible to infer the communicator’s specific intention.
“Our talk exchanges…are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts;
and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of
purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction…at each stage, some possible
conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable.
We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected to
observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage
at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you

written or spoken, verbal or nonverbal, to show a process of sending and receiving
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messages. This concept has much to share with the definition given by Saundra Hybels and
Richard L. Weaver (1992:7) which says “communication is any process in which people
share information, ideas, and feelings. That process involves not only spoken or written
word, but also the body language, personal mannerism and style, the surroundings –
anybody that adds meanings to a message.” As seen from this definition, communication
itself is an on-going process with a lot of factors that help. Basing on particular situations,
communicators will choose to make use of some factors that are most useful and available
in such cases to make their messages understood.
Therefore, it can be concluded that communication process is made up of various elements
in which there are participants, messages, channels, feedback, noise and setting:
• Participants: the sender and receiver of the messages in both interpersonal and non-
interpersonal communication.
• Messages: including meanings, signs, symbols, encoding and decoding and form or
organization.
• Channels: the ways messages are sent.
• Feedback: the response of the receiver to the sender and vice-versa.
• Noise: it is interference that gets in the way of sharing meaning. There are 3 forms of
noise.
 External noises: They are sights, sounds and other stimuli that draw people’s
attention away from intended meaning.
 Internal noises: They are thoughts and feelings that interfere with meaning.
 Semantic noises: They are those that alternate meanings arisen certain symbols that
inhibit meaning. Also, meanings are dependent on your own experience, other
people may sometimes decode a word or phrase differently from the way you
intended.
• Setting: It is the place where the communication occurs. This is an important factor
and has great influences on communication.
2.2.6 Advertising as a form of communication

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(Hoang, T. & Nguyen, V.T. 2000)
It is clearly stated in the model that in advertising, the intended message never comes to
the receiver in a direct way. It is always decoded, which makes the message sound implicit.
There are two reasons for this implicitness of advertising messages. Firstly, as advertisers
have to pay for their advertising information, their messages must be decoded so that they
can convey as much as possible to the customers with the minimum number of words.
Secondly, and more importantly, it is strongly believed by copywriters that human beings
have an inborn ability to infer as it is noted by Geis (1982:46) that “Human beings are
‘inferencing’ creatures, trained to read into what is said as much as is consistent with the
literal meaning of what is said and the context in which it is said. ”
2.2.5.2 Advertising Functions
It has been agreed by many market researchers that an advertisement should have four
functions, which can be generalized by four words: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
(1) Attention - a good advertisement should attract the consumer to direct their attention to
the product of it. To achieve this, advertisers always try to make their advertisements
special in some ways, even stupid and awkward. This is because striking things remain
longer in human minds than normal ones.
(2) Interest - the introduction and publicity of an advertisement should arouse consumers’
great interest. The interest may be caused by an eye-catching image, a pleasant jingle, a
funny advertising plot or a surprising slogan. When they are interested in the product
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Satisfy the
receivers’
needs
Intended
message
Media
Decoded
message

Interest Advertising.
Consumer Advertising
Most television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisements are consumer
advertisements. The consumer advertising includes alcoholic ads, cigarette ads, drink ads,
food ads, wear ads, cosmetic ads, automobile ads, home electric appliance ads, and other
products which are used and purchased by ordinary people. To this kind of advertisements,
most people have developed a kind of ambivalent psychology. On one hand, they are bored
with the endless advertisements hiding in the newspapers and magazines, clamoring on the
radio, or dazzling on the TV. On the other hand, they still need the information to guide
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their purchasing. Therefore, to attract the consumers’ attention is the most important task
for an advertising copywriter.
Business Advertising
Business advertising is often said to be invisible, because unless one is actively involved in
some business, he is unlikely to see it. The majority of consumer advertising appears in
mass consumer media. Business advertising, on the other hand, tends to be concentrated in
specialized business publications or a professional journal, in direct-mail pieces mailed to
business establishments, or in trade shows held for specific areas of business. Until
recently, business advertising was rarely seen in the mass media.
Service Advertising
Service advertising is actually part of consumer advertising and business advertising, since
consumer goods and industrial goods both include relevant service. However, due to its
intangible feature, service is advertised in a more imaginable way. Hence wording service
advertising is somewhat different from product advertising. Service advertising appears in
both mass consumer media and specialized business publication according to its different
target audience - consumer or people in business.
Public Interest Advertising
The general objective of public interest advertising is to inform, persuade, or remind
people about the particular idea, cause, or philosophy being advertised. This kind of
advertising is often used by non-business institutions, such as schools, hospitals and

are called the four main media of advertising. Moreover, any kind of objects or tools can
be a medium for the advertisement, such as airplane, train, bus, building, neon light,
movie, package, exhibition, and etc. Different kinds of media have different features,
disseminating area, target audience and speed.
Within the advertisement itself, the components are headline, body copy, slogan,
illustrations and colors, trademark, and brand name. These elements are named as
visual elements. Another kind of elements - audio elements are advertising commentary,
advertising music and advertising sounds. In these elements, headline, body copy and
slogan are the most important elements in an advertisement. In this study, I would like to
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pay more attention to slogans, which carry the features of being explicit, refined and
inflammatory.
2.2.5.5 Features of Advertising Language
The language of advertising has been described as a “functional dialect” (Smith,
1982:190). Holmes (2005:8) explains this term as “the product of a process whereby
language is chosen and used for a particular purpose (hence, ‘functional’, and
consequently becomes a variety (hence, ‘dialect’) of its own because it becomes associated
with this particular function.”
The definition has stated that the language of advertising is somehow different from
normal language. Although advertisers always aim at being as close as possible to their
customers, the most striking difference between the two kinds of languages is that
advertising language is always well-planned in advance, and rarely random.
To achieve the functions of drawing the attention, building the interest and stimulating the
desire to buy the products among customers, the language used in advertising should be
impressive, credible and stimulated. Schrank (1996) points out some techniques commonly
used by advertisers in creating informative and persuasive advertisements.
The first technique employed is “the weasel claim”. Weasel words or claims are the words
used to say something, but actually they say the opposite or nothing at all. Common weasel
words are help, virtually, act, work, refresh, fight, tackle, strengthen, etc.
“”Leaves dishes virtually spotless” – …

2.2.6.1 Definition of a Slogan
The word slogan is derived from a Scottish Gaelic word sluagh-ghairm pronounced as
slogorm which used to mean battle-cry.
According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995), “a slogan is a short
easily-remembered phrase used by an advertiser, a politician, etc.”
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Therefore, in general, a slogan is a memorable motto used in political, commercial,
religious, and other contexts as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. In the
particular case of an advertising slogan, it is a verbal logo normally appearing just beneath
or beside the brand name or the logo of the product. A slogan is kind of a condensed
message of the whole advertisement which advertisers want their customers to remember
most. It is the usual case that slogans come to customers’ mind first when they think about
the products.
In his book, Creative Advertising, Charles L. Whittier (1958: 11) says a slogan:
“…should be a statement of such merit about a product or service that it is worthy of
continuous repetition in advertising, is worthwhile for the public to remember, and is
phrased in such a way that the public is likely to remember it.”
One interesting fact is that slogans are referred to with different terms in different
countries. Here are some of them.
Countries Terms meaning slogans
The UK Endlines, end lines or straplines
The USA Tags, tag lines, taglines or theme lines
Germany Claims
Belgium Baselines
France Signatures
The Netherlands
and Italy
Pay-offs or payoffs
Some others Rip-offs or rip-offs
Slogos (the slogan by the logo)

First of all, it should be taken into consideration that airline advertising belongs to the
category of service advertising, i.e. the advertising object here is intangible. Hence, it is a
commonplace that customers know about the merits of the service through experiences,
both first-hand and second-hand.
Secondly, as all the airlines mentioned in this study are world-famous ones, their
advertising campaigns must be international or cross-cultural. Obviously, each airline
belongs to a particular country. However, their customers come from every corner of the
world. It cannot be denied that culture varies from country to country, even from region to
region within each country. With a population of customers coming from various cultures,
airline advertisers must have a profound insight of the differences in their customers’
cultural values and perceptions. One that is considered good in this value may be bad in
another. The advertising world is littered with examples of linguistic cross cultural
blunders. Of the more comical was Ford's introduction of the 'Pinto' in Brazil. After seeing
sales fail, they soon realized that this was due to the fact that Brazilians did not want to be
seen driving a car meaning 'tiny male genitals'. Therefore, airline advertising should be
kind of cross-cultural, or, more exactly, universal advertising which uses the most highly-
accepted ideas to best speak to their target audience. Furthermore, the language used in
airline advertisements, especially their slogans must be of simple and understandable
English to all their customers, even those from non-English speaking countries.
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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 A descriptive approach
This study is actually a descriptive study as it “involves a collection of techniques used to
specify, delineate, or describe naturally occurring phenomena without experimental
manipulation” (Seliger & Shohamy, 1989:124). Therefore, the collection of data will be
carried out through non-intrusive and non-manipulative procedures. The descriptive
approach helps to investigate into the frequency of the occurrence of some linguistic
phenomena among the slogans of some world-famous airlines. The purpose of this type of
this research as it is introduced by Wisker (2001) is to find out more about a phenomenon

The population of 50 airlines’ slogans to be investigated is considered large enough as it
includes:
• Some national airlines, many of which belong to English-speaking countries
situated in Europe and are famous for their airline services. Well-known names that
can be mentioned are Air Canada, Air France, British Airways, Swissair, Lufthansa
(Germany), and so on.
• Some other airlines which are not national airlines but really well-known in the
world for their long-built prestige and often appear in the lists of Skytrax.
• Some randomly-chosen slogans in the database of airline slogans to ensure the
generalization of the study.
3.3 Data Analysis
To find out the prevailing trend in creating airline advertising slogans, all the chosen
slogans will be studied in the light of common features of advertising slogans to see what
features or techniques are mostly employed by airline advertisers. This purpose is best
achieved by working out the commonly-employed linguistic features and the proportion of
The Language of Airlines’ Advertising Slogans Page 22
slogans possessing each feature and employing each technique, i.e. the quantitative method
of analysis will be fully exploited. With each feature, some examples from the stock of 50
slogans chosen will be carefully analyzed, which means the qualitative method will be
used as a combination here.
Judging from the fact that a slogan is the most condensed and meaningful message the
advertiser would like to send to his consumers, it is clear that every component of it plays a
vital or indispensable part contributing to the success of the advertiser-consumer
conversation. The art of making a slogan, though it just consists of a few words, must take
these things into consideration:
• The words employed to make the message understood. Such questions as what
words to use, how many words are needed, what part of speech to employ, etc. will
surely be carefully prepared.
• The arrangement of the words chosen. The advertiser needs to ask himself such
questions as: Will the slogan be a sentence or just a phrase? If it is a sentence, what

with it. By this kind of rhyming, the brand name is highlighted. The ad slogan is thus
highly purposed. It can differentiate a slogan from others by the brand name and the
special rhyming which is the identity of the slogan.
Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it –Thomas Cook
()
A fall-back position is to use a rhyme and mention the brand name without it actually
rhyming. It is not so effective, perhaps, because the brand name is not highlighted.
Austrian. Like a smile in the sky - Austrian Airlines
Use of alliteration
Alliteration can help the slogans achieve the strong beating rhythm needed to make it a
repeatable sentence. By so doing, the sentences are more slogan-styled. They can be easily
remembered by the audience.
Britain's best business bank - Allied Irish Bank
Functional Fashionable Formidable – Fila
However, this technique is not employed by airline advertisers.
4.1.2 Lexical features
Common uses of first and second person addressee “you”, “we”, and “us”.
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