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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 RATIONALE
Language is the most powerful weapon in communication. It is termed
the magic in communication and is thought to contain special powers, which
only the initiated are allowed to understand or control [35]. It is expressed in
varied styles in various disciplines.
Advertising is one of the disciplines where the use of language has to
be employed with care in order to deliver the message effectively and
efficiently. According to David Crystal [35], language is the systematic,
conventional use of sound, signs or written symbols in a human society for
communication and self-expression. One can then bridge the great link
between language and advertising since according to Leo Burnette [30], the
aim of advertising is to draw attention to products or services in order to make
them sell.
Crystal also thinks that, most obviously, the language is generally
laudatory, positive unreserved, and emphasizing the uniqueness of a product.
An advertisement may not attain the goals of selling goods, services or ideas,
not only because the target audience was not exposed to the advertisement,
but also because the language used in the slogans did not suffice to grab the
attention of the audience, captivate their interest, create a desire and move
them to action. It could as well be that, the message was not understood and
conveyed a different meaning to the target population. Hence the improper
use of language will cause the advertisement not to serve the purpose intended


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their environment.. Advertising shows us what goods we can buy and where
to buy, how to rationalize labour to lighten the burdens of housework, what
food we should eat and what medicines we should take for being healthy, etc.
As far as we know, advertising nowadays not only spurs economic
development, engineers sales, helps people and organizations find each other,
creates and sustains thousands of jobs – in advertising agencies, in various
promotion and exhibition industries but also gives the public the right to
choose between many options, many brands. It enables consumers to opt for
the best quality or the lowest price or the best mix of quality and price.
Although advertising appears in many different forms and means, it basically
uses the language as a means to draw customers’ attention and supplies
listeners, readers, or viewers with necessary information about new products
and services.
Advertising is also a good guide and good educator for cultural needs, a
source of information and stimulus for new achievements and progress in
every field. In the production field, advertising can ensure a certain number of
buyers so that manufacturers can manage their production accurately and
effectively. In addition, advertising efficiently supports the development of
other industries such as journalism, television… Every time an advertisement
arouses a consumer’s interest enough to result in a purchase, it keeps a
company going strong. And it helps secure the job of the people who work
there. And when advertising does its job, millions of people keeps theirs.
Therefore, advertising is very important and has become indispensable in our
modern life. It can be said that the economy of any country would take a
downturn without advertising.
In order to enhance the appeal of an advertisement, advertising writers
pay much attention not only to such expressive devices as plates, colour and

teaching and learning of English and Vietnamese Stylistics in general and of
stylistic devices in advertising language in particular. The findings of the
research will help Vietnamese learners appreciate the beauty of advertising
language. Moreover, it will not only help them get better understanding of
advertising language but also provide them with some necessary strategies


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and techniques in writing advertisements. I also hope that this research will
provide the learner with precious experience of how to write and translate an
advertisement. As a result, their experience will certainly facilitate their
English language learning so that they will be able to learn more effectively
and successfully.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study focuses on the findings of stylistic features of some
commonly used stylistic devices namely simile, metaphor, rhetorical
questions, hyperbole, repetition and personification in English and
Vietnamese advertising language, the similarities and differences, the
frequencies of occurrence of the stylistic devices in advertising language in
English and Vietnamese newspapers.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Findings are discussed in relation to the following research questions of
the study :
1. What are stylistic features of some commonly used stylistic devices
in English and Vietnamese advertising language?
2. What are the similarities and differences in stylistic features in
English and Vietnamese advertising language?


LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 GENERAL VIEWS OF ADVERTISING
2.1.1 Notions of Advertising
In contemporary society, advertising is everywhere. We cannot walk
down the street, shop, watch television, go through our mail, log on to the
Internet, read a newspaper or take a train without encountering it. Whether we
are alone, with our friends or family, or in a crowd, advertising is always with
us. Although advertising has become familiar to us and, in fact, it has become
a part of our life, it is by no means easy to come to terms with a definition for
it. Beside the usual definition: Advertising is a way to help selling the bad
products, there are a lot of different definitions of advertising. However, the
following ones seem to be the most appropriate to my study on stylistic
devices in advertising language in English and Vietnamese newspapers.
Advertising is defined by Harris & Seldon as a public notice
“Advertising designed to spread information with a view to promoting the
sales of marketable goods and services”. [42, p.40]
Another definition given by Cook, G. (1992) states: “Advertising
means clearly identifiable, paid for communications in the media, which aims
to persuade, inform or sell. But the world is also used to cover a much
broader range of activities – from design to public relations – by what are
often the same organizations, using similar skills.” [34]
According to the Encyclopedia American, “Advertising is any paid
form of non-personal presentation and promotion of products, services, or
ideas by an identifiable individual or organization.”
Or “Advertising is any no-personal presentation of ideas, goods, or
services that is paid for an identified sponsor.” [50, p.15]


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an appointment, coming buy your store or sending in an order by mail. The
outcome of these actions should, of course, eventually be a sale.
Advertising is uniquely able to deliver consistent messages reliable,
quickly and efficiently. Unlike other marketing communication tactics, such
as public relations, advertising allows you to control the message, the
placement and the frequency. Through advertising, you deliver a message
about your product or service. Additionally, advertising can:
° establish and maintain an awareness and positive image of your
company, products or services
° develop a need for products or services
° persuade customers that your products or services are the best
° promote events
Therefore, in this study, the aim of advertising is referred to as a main
factor affected of creating an effective advertisement. Once again, this is an
important problem for advertisers, which requires an effort to use the
techniques about linguistic to have a strong persuasion.

2.1.3 The Functions of Advertising
Advertising aims at drawing the customers’ attention towards a product
or service and persuading them about its usefulness, attraction and advantage.
In his desire to sell a product, the advertiser strives to make the public
familiar with it, to create the belief that it is superior to rival products and to
convince people that it is essential. In my study, I found that advertising has
the following functions:
2.1.3.1 Informative Function
This is the main function of advertising. Advertisements describe

to be printed in places that please readers’ eyes. A beautiful picture always
catches the readers’ attention. That is why beautiful girls’ photos often go


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with the advertisements. And these beautiful images give the readers pleasant
feelings and make them want the product.
2.1.3.4 Educative Function
Advertising is also a guide and a good means of education about the
cultural needs of people. With food for example, advertisements show the
way for us to make good meals. Or advertisements also tell us how to use the
right medicines to prevent pain or illness. Advertising educates us to the good
things in life and advises us to follow them.
2.1.3.5 Entertaining Function
This is only a subordinate function of advertising. Advertising
hoardings and posters at the station, at the bus stop or in streets are also a
hobby, recreation for passers-by to watch. It‘s really very interesting to look
at a beautiful advertising poster when we are tired after working or when we
go in streets. These posters and hoardings usefully replace empty and dull
walls.
In addition, advertising on television also pleases our eyes very much
with beautiful images. Some people learn by heart the words in advertising
and say them again very cheerfully. Advertising is really a source of joy in
life.

2.1.4 Means of Advertising
Advertising

reaches


2.1.5 The Language of Advertising
Language has a powerful influence over people and their behavior. This
is especially true in the fields of marketing and advertising. The choice of
language to convey a specific message with the intention of influencing
people is vitally importance. Visual content and design in advertising have a
great impact on the consumer, but it is the language that helps people identify
a product and remember it. In general, advertising language has some
following typical characteristics. [41]
2.1.5.1 Legality
Because advertisement texts are openly popularized to the public, in the
form, at least, its language and messages must be legal and appropriate to the
laws of local government. For instance, in Vietnam, all advertising contents as
well as advertising language, which sexually stimulate or provoke violence,
are banned. While in the United States of America they are legal if enclosed
warning: For those over 18 only…
However, different the standard and force of implementing, advertising
laws and government in most countries require advertising language and
contents to be legal, decent, honest and truthful (four standards of
advertisements in Britain) and truthful, correct, clear, harmless to


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manufacturers, business men and consumers (standards of advertisements in
Vietnam).
2.1.5.2 Theoretical, Factual Foundation
Advertisement texts must create belief on the benefit and strength of
commodity and service. Consequently, they need to give right reason along
with statistics, factual evidences... to confirm and heighten the truthful, the

suggestive,

impressive,

visual,

figurative…) and text form (content, capacity and structure). Rhythm, rhyme
and other phonetic effects are noticeable.
2.1.5.6 The Multi-stylistic
What linguistic style does advertising language belong to scientific,
political commentary, administrative, literary or conversational? In fact,
advertising language clearly belongs to none of them.
In phonetic, advertising language both adapts to the general standards
and takes advantage of dialects. Vocabulary in advertising is vivid and
concrete. In syntax, complete and incomplete sentences are much used in
advertising. Lastly, most ways of expression used in advertising are brief and
clear.
Because the purpose of advertising is to get people to think about or
react to the product or the company in a certain way, advertising messages
must be imaginative, entertaining and rewarding to their audience. Effective
advertising messages should be:
° meaningful, pointing out benefits that makes the product desirable or
interesting to consumers.
° believable, so that consumer will believe that the product or service
will deliver the promised benefits.
° distinctive, telling people how the product is better than competing
brands. [47, p.21, 22]
In brief, advertising language has its own peculiarities most clearly
illustrated in its register. The register of the advertising language can be
investigated in the following three aspects: vocabulary, grammatical

Similarly, in “An Introduction to Stylistics”, Clark, Urszula (1996)
looked into the aspects of vocabulary in advertising and point out the
semantic features of advertising language.


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“A Discussion Concerning Linguistic Units and Meaning in English
Language Advertisements” (1993) by Dinh Gia Hung, Ho Si Thang Kiet
discussed the features of English linguistic units and semantic meaning used
in advertisements.
Another advertising work is “Mastering Advanced English Language”,
in which Sara Thorne (1997) analyzed the linguistic and stylistic aspects of
advertising and discussed the general features of advertising language.
In “The Language of Advertising”, Peter Sells and Sierra Gonzalezz
(1998) look at the relationship between advertising and culture. They also
focus on the interrelation of language, image, typeface, draw on literary and
linguistic theory for analysis of texts, explore specific advertising strategies
such as hooklines, puns… and examine a wide range of advertisements.
In “The Discourse of Advertising” by Guy Cook (2003, 2nd edition),
the author provided a framework for analysis of advertisements as a
discursive genre. Concepts from discourse analysis; stylistics and linguistics
are applied to examine the advertisements textual and contextual features in a
bottom-up approach that allow identifying their interaction and combinations.
Also, in this book, the interaction between advertising messages, their
substance and their surroundings are discussed and their influence on the
effectiveness of the advertising is shown.
“A Study on Linguistic Devices used in English Male and Female Print
Advertisements” (2003) by Nguyen Thi Huynh Loc revealed how these
linguistic devices work in male and female print advertisements with the


English

Lexical

Choice

in

Trading

Advertisements” (2004) by Ngo Thi Hong found out the distinctive lexico –
semantic features of chosen lexical items and their stylistic features as well as
the distribution of lexical devices in trade advertisements.
Most lately, in “A Study on Directives in Advertising in English and
Vietnamese” (2005) by Ngo Thi Nhu Ha, she studied on ten typical directives
in English and Vietnamese advertising as well as their syntactic and
pragmatic features.
There are many other studies on Stylistic Devices and Advertising
Language in English and Vietnamese I cannot mentioned here. However, as
far as I am concerned, so far no reported research has been found on the
contrastive analysis of stylistic devices in English and Vietnamese advertising
language.


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Based on the main purpose of the study, I decide to use the theory of
some authors such as Leech, Sara Thorne, Crystal, David and Davy, Derek, I.
R. Galperin, Clark, Urszula, Cù Đình Tú, Đinh Trọng Lạc, Hữu Đạt… and to


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Le Style et ses Techniques (1947) strongly influenced the formation of
modern literary stylistics. Leo Spitzer, in contrast, follows the more
philologically based tradition of textual (often literary-textual) analysis. Style
is seen as an expression of a particular psychological, social, or historical
sensibility or moment rather than as a general property of a particular
language. It can be said that modern stylistics in European continent in midtwentieth century witnessed an early separation between linguistic stylistic
description and literary stylistic interpretation.
In Anglo-American linguistics at this time, there remained a link
between literary stylistics and structural linguistic analysis. However, it was
Noam Chomsky’s transformational-generative grammar that signaled the
establishment of stylistics as a discipline with independent, self defined goals
at least, if not yet a real autonomy. Then the founding of the field’s major
Anglo-American journals named Style (1967) and Language and Style (1968)
contributed to the full arrival of stylistics as an academic discipline in Britain
and America.
Later, there appeared a series of related works including Donald
Freeman, ed., Linguistics and Literary Style (1970); Pierre Guiraud, Essais de
Stylistique (1970); Guiraud and Pierre Kuentz, ed., La Stylistique: Lectures
(1970); Seymour Chatman, ed., Literary Style: A Symposium (1971); Roger
Fowler, ed., Style and Structure in Literature: Essays in the New Stylistics
(1975); Freeman, ed., Essays in Modern Stylistics (1981), etc. Other linguists
such as I. R. Galperin, H. G. Widdowson, Sara Thorne, David Crystal and
Derek Davy etc. focus on English stylistics. They not only present an
overview of English stylistics but also categorize English stylistic devices into
different groups and provide carefully analysed examples.
In Vietnam, Cù Đình Tú, Đinh Trọng Lạc, Nguyễn Thái Hoà, Đinh
Xuân Quỳnh... do the same job with Vietnamese stylistics. However, none of

As an art of persuasion its materials are words and images, sentences and
paragraphs, arguments and examples, all of which are used to organize the
responses and actions of an audience. As an attitude about the world, rhetoric


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underwrites all kinds of processes and methods that aim to produce order out
of chaos.” [60]
According to the Encyclopedia that Rhetoric is classically defined the
art of speaking in such a manner as to impress the hearers and influence them
for or against an opinion exists implicitly or explicitly in any society. It is
essential to cultural, political, and social activities as such in so far as these
demand a display of uninterrupted speech or monologue. As a formalized type
of knowledge, it has been studied and practiced by the ancient Greeks since
the fifth century BC; it was developed by the Sophists of Athens, who learnt it
from Sicily (Corax and his pupil Tisias, both of Syracuse), discussed by Plato
and Aristotle – the creator of a systematic and scientific Rhetoric – continued
by the Alexandrian Hellenists, and later by Romans (Cicero, Quintilian), for
whom the oratorical skill had an ethical bearing as attached to the art of
living.
In the popular sense, the word Rhetoric has associated with it the
stigma of empty, flowery talk, or impressive speech saturated with falsehood.
It should be also noted that a Rhetorical question is really not intended to
elicit an answer, one often regards Rhetoric as suspiciously false and
dishonest. Rhetoric refers to the art of oratory, or persuasive speaking – the
art of effective argumentation with the view to influencing opinion.
In many spheres of life, persuasive communication is popular, for
example, counseling, cajoling, and even deceiving. It is a vital mode of
discourse in business, politics, and negotiation. Even so, certain cultures

defined as distinctive linguistic expression to serve its own purposes and
effect with its own inventory of tool. [65]
The word rhetorical means using language well. Device, in this sense,
according to William Shakespeare is anything fancifully conceived.
Rhetorical device just means a fancy of way of saying something. It is how
something is said, not what is said. This meant that, having a good idea or
something important to say is not enough, one must also get the message


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across to the intended recipient, and do in such a way that both the message
and its importance are received and understood. [65]

2.3.2 Simile
Simile is a specific semantic trope in stylistics, especially in stylistic
devices. The existence of simile in stylistic devices has partly created the
creativeness in the development of languages. In the language of literature,
music as well as the one of advertisement, we can easily find out many kinds
of simile and they themselves have enabled these kinds of language to be
more attractive, more expressive, charming and persuasive. By using similes,
the poets, the writers, the musicians, the advertisers, etc. have helped us to
approach such ways of figurative comparison although they are very
deviatory. Since they are comparisons of objects belonging to entirely
different classes, they have high value of expressiveness stimulating the
conceptual ability from the hearers and readers. In order to understand what is
simile and how it works in languages, let’s study some simile definitions both
in English and Vietnamese.
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied
Linguistics, “Simile is an expression in which something is compared to

In the definitions of [68] & [73], the simile markers such as: like, as,
as…as, than, similar to, resembles, appears, more than… in English or như,
như là, là, bao nhiêu, bấy nhiêu... in Vietnamese were mentioned for the
illustration of simile.
By examining the definitions above, to some extent, we have a basic
knowledge about what is simile. In fact, to understand thoroughly about
simile and apply its theories in analyzing structural or stylistic features… is
not such an easy game at all. It requires a passion for linguistic research as
well as a wish to maintain the fascinating beauty of rhetoric.
Simile in English and Vietnamese is a comparison between two
different things that resemble each other in at least one way. The simile is a
device both of art and explanation, comparing an unfamiliar thing to some
familiar thing (an object, event, process, etc.) known to the reader.


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When you compare a noun to a noun, the simile is usually introduced
by like:
I see men, but they look like trees, walking.
(Mark, 2002)
Rách như tổ đỉa
(Hữu Đạt, 2000)
When a verb or phrase is compared to a verb or phrase, as is used:
They remained constantly attentive to their goal, as a sunflower always
turns and stays focused on the sun.
(Mark, 2002)
Sống chết một lần thôi
Con sẽ chết như những người đã chết
và những người đang chết