Language and Advertising

  Advertising is an inescapable part of our daily experience, it influences our habits, values and language.  Due to its omnipresence, advertising directly influences everyday speech and it also serves as a window into current language use.  Advertising works below the level of conscious awareness, and it is one of the primary means through which we absorb what we are (supposed to be) as individuals, and also as members of certain socio-economic classes and nations. Hence, advertising is an excellent empirical domain for the study of language, and also its relation to thought and background culture.

 This course uses mainly print advertisements, and to lesser extent also videos. It introduces basic concepts and tools from linguistics, semiotics and philosophy to analyze their language component: e.g., sign, signifier, signified; denotation and connotation, presupposition; the given vs. new distinction; linguistic relevance, cohesion, coherence.  Topics will also include the use of sound symbolism, novel words and phrases, the distinction between social vs. individual advertisements, and the contrast between information, on the one hand, and persuasion and deception, on the other hand, explored from the point of view of psychology and ethics.