MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Linguistic and nonlinguistic features

of car advertisements

Diploma thesis

Author: Jana Neužilová

Supervisor: PhDr. Renata Povolná, Ph.D.

Brno 2005
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor PhDr. Renata Povolná, Ph.D., for
her invaluable advice and help.
I declare that I have worked on this diploma thesis independently, using only the
sources mentioned in the bibliography.

CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1
2 Previous research 3
2. 1 Advertisement as a text and its linguistic research 4
2. 2 Car advertising and its traditional stereotypes 8
2. 3 Marketing and its importance to (car) advertising 9
3 Advertising – classifications and framework 12
3. 1 Classifications of advertising 12
3. 1. 1 Press advertising – newspapers 14
3. 1. 2 Press advertising – magazines 15
3. 2 Framework – styles 16
4 Material 21
4. 1 Journalinguistics 21
4. 2 Characteristics of the British newspapers 23
from which the material has been taken
5 Hypothesis 25
5. 1 Quality versus price 25
5. 1. 1 Market segmentation process 28
5. 1. 2 Quality and price – criteria excluded 30
5. 2 Advertising as a discourse 31
5. 2. 1 Language of advertising 31
5. 2. 2 Context 33
Analysis 35
6 Quality ads versus price ads – concrete features 35
6. 1 Setting 35
6. 2 Language of car advertising connected to the aspects of gender 37
6. 3 Car advertising – reality versus idealism and environmental issues 42
 6. 4 Figurative language 45
6. 4. 1 Alliteration and repetitiveness in headlines 46
6. 4. 2 Metaphors, personifications, puns and alliteration in ads 49
6. 4. 2. 1 Metaphors 50
6. 4. 2. 2 Pun 52
6. 4. 2. 3 Personifications 53
6. 4. 2. 4 Alliteration 54
6. 5 Block language structures 55
6. 5. 1 Block language structures with verbs 55
6. 5. 2 Block language structures without verbs 56
6. 6 Simple, compound and complex sentences 60
6. 7 Sentence types 62
6. 8 Deixis 69
7 Superlative and comparative forms of adjectives 72
8 Features of informal and spoken language: 74
ellipsis, clusters of clauses and contraction
9 Emphatic word order 77
10 Slogans, slogos, logos and lexical cliches 80
Conclusion 83
Resume 86
Bibliography 87
Appendix