A Study On Coca-Cola's Advertising Slogans And Headlines In The Past 100+ Years Through The Linguistic Adaptation Theory

Advertising slogans and headlines are claimed to be the most effective elements in advertisements. They are now playing a large part in the interplay between rival companies. The history of Coca-Cola's advertisements is also regarded as the history of modern advertising by many scholars too.This paper is dedicated to a study of Coca-Cola Company's advertising slogans and headlines in the past 100+ years based on the 268 slogans and headlines collected from the website and several related works.The central part of this thesis is the descriptive analysis of the collected slogans and headlines. It's a comprehensive and thorough application of the related linguistic theories. The conceptual framework is constructed on the basis of the Linguistic Adaptation Theory proposed by Jef Verschueren. (2000). The present study aims to test whether the Adaptation Theory can well explain the linguistic phenomena of advertising slogans and headlines and whether they are the outcomes of linguistic choices adapting with language user's physical world, social world and psychological world on both lexical and syntactic levels. Through this study, the author studies in detail the relationship between the language of advertising slogans and headlines, society, cultural and thought, and hopefully expects to shed some light on the study and creation of advertising slogans and headlines in China.