Foregrounding: The Linguistic Art Of Advertising English

Nowadays, advertising penetrates every corner of society. Whenever we open a newspaper or a magazine, turn on TV, or look at the hoardings on building, we are confronted with advertisements. And the language of advertising has gradually formed its own unique style -- advertising style. As a practical variety with high business value, advertising English is an important component of modern English, it has its own special linguistic features and communicative and persuasive functions.In this thesis, I have made a relatively systematic and objective study of the special linguistic features and their stylistic effects of advertising English, so that it will help both addressers and addressees understand better the artistic use of language of advertising English from a new perspective -- foregrounding. To study advertising English, as a special variety, as we believe, will provide a better angle of vision into the internal structure of advertising English, and will also be significant for us to give a more systematic classification of advertisements. In terms of field of discourse, we have product, nonproduct, commercial, noncommercial, action and awareness advertisings; according to tenor of discourse, English advertisements can be classified into two broad kinds: consumer advertising and business advertising. In terms of mode of discourse, advertising English falls into print advertising (newspaper, magazine), broadcast/electronic advertising (radio, television), out-of-home advertising (outdoor, transit) and direct mail advertising (advertising sent through the mail).Foregrounding can be classified into two types: qualitative foregrounding and quantitative foregrounding. Qualitative foregrounding is the deviation from the language code itself (deviation from some rule or convention of English), which can be realized by deviation and may appear at various linguistic levels. But in this thesis I have just discussed three major levels: lexical, semantic and syntactical levels. Lexical deviation may be made by neologisms, such as coinages, misspellings, or compoundings. Semantic deviation may be realized mainly by rhetorical devices which may add literary and intellectual flavor to the ads. Metaphor may present a vivid picture of the products to be sold; personification gives life to the goods; puns in ads sound humorous, happy and relaxed. These foregrounded linguistic features are vivid, economical, impressive and powerful. Quantitative foregrounding happens by parallelism or repetition. When a certain normal item in language appears in high frequency, it definitely stands out from the background and catches people's attention. Advertisers tend to use alliteration at phonological level, imperative sentences at syntactical level and repetition and parallelism at rhetorical level. These features are not deviant, but nevertheless striking. For example, phonological devices may produce some musical or rhythmic effects for its readers and thus arouse their happy associations.Foregrounding is an important device for producers to make striking and persuasive adverts. Usually, when an advertiser does not resort to deviation, he will possibly turn to quantitative foregrounding for help, and most successful ads are making the best use of either qualitative or quantitative foregrounding, or both. All these foregrounded linguistic features are vivid, economical and effective. In a word, foregrounding is not only an effective stylistic theory, but also an important linguistic art of advertising English.