Speech Act Classification of German Advertising Texts

This paper uses the theory of speech acts and the underlying concept of pragmalinguistics to determine the types of speech acts and their classification in the German advertising printed texts. We ascertain that the advertising of cars and accessories, household appliances and computer equipment, watches, fancy goods, food, pharmaceuticals, and financial, insurance, legal services and also airline advertising is dominated by a pragmatic principle, which is based on demonstrating information about the benefits of a product / service. This influences the frequent usage of certain speech acts. The dominant form of exposure is to inform the recipient-user about the characteristics of the advertised product. This information is fore-grounded by means of stylistic and syntactic constructions specific to the advertisement (participial constructions, appositional constructions) which contribute to emphasize certain notional components within the framework of the advertising text. Stylistic and syntactic devices of reduction (parceling constructions) convey the author's idea. Other means like repetitions, enumerations etc are used by the advertiser to strengthen his selling power. The advertiser focuses the attention of the consumer on the characteristics of the product seeking to convince him of the utility of the product and to influence his/ her buying behavior.

advertisement texts, Speech Act Theory, stylistic and syntactic devices of expansion