…, everything you need for that big bargain basement special.

…, and vitamin E to leave skin soft and smooth.

Treat your weary ghosts and goblins to a warm bowl of chill and …

    …

    2.2.4 Use of weasel words

A weasel word is defined as “a word used in order to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position” according to Webster Dictionary (Philip Babcock Gove, 1976). The use of weasel words has become a device in advertising. Weasel words make people hear things that aren’t being said, accept as truth that have only been implied, and believe things that have only been implied and suggested. Let’s take a look under a strong light at several frequently used words.

   Help

   Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail helps maintain urinary tract health.

   It helps control the bacteria in this system.

   A breakthrough way to help stop wear-out

   Help finance the video equipment.

       …

All the examples shown are from our corpus. 23% advertisements of all samples use the word help. These helps can be omitted because they have lost their original meaning: aid, assist. Yet, help in advertising English is never redundant. It has magic power in advertisers’ eyes.

Help is the great qualifier; once the advertiser says it, he can say anything after it. Help qualifies everything. The audience has never heard anyone say, “This product will keep you young,” or “This toothpaste will positively prevent cavities for all time.” Obviously, advertisers can’t say anything like that, because there are not any products like that made. But by adding that one little word help, in front, they can use the strongest language possible afterwards. And the most fascinating part of it is that the readers are immune to the word. The readers literally don’t hear the word help. They only knew what comes after it. That is strong language, and likely to be much more important to the readers than the little word at the front.

       Like

   It’s like getting on bar free.

   Cleans like a white tornado.

   It’s like taking a trip to Portugal.

   …

       Like is also a qualifier, and is used in much the same way as help. But like is also a comparative element, with a very specific purpose; advertisers use like to get the audience to stop thinking about something that is bigger than or better or different from the product which are being sold. In other words, they can make the audience believe that the product is more than it is by likening it to something else. Like help, like doesn’t catch much attention. However by using it, almost anything can be said and promised afterwards.

2.3 Differences at the lexical level

    2.3.1 Gender identity in advertisements

While we found quite a lot of similarities in the choice of words, we have also found some delicate differences in the choice of words in the three types of advertisements as classified before: daily consumer goods ads, technical equipment ads, and service ads.

Language, as a communicative tool, is not only to impart information, to communicate ideas about a product, etc., but also to convey information about the relationship between the addresser (advertisement) and the addressee (the audience). An intimate relationship between the advertisement and the audience is always hoped to achieve. So according to different audience, language applied is different.

What constitutes a female and a male identity, according to advertising? Table 1, based on the language of advertising (Torben Vestergaard & Kim Schr der, 1981:74), gives the commodity profile of two gender-identified magazines: Women and Playboy and also provides the distribution of the different types of advertisements.

Table 1 Distribution of three types of advertisements

   Percentage of ads
   Women (%)  Playboy (%) 
 

Daily

Consumer

Goods
 Hygiene 10 3
Beauty 18 1
Clothes 12 14
Food, Detergents 31 -
Tobacco 8 15
Beer, Spirits - 25
Leisure - 3
　
Technical

Equipment

 Vehicle - 27
Radio, hi-fi - 4
Computer - 7
Service Insurance, banking 2 -
   Others 19 1

 
It can be seen from table 1 that the hygiene, beauty, food and detergents ads are dominant in the women’s magazines while technical equipment ads prevail in men’s magazines. The reason is that women are potential purchasers of daily consumer goods while men are potential purchasers of technical equipment. So advertising language tries to win its audiences by noticing audiences’ gender identity. 
In addition, since the subjects involved in advertisements vary from simple to complex, shared knowledge by the addresser (ads) and addressee (the audience) varies. For example, knowledge of technical equipment, sometimes demands high educational background or special interests in a certain field. To convey different knowledge clearly, advertisements don’t always speak in the same way. In the following section, we will make a comparative study of three points in order to find differences in the choice of words in three types of advertisements: the selection of adjectives, the use of compound words and the use of pronouns.

  2.3.2 Selection of adjectives

Adjectives, as emotive and exciting words, are used to enhance the facts of a certain product or service. In the study of the selection of adjectives, we have first divided adjectives into two groups: descriptive adjectives and evaluative adjectives. The former is used in objective description and the latter give the advertiser’s subjective comments. Then we have listed those frequently used descriptive adjectives and evaluative adjectives in daily consumer

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