A Brief Analyses of the Glamour of Commercial English
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Abstract: Nowadays, advertisement is everywhere in sight now and then. It is an invisible tie which associate the enterprises with thousands of customers all over the world in a certain region or country. It devotes a lot to information spreading, the supply and demand communication, sales promoting and so on.
Key words: wording； rhetorical features
With the development of the society, commercial is getting more and more important in business competition. It aims to attract people’s attention and introduce the product, illustrate why you should buy it. It arouses attention and attraction, so people probably have the desire to buy it instantly. From this point, commercial english must can affect the public quickly and persuade the public. Compared to the literary language, commercial language has peculiar language patterns and features.
1. The important features of commercial
1.1 Original and eye-catching, stimulate the memory, promote the sales
1.2 Repetition--- the mystery of a successful commercial
1.3 Simple words--- Sometimes people don’t have the mood to read the whole commercial, thus, it has to deliver the information to the customer as quick as possible. The briefness is helpful to illustrate the ideas and it is easier for the customer to read and accept.
1.4 Understandable and clear-cut--- It will be a failure if the customer comes across some words he does not understand in the commercial. The commercial language should be clear and easy to understand and avoid the deep words.
2. Features of wording
2.1 As a method of spreading the information, the wording of commercial english has a great difference from standard english. Clearness, vividness, full of emotions and infections should be what it devotes to. For example,
Different countries Different languages Different customs One level of comfort, Worldwide. This is a commercial of an airline company. The verbs in it are the most common ones, they are easy to read and memorize.
2.2 Creating new words. In order to promote the new product, the advertisers are always exploring the new expressions that can touch the customers in the first place. Such words add to the novelty and vividness and attraction of the commercial. The new words can be classified as below:
2.2.1 Misspelling. Such a commercial can be seen everywhere in Britain: DRINKA PINTA MILK A DAY. This is a commercial that advises people to drink a bottle of milk for each day. The original version should be this: Drink a pint of milk a day. The advertiser combines the words skilfully to create a brand new one. Thanks to the commercial, “Pinta” now is a synonym for milk. For example, when the price of milk goes up, people don’t say “milk has gone up”, but “pinta has gone up” instead.
2.2.2 Words creation. For example, Orangemostest Drink in the world. This is a drinking commercial. The word “Orangemostest” comes from “orange---most---est”, “most” and “est” are the superlative forms, when they are connected with “orange”, the super quality can be captured by the customers.
2.3 Foreign words.
Some of the products are imported from abroad, and some of them are local product but full of foreign flavors. Therefore, we can see many foreign words in the commercials. These words are used to show the exotic flavor and the superior quality, thus to attract the customers’ attention. Among these foreign words, French and Spanish are used most. For example,
3.1 Bon Voyage(have a smooth journey) is often used as the brand of perfume. France is famous for its perfumes and cosmetics,so the value of the cosmetic products will be increased if the French words are used.
3.2 Perrier---.with added .Je ne sais quoi. This is a commercial that introduces a kind of French drink. “Je ne sais quoi” are French words which meaning is “ I don’t know what”. It not only increases the curiosity of the customers, but also adds to the genuine flavor of the drink.
2.4 Compounds.
Compound using can be very flexible. Sometimes it can add to the newness of the commercial. It is widely used in commercial english. Such as, color-freshness, fragrant-aroma, top-quality bulbs, up-to-the-minute fashion, line-dry, shining-clean, quick-frozen food.
2.5 The massive use of adjectives.
Adjectives are the most frequently used in commercial english. Most of them are evaluative adjectives, comparative and superlative forms. According to what they modify, adjectives can be classified as two categories: one is to provide the information for the customers to introduce the various functions of the commodities, the other one is to evaluate the commodities subjectively. Such adjectives words are of high praise and strong emotions, we call them evaluative adjectives. Such as good , real, beautiful, delicious, true, fresh, mar-velour, wonderful, super, special, big, large, oversized. To promote their products, the advertisers have to beautify them, what can touch the customers the most? With no doubt, it is the evaluative adjectives. Here blow are some examples:
What a Good time for a Good taste of a kent?---Kent (cigarette)
Why our special teas make your precious moments even more precious?---Lipton (tea)
3. The rhetorical features in commercial english
The common rhetoric devices are pun, parallelism, metaphor, rhyming, personification, exaggeration, rhetoric question and so on. Examples are as belows:
3.1 Pun. A pun is the humorous use of a word or phrase as to emphasize its different meanings. The humor flows from the ambiguity of the multiple meanings. For example,
The Unique Spirit of Canada (this is a commercial of a Canadian wine)
“Spirit” in the commercial above is a poly-semantic word. When translated as “strong drink”, the whole sentence can be understood as “distinctive flavored Canadian wine”, but when translated as “mood”, it can be understood as “ the unique Canadian national characteristic”. There are double meanings in the word “spirit”, when you see it, you can reject neither.
3.2 Parallelism. Such sentences can simplify themselves and they have clear key points. For example,
When you are cool, tea will warm you
When you are hot, tea will cool you
When you are sad, tea will cheer you
When you are excited, tea will calm you
This sentence pattern is full of rhythms, emphasizes the key points, stimulate the customers’ passion towards tea. When we use parallelism, the super quality of the product can be easily revealed, in the meanwhile, the readers can enjoy the beauty of the commercial language.
3.3 Rhyming. A rhyme is a word which rhymes with another word, or a set of lines which rhyme.
Go for Gold.
This is a commercial of a kind of wine which brand is Gold Seal. It makes full use of “gold”, it makes people feel that the wine is as precious as gold, and it has the same rhyme with “go”. In this way, the commercial becomes more vivid and easier to remember.
3.4 Analogy. Analogy is drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity in some respect. For example,
What’s on your arm should be as beautiful as who’s on it.
This is a commercial of Citizen, a famous watch brand. The couple in the picture are hand in hand, showing a combination of strength and tenderness. The language and the picture matches perfect, the use of simile makes it charming and is easily to touch the audience. Analogy is the main rhetoric device, it can change the abstractness to concreteness, vagueness to clearness and fantasy to reality.
3.5 Personification. A personification of something abstract is its representation in the form of a person. This rhetoric device can provide the product with liveness and can be full of human interests. And to some extent, it gives the customer a sense of intimacy.
“Terylence” keeps its promises. (“涤纶”商标，信誉卓著)
Flowers by BEAUTY spread from the heart. (“美人”鲜花，倾诉衷肠)
Peony stands out for taste. ( 牡丹香烟，醇味盖冠)
3.6 Rhetorical Questions. Rhetorical Questions is a statement that is formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered. According to the statistics, there is one rhetorical question out of 30 sentences. There are various forms among rhetorical questions, they are general questions, special questions and tag questions. Some of the questions are presented as dialogue. For example,
Why your skin drinks it down so quickly?(玉兰油护肤品广告)
Are you still feeding your six month old an infant formula? (婴儿食品广告)
Can you tell cheese from real cheese? (农舍牌英国乳酪广告)
In a word, commercial english is a practical style which has business values. Various rhetorical devices are used in it to achieve the business goals. It can not only arouses the fantasy of the audience, but also can broaden their imaginations. Thus, the commercials will be more motivational and persuasive. Accordingly, the goal can be achieved, meanwhile, people can also enjoy the glamour of the commercial language.
作者简介：
罗粲（1985.10-)，女，湖北武汉人，汉族，本科，助教，现就职于武昌职业学院，研究方向：英语文学。