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publicidade derive from the Latin verb "publicare", to make
something known to people. Advertising comes from the Latin
"advertere", to turn toward or to call attention to something.
Another word often associated to advertising is propaganda.
Its use, however, is more restricted in English than in
Portuguese. While in Portuguese we may refer to an ad on
television or in a magazine as "uma propaganda" and we may
also use the term in a general sense ("propaganda comercial,
política, religiosa"), in English we generally use propaganda
in the sense of "systematic propagation of a given doctrine."
This interpretation often implies dissemination of ideas in
order to favor one's own cause or to harm someone else's.
Although both in English and in Portuguese a lot of ads
explicitly offend their competitors, this should not be the
purpose of
advertising.*
On the other hand, it is not possible to hide the
intention of advertising to persuade and influence the
public, besides informing it about products and services.
According to O'DONNELL & TODD (1980), advertising is "a form
of persuasion directed at large numbers of people by means of
i
the media" and it is a "complex phenomenon because it involves
two interacting processes, namely, communication and
persuasion, and both processes are many-faceted. Since
these are processes involving man and his life in society, we
may conclude as VESTERGAARD & SCHRÄDER (1986) have:
*The definitions were taken from Dicionário brasileiro da lingua portuguesa
(p.1404, 1419), The American heritage dictionary of the English language (p.11, 564), and
Oxford advanced learner's dictionary of current English (p.675). Complete references can be
found in the Bibliographical References.