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idiolect; and if it is based on the use in relation to social
context it is called register.
Register is actually the best term to classify the
speech variety used in advertising. Therefore, the
expression the language of advertising should be interpreted
in more specific terms as the register of advertising.
However, since many authors keep the general term
language, we will also use it most of the time in this work
in the sense of
register.
It has already been mentioned (p.8) that "advertising
is a form of persuasion" and it is clear from most ads that
they are "overwhelmingly persuasive in intent." 2 ® There are
many devices employed by advertisers in order to persuade the
public to buy their products or hire their
services.
One of these devices, in a broad sense, is the
psychological appeal which associates the advertised object
with i aesthetic concepts, or with feelings like greed, envy,
fear and happiness, or even with famous people. Other devices
which ultimately aim at persuading the public are called here
linguistic features and are classified as stylistic,
syntactic arid lexico-semantic .
2.3.1 Psychological appeal
One of the subtlest ways to appeal to the public is to
aestheticize the article, i.e. , to create an image of the
object associating it with things which have nothing to do
with it. For example, the fact that a bar of soap is
transparent or a toothpaste has stripes does not make each of