The Language-Culture Interface in Persian Gulf States Print Advertisements:

We present an analysis of the contents and execution of a sampling of 40 print advertisements gathered from four major periodicals distributed in the Gulf region. Focusing on the texts and the visual strategies used, we argue that religious and social values and attitudes shape the language and images, which appear in print advertising in the Middle East. For comparative purposes, we analyze the message content of the advertisements and examine the text for elements of persuasional style that have been shown to be characteristic of Arab Rhetoric or which reflect emphasis on evaluative versus factual content. Our findings point to less market segmentation, variability and heterogeneity in this geographic region, and based on our analysis, we conclude that there is a relationship between the information content and language.