A Stylistic Analysis of the Language of Advertising in the Nigerian Communication Industry.

AbstractThis study examines the stylistic and linguistic features of the language of advertisingin the Nigerian communication industry. Relying on speech Act theory, the researcherconsiders Austin’s view of speech Act theory,which accounts for linguistically drivenmeaning and linguistic forms. Some selected samples of telecommunicationadvertisement in some National newspapers were subjected to stylistic and contentanalysis using Austin’s speech Act theory. On the basis of this stated objective, adescriptive survey research design of a correctional type was adopted. The data usedin this research were obtained from national newspapers, while the sources ofmaterials used in this research were drawn from journals, books, and some electronicsources. As the study indicates, the Nigerian communication industry employsdifferent stylistic features in advertising their services and products. The study findsthat the stylistic features of language of advertisements identified in the samplednewspapersare figures of speech, ellipsis, rhetoric, repetition, simple sentence anddeclarative sentence, and that their distinctive deployment in advertisements by theseNigerian communication industries has affective linguistic, stylistic, and phonologicalimplications on their customers. It therefore concludes that the results of thesestylistic effects have a sociolinguistic relevance in the study of stylistics.