ABSTRACT
Advertising is simply the promotion of goods and services through various media. That said, advertising comes in several different forms, draws on a vast range of linguistic strategies and is targeted at a host of potential consumer groups. The first distinction captures the difference between those advertisements that draw attention to a specific product – a car, say, or a bottle of perfume – and those that more generally represent the image of a company or organization. Multinational conglomerates such as oil companies or information technology (IT) giants habitually use non-product advertising because the presentation of a positive image is a crucial first step for their expansion into new global markets. The ‘reason’ and ‘tickle’ distinction overlaps with the hard sell–soft sell contrast because of its concern with the degree of explicitness and persuasiveness embodied by advertisements. Advertorials combine article and advertisement in a style that shows how advertising has spread from actual advertisements into other genres of discourse.
