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A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF THE INTERFACE BETWEEN INFORMATIVENESS AND CONCISENESS IN THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISEMENT OF THE NIGERIAN PRINT MEDIA

Language is the chief medium of communication used for all forms of social interaction, the most important of which is passing and receiving information and messages. Advertisement also a form of communication, relies on language to pass its message in order to attract consumers to what it is advertising. This study, which is a pragmatic analysis of the interface between informativeness and conciseness in the language of advertising of the print media, focuses on the informative content as well as the conciseness of the adverts. Information cues such as price, quality, nutrition, packaging availability etc are used to assess the informative content of the adverts. An advert that contains one or more of these cues, is regarded as informative. The study also adopts Grice‟s co-operative principle to analyse the invisible meaning contained in the advertising slogans. The presence of hidden meaning from which readers are left to make inferences generates implicatures which readers derive, in order to make meaning out of the adverts. Fifty (50) adverts were selected and analysed. The findings reveal that, most advertising slogans are not informative in themselves. Readers have to rely on the additional information given, to fully understand the advert. Also revealed is that, an advertisement that seeks to be informative is not concise, while too an advert that seeks to be concise is not informative.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background of the Study

The term „language‟ has a wide range of application. This has prompted several definitions by linguists focusing on the different aspects of language, such as the general concept of language, the formal features of language; phonology, grammar and semantics. Some linguists emphasize on the functions performed by language, while others have applied language figuratively to all forms of human behaviour, such as the languages of music, medicine, computer and theatre. The language of advertising falls into this group.

Languages have developed and are constituted in their present forms in order to meet the needs of communication in all its ramifications. Sapir (1921), in Crystal (1972:396) defines language as “a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols”. Language interacts with every other aspect of human life in society, and itcan be understood only if it is considered in relation to society. A language is both a working system of communication in the period and in the community wherein it is used.