Persuasive effect of figures of speech in the english of advertisements in the Ghanaian Press

Abstract

Little is known about persuasive effects of figures of speech in the English of advertisements in Ghanaian press. In the current study, we focused on this persuasive effect of figures of speech in the English employed in advertisements in newspapers in Ghana. Since advertising is a genre of mass media communication which unearths the exceptional qualities of products and services in a persuasive fashion, it is also a form of marketing communication through which business organizations inform the general public about new or improved commercial endeavors. Therefore, language plays an indispensable role in the transmission of the message. The language of advertising influences the reasoning, thinking, feeling and the general attitude of the audience. The study reported about in this article was underpinned by the Conventional Figurative Language Theory, utilizing the qualitative content analysis approach as the analytical framework. The findings revealed that copywriters of the Ghanaian newspapers employed English figures of speech (tropes and rhetorical figures) in advertisements for persuasive effect