INVESTIGATING PRAGMATIC TRAPS IN ADVERTISING MESSAGES OF ZAIN – IRAQ TELECOMMUNICATION COMPANY

Basim Jubair Kadhim

Abstract


This paper discusses the use of pragmatic traps in advertising messages and their impact on customers, with a particular focus on the messages of Zain Telecommunication Company in Iraq. Pragmatic traps are false or misleading claims in advertising that deceive customers by distorting the reality of the product or service being offered. The research aims to investigate the extent to which Zain uses pragmatic traps in its advertisements and how these traps affect customers. The analysis of fifty advertising messages from Zain reveals a high use of persuasive language, emotional appeals, particularized and coded implicature, and violations of the maxims of quantity and quality of the cooperative principle. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the elective model of pragmatic traps in advertising and the ways in which advertisers can use language to manipulate the context and meaning of a message. As customers, it is important to be aware of these traps to make informed purchasing decisions.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


pragmatic traps, coded implicature, discourse of advertising, discourse of marketing

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bach, Robert. (2005). 'The Top 10 Misconceptions about Implicature'. John Benjamins.

Belk, R. W. (2013). Extended self in a digital world. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(3), 477-500.

Chen, X. (2017). Critical Pragmatic Studies on Chinese Public Discourse. Springer.

Cook, G. (2001). The discourse of advertising. Psychology Press.

Crocker, J. (2008). The role of the self in shaping beliefs and attitudes: Some implications for persuasion and attitude change. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2(5), 1751-1768.

Cruse, A. (2006). A glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Grice, H. P. (1991). Studies in the Way of Words. London: Harvard University Press.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In: P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, 41-58. New York: Academic Press.

Grundy, P. (2000). Doing Pragmatics. London. Hodder Headline: Group. 2nd ed.

Jubair, B. & Al-Hindawi, F. H. (2016). Irony in Electoral Political Speeches: A Pragmatic Model of Effective Strategies. Lambert Academic Publishing: Germany.

Jubair, B. K. (2023). International Education Studies and Sustainability. Toward a Comprehensive Model of the Pragmatization of Lexical Uniqueness with Reference to Iraqi Arabic. Vol. 3, No. 1, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22158/iess.v3n1p1

Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2010). Principles of marketing. Pearson Education.

Kunz, W. (2009). Pragmatic traps in advertisements. Marketing and Semiotics, 2, 45-59.

Mick, D. G., & Fournier, S. (1998). Paradoxes of technology: Consumer cognizance, emotions, and coping strategies. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(2), 123-143.

Obermiller, C., & Spangenberg, E. R. (1998). Development of a scale to measure consumer skepticism toward advertising. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7(2), 159-186.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-205.

Sassatelli, R. (2010). Consumer culture: history, theory and politics. Sage.

Szmigin, I., & Carrigan, M. (2006). The ethical consumer. Sage.

Tseng, Y. (2018). The impact of pragmatic traps on consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 25, 872-880.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v6i1.423

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2018-2023. European Journal of Applied Linguistics Studies (ISSN 2602 - 0254 / ISSN-L 2602 - 0254). All rights reserved.


This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.