A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISING LANGUAGE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Thai Cong Dan, Tran Ha Tu Ngan, Thai Phan Bao Han

Abstract


The study provided the analysis of advertising language in English and Vietnamese from a semantic point of view and specified semantic means used in aforementioned languages’ advertising writing. The paper was addressed to English for Special Purposes (ESP) students and teachers, as well as linguisticians and people working in the advertising industry. The research was carried out on 100 advertising slogans (50 in English and 50 in Vietnamese). The findings from descriptive analysis and comparative methods revealed that the lack of semantic figurative languages and equivocal statements served as the most distinctive difference between Vietnamese and English. The most and least adopted figurative devices in the two languages were identified. Based on the results of the study, the researchers also proposed suggestions and implications for further research.

 

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advertising language, descriptive analysis, figurative languages, semantics

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejals.v7i2.535

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