A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF

ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN SELECTED BILLBOARD

ADVERTS IN NIGERIA

Akinyele Kolade Abel (2014)

kurlarday@gmail.com

+2348034791190, +2348180458852

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 INTRODUCTION

This study is a pragmatic analysis of the use of English in

selected billboard adverts of products consumed or used in

Nigeria. Ten textual samples will be analyzed using the

pragmasociolinguistic concept; a concept which examines the

pragmatic, social and linguistic contexts with generated

advertisers’ choice of linguistic elements. The study observes

that; illocutionary forces (speech acts) are intentionally

directed towards the advertisers’ communicative intentions; in

commercial adverts, language is mainly a persuasive

instrument; in their choices of words, advertisers rely on the

mutual knowledge they have with their audience. As it will be

generally noted in this study, presuppositions are potent in

commercial bill-board adverts.

1.2 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The word ‘pragmatics’ was derived from the Greek word ‘pragma’

which means ‘deed’ or ‘action’. Pragmatics has emerged as a

reaction against the hitherto-purely formalist approach to

language study; an approach which had deprived man of the most

outstanding of his ability; the ability to negotiate a meaning

to the world instead of extracting a meaning that was already

there. The emergence of pragmatics has caused the replacement

of the idea of ‘linguistic competence’ with ‘communicative

competence’. Linguists who have championed the cause of a

context-dependent layer of linguistic study included: Austin,

Lyons, Searle, Leech and Halliday. A pragmatic analysis of

language use in advertisement is an investigation of how

language has functioned in communication between the

advertiser and his audience. This has incorporated the fields

of linguistics, philosophy, communication theories, psychology

and marketing. Leech has cited ‘that English of advertising

has aroused though hardly engaged the interest of linguists’.

It is understood that the pragmatic analysis of language is

the investigation into that aspect of meaning which was

derived not from the formal properties of words and

constructions, but from the way in which utterances were used

and how they are related to the context in which they were

uttered. According to Leech (1983: 57), the scope of

pragmatics includes:

i) the message being communicated

ii) the participants involved in the message

iii) the knowledge of the world which they share

iv) the deductions to be made from the text on the basis of

the context

v) the impact of the non-verbal aspect of interaction on

meaning.

However, in this study, the dimensions of language shall be

investigated in commercial bill-board adverts by using the

tools of pragmatics, evolved by different theorists in the

literature: speech acts, (locutionary, illocutionary and

perlocutionary acts) presupposition, mutual contextual

beliefs, world knowledge, non- verbal communication and

cooperative principles.

The study of speech acts (which is the core of pragmatics) has

grown appreciably, but from a theoretical perspective in

particular. In this study, the theoretical base of speech act

study will be extended to practical climes, using textual

samples that are probably different from those analyzed in

previous studies of language used in advertisements; also,

critical comments that appear novel in the literature of

pragmatics will be examined.

This study will contend that advertisers are not unaware of

the nature of communication; they have known that

communication could make or mar society, unite or separate

people, foster or destroy ties, promote or hinder patronage.

This research will posit that language should be appropriately

used in adverts. Advertisers have achieved their illocutionary

goals by skilfully manipulating linguistic and para-linguistic

elements of communication. For example, advertisers have

decided on what constitute captivating, exciting, persuasive

and all- embracing language. Many business organizations have

failed because of lack of patronage which could be traceable

to poor advertising strategies. The consumers or would- be

consumers may not be fascinated by certain products, but by

the pragmatic use of language (the speech act machinery) in

the advertisement of such products. This research effort shall

align with the philosophical saying that ‘the word is mightier

than the sword’. It has been noted that people have the

general belief that the language of advertisement is

exaggerative and deceptive. People have claimed that

advertisers deliberately manipulate language to achieve

intended persuasive effects. However, in this study, it will

be shown that advertisement might not be successful if the

pragmatics is sacrificed on the altar of persuasive language;

advertisers did not just use speech acts to persuade, but have

also taken care to adhere strictly to pragmatic matrix.

Man has used language (as evident in commercial adverts), to

communicate his individual thoughts and feelings as well as

psychological experience. The advertiser, for example, has

personal feelings about the taste of the public (he may even

have sound knowledge of it) and the desire of the consumer

(since he has assumed that the consumer is a rational

thinker); a rational thinker would read the advertisement

contents on different products and decide which is preferable

despite his background knowledge of how deceptive language of

adverts could be in the country. Man, being a social animal,

interacts inevitably with others in society; he relates both

with people and with social institutions. In deciding on

advertisement strategies, the advertiser has taken into

consideration, the idea of ‘sociology of language’ or

‘sociolinguistics’. The advertiser might not be conscious of

these nomenclatures used in linguistics, but they reflect in

his advertising strategies. Simply put, advertisers have

targeted their adverts at society, using social realities;

advertisers have used language to achieve intended effects on

the target audience with whom the advertisers have shared same

background knowledge. The study has noted that both linguistic

and paralinguistic elements are employed by advertisers as

illocutionary strategies. For effective advertising,

advertisers have employed the norms (formal properties) and

pragmatics (individualistic dimensions) of language use as

well as other media of communication. Scholars have opined

that for a meaningful analysis of texts through a pragmatic-

analyst approach, it is necessary to acknowledge the fact that

pragmatics, syntax and semantics co-exist. Adding to this

observation, Brown and Yule stated that any analytical

approach to linguistics, which involves contextual

considerations, belongs to that area of study called

pragmatics. They commented further on context phenomenon,

saying, “the actual context is defined by the period of time

and the place where the common activities of speaker and

hearer are realized and which satisfy the property of ‘here’

and ‘now’, logically, physically and cognitively’’. We

observed that the pragmatic theories of Austin (1962), Grice

(1975) Bach and Harnish (1979) as well as Adegbija’s approach

(E. Adegbija, Indiana University, USA, Unpublished Ph.D

Dissertation) as described below will be useful for a

comprehensive analysis in this study.

Austin posited that words count as actions, being that, in

uttering certain words in certain contexts, actions are done,

as long as the felicity conditions for the performance of such

locutionary acts were met by participants of discourse. It has

been noted that his classification of speech acts into

locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts will be

useful in this study, because such classifications have shown

that advertisers’ choice of words have conveyed intended

illocutionary forces and have also generated or yielded

intended perlocutionary effects on the target audience. Grice

has contended that the Cooperative Principle of Conversation,

spelt out by maxims of Quality, Quantity, Manner and Relevance

generate conversational implicatures, when flouted by

participants of discourse. He has submitted also, that besides

conversational implicatures, there are conventional

implicatures, which are generated from the conventional

meanings of words. It has been noted that in billboard

adverts, conventional issues are of both immediate and remote

relevance to the audience.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objectives of this research effort are highlighted below:

( 1.) To examine the contextual use of English in selected

billboard adverts in Nigeria.

(2. ) It will also look into how the samples of advertisement

selected for this study comply with the cooperative principles

of pragmatics.

(3.) It will examine the various ways in which advertisements

reflect the socio-cultural experience of the consumers and

advertisers in a particular context.

(4.) It will show how advertisers effectively or fail to

convey their intended messages and information about a product

to the consumers with their use of English.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

With the rocketing development of technology and commercial

economy, the design and types of advertisement vary greatly.

In the mean time, the social role that advertisements play

attracts more and more attentive eyes in the society. It is

clearly seen that advertisement makers exert great effort in

the use of language, which becomes more and more delicate,

attractive, and offers much for thought. Advertising language,

considered as having interactional function, does not merely

inform the customers about what is sold, but also to attract

the customers’ attention so that an act of purchasing will

expectedly follow from the language expression. Thus, it is

evident that it is the advertisers’ attempt to establish a

good social relationship with the customers.

Therefore, the charming specialty and exquisite form of

advertising language contribute considerably to the selling of

products. The study and analysis of advertising language, as

well, becomes a new item for language learners. This study

will mainly focus on the analysis of advertising language from

the pragmatic aspect, especially Grice’s cooperative

principle. The pragmatic implicature in advertisement use

still has many good and typical examples. Through the analysis

in the light of the cooperative principle, it is better to

understand the advertising language and help develop the

design of new and more exquisite advertisements. In the

meantime, it can be seen that the implicature of most

advertisements can be controlled so as to give consumers

enough space to deduct the deep and non-conventional

implicatures from the literal semantic meanings.

1.5 CONCLUSION

So far, this is an attempt to achieve a brief but

comprehensive introduction of this research work. Having done

that, a review of relevant materials, articles and journals

relevant to this research topic will be considered in the next

chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 A HISTORY OF ADVERTISING IN NIGERIA

Advertising is a non-personal way of passing messages of the

products and services of an identified sponsor for the purpose

of reminding, persuading and informing the prospects to make

purchase.

Advertising in Nigeria can be traced to the establishment of

the first newspaper by an Anglican missionary named Rev Henry

Townsend. The newspaper which was called ‘iwe iroyin’ devoted

some of its pages to adverts. Later, newspaper emerged and

also placed advert in their Newspaper.

The history of modern advertisement began in the colonial

times and could be traced to have started in 1928 with the

birth of West African Publicity Limited. Derived from UAC, it

was established to cater for the needs of the colonial masters

in Nigeria and West Africa. This company later became an

advertising agency in 1929 named Lintas with two other

subsidiaries: Newly Afromedia (the outdoor medium) and

Pearl/Dean (the cinema arm). In the 1950's, new advertising

agencies emerged. With the setting up of the companies then

headed by expatriates, the companies were to enjoy monopoly

for a long time, but it was not until 1950’s when other

advertising agencies started to emerge on the scene. Ogilvy,

Benson and Martha (OBM) and Grant were later to join the fray

to form the big three in the industry.

The medium of advertising was in its infancy in those days

when Federal Government owned National Broadcasting

Corporation (NBC) was the only television station that

operated in the four regions of East, West, North and later

Midwest.

With the increase in practitioners and agencies, a regulatory

body had to be formed to standardize their practices. A

meeting of the agencies held at Ebute Metta, Lagos in 1971 was

to metamorphose into Association of Advertising Practitioners

of Nigeria (AAPN) with the objective of protecting

practitioners against unfavourable business. The association

was later renamed Association of Advertising Agencies of

Nigeria. The need to establish an institution to regulate

advertising practice became apparent. This gave rise to the

establishment of Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria

(APCON) by Decree 55 of 1988, later renamed Act 55 of 1988 by

the civilian administration on November 1989, the first

meeting of the association held somewhere in Ebute-meta, Lagos

finally culminated to the birth of APCON.

In the 1990's the sector came alive, it began to expand beyond

advertising as full services public relation firms such as the

Quadrant JSP and Quest were established. Also the era

witnessed the mad rush of foreign affiliations. While some

agencies sought this affiliation to help boost their human

capital, others just joined the bandwagon just to feel among.

Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria

(MIPAN), Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN)

emerged.

Today, Nigerian advertising industry is making efforts to

ensure that they measure up to global industry practice.

Affiliations also avail them of technical knowhow in the areas

of creativity and training. The industry has grown to shooting

their adverts locally and injecting a lot of local content in

their campaigns. The regulatory body of advertising, APCON, is

living up to expectations by the measures put in place to

sanitize the industry. Of note is professionalizing the

practice to ensure that quacks are reduced if not flushed out

completely. Again, measures are adopted to ensure

practitioners operate within set advertising standards.

Sectional associations include broadcasting organisation of

Nigeria (BON), Media Independent Practitioners Association of

Nigeria (MIPAN), Advertisers Association of Nigeria (AAN),

Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) and

Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN).

2.2 ADVERTISING AND THE PRAGMATIC THEORY OF TRUTH

The pragmatic truth theory refers to those accounts,

definitions, and theories of the concept of truth in question,

various along lines that reflect the influence of several

thinkers initially and notably, Charles S. Pierce and William

James. There are also a number of common features that can be

identified. The most characteristic features are a reliance on

the pragmatic maxim as a means of clarifying the meanings of

difficult concepts, truth in particular, and an emphasis on

the fact that the product is variously branded as belief,

certainty, or truth is the result of a process. As Pierce

(1901: 565) states:

‘Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with

the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would

tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance with

the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the

confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this

confession is an essential ingredient of truth’.

Pierce understands all thoughts as signs, and thus, according

to his theory of thought, no thought is understandable outside

the context of sign relation. Sign relations taken

collectively are the subject matter of a theory of signs.

Therefore, Pierce’s semiotics; his theory of sign relations,

are keys to understanding his entire philosophy of pragmatic

thinking. According to the Pragmatic Theory of Truth in

Advertising, Advertisers should be held responsible not only

for conventional implicatures of what they say, but also for

conversational implicatures of what they say (Cline 1998: 18).

Utterances, as a kind of language information passing state,

are not always so direct and clear, but on the contrary, in a

roundabout way with the basic condition of maintaining

communication. The correct and successful application of

pragmatic implicature can be a significant way of language

expression technique. Moreover appropriate language technique

will in different degrees change the conventional language to

non-conventional ones and to achieve speakers’ special

purposes. However, the use of conversational implicature

should be better controlled and take the audience’s

comprehension level, the position of the content and the

aesthetic requirement into consideration. This is especially

crucial in advertising language (Guown 1997: 2).

Moreover, Language is the media for human communication and

information transmission. In daily communication, our

conversation includes both conventional and non-conventional

sense of the linguistic expressions uttered. However, non-

conventional implicature indicates more than what is actually

said. The conversational implicature of the speaker is

expressed through the combination of literal semantic meaning

with a specific context. Pragmatics recognizes the importance

of context, and thus can reveal the meaning underlying a

certain utterance. To construct the appropriate meaning in an

exchange, the speakers and the hearers need to negotiate it,

taking physical, social, and linguistic contexts as well as

the meaning potential of the utterances into consideration

(Thomas 1995:20 ). Grice (1975: 45) shifts the focus to

those aspects of meaning which are not semantically

determined. He calls these conversational implicature, as

opposed to semantically determined conventional implicature.

Conversational implicature is worked out from the meaning of

the sentence uttered, together with the context, on the basis

of the assumption that communication is governed by the co-

operative principle. The assumption is that the speaker has

observed certain general maxims of communication.

In a series of influential and controversial papers of Grice

(1957:66), (1968: 4), (1969: 68), he argues that the meaning

of a word or a non-natural sign in general is a derivative

function of what speakers mean by that word in individual

instances of uttering it. That is, the universal type ‟

meaning, or a set of such meanings, for a given word is an

abstraction from the token meanings that speakers mean for the

word in specific instances of use”. Among other

things, this account opposes the formalist orthodoxy in

semantic theory, according to which the universal conventional

meaning or set of meaning of a word predetermines what that

word may mean by a word in a certain utterance; in order to

understand the utterance, it is enough to know what the word

means. But Grice holds that what a word means derives from

what speakers mean by uttering it; and he further holds that

what a particular speaker or writer means by a sign on a

particular occasion may diverge from the standard meaning of

the sign (Grice 1957: 381).

Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory provides the most

comprehensive account of utterance interpretation and the

pragmatic theory of truth. Their framework is based on

ostentation (an attempt to hide the real thing), the

communicator’s intention to communicate and to publicise his

intention, and the principle that an ostensive stimulus

creates a presumption of optimal relevance. The task of the

audience in ostensive communication is to process the

communicator’s utterance against background information and

derive an interpretation which is consistent with the

principle of relevance. Relevance Theory will later be applied

to the analysis of advertisements in this study; focussing on

convert communication, puns, and metaphors. Moreover,

Sperber and Wilson (1995: 260) postulated that there are two

principles of relevance, defined as follows:

1- Human cognition tends to be geared to the maximisation of

relevance.

2- Every act of ostensive communication communicates a

presumption of its own optimal relevance.

The first principle is to do with cognition, while the second

one is about communication.

2.3 THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF GRICE AND THE ADVERTISING

LANGUAGE

Grice's suggestion is that there is a set of over-arching

assumptions that guide the conduct of conversation. These

arise from basic rational considerations and may be formulated

as guidelines for the efficient and effective use of language

in conversation to further cooperative ends. Grice identifies

as guidelines of this sort four basic maxims of conversation

or general principles that underlie the efficient cooperative

use of language, which jointly express a general cooperative

principle. The cooperative principles are expressed as

follows: the maxim of quality, the maxim of quantity, the

maxim of relevance, and the maxim of manner. Details about

each of these maxims would be discussed in the chapter three

of this research. But in this regard, Widdowson (2007: 130)

demonstrated that,

"These are the four tenets of the cooperative principle.

The quantity maxim relates to amount of information

provided, the quality maxim to its truth, the relation

maxim to its relevance, and the manner maxim to how it is

expressed."

In short, these maxims specify what participants have to do in

order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational,

cooperative way. Thus, they should speak sincerely,

relevantly, clearly, and provide sufficient information.

Grice’s theory leads to new studying interests in pragmatic

field, and eventually becomes the basis for pragmatic study

(Grice 1975: 41-43).

The appropriate application and control of Grice’s cooperative

principle in advertising language help the full expression of

producers in their selling and provide sufficient food for

thought.

The study of implicatures has developed very well and now it

is forming the cornerstone of most pragmatic approaches. This

linguist and philosopher Herbert Paul Grice is principally

associated with implicatures. He argued that in natural

language, communication can take place when speakers enter a

non-verbal agreement over methods of interpreting what is

being said. This agreement takes into considerations the rules

by which implicatures work and have a form of cooperation

which is called the cooperative principle, this principle

including its maxims of quality, quantity, relation and

manner, has been greatly influential in grammar studies (Finch

2000: 149).

An important note about these maxims is not to consider them

representing a descriptive statement of how conversational

contributions are. For there are occasions when speakers

decide to unostentatiously violate a maxim, s/he may lie, s/he

may give information that has lack of relevance, or may

provide utterances that can be later realized as ambiguous.

“Moreover, there are much more important occasions when a

speaker breaks a maxim for certain reasons such as s/he

faces a clash between two maxims, and that would make it

impossible for the speaker/writer to be as specific as

s/he should be and still his speech would lack adequate

evidence, perhaps he chose to flout a maxim, that is to

say he may blatantly fail to fulfil it. In such cases,

the conversational maxims provide a basis for the reader

to infer what is conversationally being implicated”

(Coulthard 1985: 31).

Grice's cooperative principle is a principle of conversation,

claiming that participants expect that each will make a

'conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage

at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of

the talk exchange in which you are engaged' (Grice 1975: 45).

The idea of Grice's maxims is to make it clear to language

users what good communication practice is and if we all make

an effort to follow them we can become more effective in

talking to each other. The maxims are not rules but rather

conventions or right things to do.

A number of studies have been done of Grice's framework, such

as Kasher (1976, 1982, 1986, 1987) and Keenan (1976). It has

been argued that Grice's maxims are not held by speakers of

various cultures. For example, Keenan (1976) stated that

people in Madagascar tend not to give information when

required, thus intentionally and systematically violating

Grice's Quantity Maxim. Keenan questioned the feasibility that

the maxims can apply universally and independently of culture,

style and genre. Kasher (1982) suggested that Keenan's and

similar apparent counter-examples to Grice's maxims could be

better explained in terms of the rationality principles and

its consequences, if proper attention is paid not only to its

'most effective' component but also to its 'at least cost'

component. It was observed that Malagasy speakers seemed to

try to strike some balance between being most effective in

presenting their beliefs, while paying the least cost in terms

of commitments they wish to spare (Kasher 1982).

Clyne's (1994) revised maxims for intercultural analysis have

more regard for the communicative patterns of non-English

cultures; however, they don't altogether meet the needs of

inter-cultural communication. The universality of Grice's Co-

operative Principle and Brown and Levinson's theory of

politeness (Brown and Levinson 1987) has been questioned

(Wierzbicka 1985, 1991/2003 and Goddard and Wierzbicka 1997)

on the basis of cultural relativity and different cultural

scripts. For example, there would be different expectations

and interpretations of sincerity and relevance in a given

communication, or in the ranking of imposition when making a

request.

Wilson and Sperber (2002) question the view that verbal

communication is governed by a maxim, norm or convention of

truthfulness which applies at the level of what is literally

meant, or what is said. They argue that verbal communication

is governed by expectations of relevance, raised by literal,

loose and figurative uses alike. In addition, they state that

the notions of 'literal meaning' and 'what is said' play no

useful theoretical role in the study of language use, and that

the nature of explicit communication would have to be

rethought.

A number of questions have been raised, including the source

of the cooperative principle and maxims (e.g. whether they are

culturally specific or universal), definition of terminologies

(e.g. vagueness of 'relevance') and adequate explanation of

comprehension procedure (e.g. exactly how hearers identify

conversational implicatures).

In general, there have been three directions for the

development of Grice's original proposals:

(a) To further develop Grice's maxims while remaining close to

the spirit of the original maxims, including Levinson (1983,

2000), Brown and Levinson (1987), Horn (1973, 1984) and Clark

(1996).

(b) To propose alternative principles and maxims, including R.

Lakoff (1973, 1976), Leech (1983), Attardo (1997, 1999, 2000).

(c) To substitute Grice's original proposal with a more

general cognitive principle, i.e. Sperber and Wilson's

relevance-theoretic framework (1986/1995, 1998, 2002, Wilson

and Sperber 2004).

It should be pointed out that Grice's maxims depict a rosy,

idealised and simplified language use, whereas reality is a

much more complex and multi-dimensional. In actual

conversations, telling the whole truth might be seen as

impolite or somehow inappropriate. There also tend to be

cross-cultural differences, not always following a universal

principle. It seems that some cultures/languages (e.g.

Chinese) prescript their speakers quite frequently to express

things in an indirect manner, which means they are unable to

follow Grice's maxims. In such cases, there is a clash between

Grice's maxims and the pragmatic rules of conversation, which

are culturally sensitive. For example, when being offered a

drink, a typical Chinese would habitually say no the first

time while expecting the offer would be made at least twice or

three times. This is a kind of phatic language communication,

i.e. saying no and not really meaning no. In this sort of

situation, if someone doesn't play by the cultural norm, then

s/he would sound odd.

2.4 IMPLICATURES IN THE ADVERTISING LANGUAGE

In advertising, many scholars usually misrepresent entailment

for implicature. Entailment is a term derived from formal

logic and now often used as part of the study of semantics; it

is also called entailingness. It refers to a relation between

a pair of sentences such that the truth of the second sentence

necessarily follows from the truth of the first, e.g. “I can

see a dog- I can see an animal”(Crystal 2003: 162). Another

example can be given about entailment:

(a) Dr. Ntekim drives a Ford.

(b) Dr. Ntekim drives a car.

It is easy to notice that if (a) is true, then (b) has to be

true too, therefore, (a) entails sentence (b).

Moreover, the concept of implicature differs slightly from

entailment, but these two concepts are related in a way that

makes them sometimes tricky to tease apart, as far as language

use is concerned. Let us take this pair of sentences:

(1) Not everyone is going to come for the school party today.

(2) Someone is going to come for the school party today.

A reader may believe that sentence (1) entails sentence (2),

but it actually does not. That is if a school party is

arranged and some friends are invited; one may say “not

everyone is going to come”, then respond with “at least

someone is going to come” and it will be surprising to arrive

and see that absolutely no one shows up at the party, because

the sentence “not everyone is going to come” implicates that

someone is going to come, but however does not entail it.

Moreover, it is important to notice that “not everyone is

going to come” can also be true in a situation which “no one

is going to come.”

Considering the above illustration, it is seen that the

Gricean maxim of quantity plays a role. For if a person wanted

to mean that “no one is going to come” s/he would have said so

and that contribution would be as informative as required.

Bearing this in mind, implicature can be implied to the

advertising language as this advert sample:

123 Filters remove bacteria from your drinking water.

In a normal language use, a reader can understand this advert

as, if you use 123 Filters, these filters will remove all the

bad bacteria from your drinking water; but that is not

actually entailed from the mentioned advertisement. On the one

hand, some entailment is that bacteria are removed by 123

filters, then this claim is true. On the other hand, if that

is the truth, then the consumer would be deceived if s/he buys

123 filters on the basis of the above claim, because s/he

understands what is implicated not what was entailed.

Implicature is the essence of our communication, and people

often understand implicature to be the same as entailment in

our daily communication, although the two concepts are not the

same (Gazdar 1979: 42). It is worth mentioning that this type

of sentence used in this sample advert is called generic

because it has a possible general reading. Generic sentences

have the property of making strong statements, such as “dogs

bark” which means that a general property of dogs that they

bark. In the bacteria advertisement, the consumer finds the

generic reading which is often the default reading in such

constructions which is “all bacteria.” However, also there is

a possibility that the sentence has a non-generic or literal

reading. If the advertiser meant by the advertisement that

only “some bacteria” will be removed by 123 filters then s/he

violates the maxim of relevance; that is if we consider the

consumer is interested in buying the filter to ensure water

purity. The advertiser here is exploiting the default nature

of generic reading in order to take advantage of the

consumer’s belief upon the advertisement as referring to “all

bacteria” or “all harmful bacteria”.

Based on the previous discussion, it is noticed that

advertising often takes advantage of implicature in order to

create claims which people interpret to be more powerful than

they actually are.

Moreover, there is another example of an advertisement using

implicature:

Mr.Bigg’s Chicken has one third less salt.

This above advertisement could seem a bit vague from the first

glance, but reasonably it can be interpreted as the chicken is

one third less salt than other relevant benchmark. That

benchmark could have less level of salt compared to a major

competitor, considering the average of all nationally sold

chickens, of an earlier production of Mr.Bigg’s chicken. This

analysis is due to Gricean maxim, for it would be totally

irrelevant to claim that the mentioned chicken contains one

third less salt than Sweet Sensation’s Chicken. Here it is realized

that communication can be misleading since advertisement

readers make implicatures that are not necessarily true, for

all it would take for the advertisement to be true for the

advertiser to claim that the sentence is literally true.

The main point to draw attention to is the limitations of

logical entailment for understanding how meaning works, for

implicature plays a huge role in our daily communication with

each other.

And advertisers take advantage of that by making many

misleading claims. For sometimes advertising misleading can be

surprising. Let us also consider this advertisement:

The Ford LTD is 700% quieter.

A reader may interpret that Ford LTD is 700% quieter than other

kinds of cars, or other Ford brands, but apparently Ford

Company had admitted that they meant “the Ford LTD is 700%

quieter than the outside.” In this case, Ford here by this

claim is testing the line between vague claims and deceit

(Kempson 1986:239).

Furthermore, it is essential at this juncture to examine the

inference process of conversational implicature and

selectiveness:

Conversational implicature:

(a) The speaker/advertiser means more than he says; he says A

but actually means B.

(b) Both speaker/advertiser and hearer are aware that the

speaker/advertiser has, either intentionally or

unintentionally, violated a maxim.

(c) The speaker/advertiser assumes that the hearer will, one

way or another (via context, knowledge and common sense,

etc.), manage to figure out B from A.

It should be noted that one of the reasons for using

conversational implicature is that the speaker/advertiser

counts on the hearer being able to work out what is implied.

Selectiveness:

(a) The speaker is being selective in giving certain

information and using certain words to suit certain purposes

(e.g. advertising or politeness). They say A and mean A.

(b) Both speaker and hearer are aware that the speaker, either

intentionally or unintentionally, is being less informative

about certain aspects (but not necessarily violating the

maxims). Usually the hearer is aware that the speaker may

withhold certain information.

(c) The speaker hopes that the hearer cannot work out the

information they are trying to withhold.

As shown, the inference process for selectiveness and the

conversational implicatures is not quite the same. In the

former case, the interesting thing is that the speaker

probably knows at the start that the hearer would eventually

work out the unspoken part of the information (although it is

not the speaker's intention), but since being selective is

common practice and people from both ends master it well, we

keep doing it. In the case of being polite, both parties know

that the speaker is just being polite by not saying anything

bluntly. It is not a matter of using a correct language form

to state the fact; but a matter of pragmatic requirement (not

being rude). Meanwhile, the hearer's inference has not come

through systematic logical reasoning; it is an informal

inference/reasoning in an everyday situation.

Finally, in terms of how the inferential process is made by

the hearer in the case of the selectiveness principle, two

elements are crucial: common sense and background knowledge

shared with the speaker; and the pragmatic meaning of the

linguistic items used in a specific situation. For example,

seeing the wording 'a cosy and easy care house' in a real

estate advertisement, readers should normally be able to infer

that the house is probably 'small' by using common sense and

reading between the lines.

2.5 THE COMMUNICATIVE FORM OF THE ADVERTISING LANGUAGE

The volume of scholarly outputs on advertising attests to the

fact that, it is a viable area of research. Generally,

scholars have approached advertising from both academic and

professional perspectives. For academic discourse, scholars

have identified various diversities of language use as well as

pragmatic and discourse features in advertising. Adegoju

(2008) situates the discourse of advertising within the ambit

of rhetoric which he affirms as the fundamental of advertising

language, especially in herbal medicine which he studied

extensively. He explains that “the principles of rhetoric in

persuading the audience to act or think in the desired manner

of the advertiser are noteworthy” (p. 1). In effect, the

skill of persuasion is germane in effective advertising

endeavors. For Awonusi (1996), advertising language,

especially the political type he studied, thrives on

linguistic dexterity that foreground salient aspects of

language use. The scholar also dwelled extensively on various

elements of language and how each is purposively reflected in

the messages studied in the political realm. One key feature

of Awonusi’s paper is the analysis of the socio-political

relevance of key messages and their discourse strategies which

are shown to be engaging.

Language is not only a means of communication but also a

necessary condition for survival for human beings. Language is

a major part of our daily life being the basis of social

integration. Language, in any society is basically for

communication. It has enabled humankind to express and bring

to reality great ideas. In the word of Lucas (1995: 259)

"indeed language is vital to thinking itself". While to Oyewo

(2000: 157) communication is "the process of transmitting,

receiving and acting upon message/information, thoughts,

ideas, attitudes and feelings through mutually agreed

understandable/determined codes/symbols". This definition

contains key words like 'transmitting', 'receiving', 'acting

upon' and 'codes/symbols'. These terms point to the 'source',

'receiver', 'response' and 'language' respectively. It shows

that communication is a process. This process is actually used

to "inform, entertain, instruct and persuade in a given

communicative encounter" (Oyewo 2000: 157). The features

mentioned above bring to light the very intention of the

billboard advertisements which is to "persuade in a

communication encounter" and "to convey meaningful messages".

Thus, the importance of language alongside that of

communication is brought to the fore.

Every human society, from the most primitive to the most

advanced, depends on some form of communication network. As

communication is the essence of using language so it will be

virtually impossible for any group of people to define

successfully their common and binding interest without

language. Indeed, all the so-called higher activities of

humans spring from the close adjustment among individuals

which we call society and this adjustment, in turn, is based

upon language. Every society is organized into speech

communities, each comprising a group of people who interact by

means of speech. Therefore to live in many communities

requires familiarity with more than one, often more than two

languages.

Nigeria is indeed a multilingual nation with an estimated 516

languages (Gordon, 2005), each one playing a very significant

role in the community where it is in use. It is interesting to

note that apart from the many indigenous languages, which are

of course the mother tongues of Nigerians, non – indigenous

languages such as English, French, Arabic, German and Russian

also exist. English has become a second language in Nigeria,

while Nigerian Pidgin English, with probably the largest

number of speakers, has also emerged as a result of contact of

English with the indigenous languages (Dada 2007: 87). This

means that it is only logical for advertisers to use more than

one language in their commercial endeavour.

Salami (1999) states that in a given speech community,

speakers often use different varieties of language. The

varieties may be dialects of the same language, separate

languages, different speech styles or register. He also

stipulates the domains for code choice as topic, person (role

– relations) and locale / place. The choice of either Pidgin

English or Standard English by an advertiser is a strategy to

reach the target audience.

Contrary to popular belief, language may not mirror reality.

It does not simply describe the world as it is. Instead,

language helps create our sense of reality by giving meaning

to events. Language is not neutral. The words used to label an

event determine to a great extent the response to it. Language

has a powerful influence over people and their behaviour. In

advertising, the choice of language to convey specific

messages with the intention of influencing people is very

important. Visual content and design in advertising have a

very great impact on the consumer, but it is language that

helps people to identify a product and remember it. Thus, both

the mass media and the advertising personnel when reporting

news and when marketing, have to put into consideration the

emotive power of their words.

According to Bovee and Arens (1989: 13), advertisement is "a

communication process, a marketing process, an economic and

social process or an information process, a public relation

and persuasion process depending on the point of view".

Advertisement has also been defined by Daramola (1997: 145) as

"any paid form of non – personal presentation and promotion of

products, services, or ideas by an identifiable individual or

organization".

From these definitions above, the nature of advertisement

becomes evident as follows:

– advertisement has an identified author,

– advertisement is a non-personal communication,

– advertisement is paid for,

– advertisement is well planned,

– advertisement targets a specific audience,

– advertisement is purposeful.

Therefore, advertisement is a communicative process that

informs and influences the audience. People advertise to

announce the arrival in the market of a new product or

service; announce a product modification; announce a new pack;

announce a price change; make a special offer; expand the

market to buyers; invite enquiries; test the medium of

communication; educate the consumers; sustain and maintain the

market; recruit personnel among others. Thus, advertisements

use communicative techniques to enliven commercial activities

specifically the mass consumption of goods and services.

In studying the language of advertising, the ethnography of

communication has a considerable role to play. Ethnography of

communication, according to Finch (2000: 222), is "the study

of language in relation to the social and cultural variables

which influence communication." He explains further that all

societies have their own rules, or conventions, about how

language should be used in social interaction. It covers, for

example, how sentences are used to show deference, to get

someone to do something, to display verbal skill and so on.

Ethnography of communication is also concerned with social as

well as referential meaning and with language as part of

communicative conduct and social action. Again, an adequate

consideration of the interpretation of advertisements cannot

be done based purely on semantic interpretation without making

recourse to semiotics. Semiotics as a discipline studies

meaning which derives from linguistic and non-linguistic forms

of communication. It examines symbols, signs and images,

pictures, diagrams, etc. as communicative artifacts.

Advertisements generally adopt semiotic elements as a base to

effect non-verbal communication. These are mainly in the form

of graphics, cinematic devices and audio effects. In print

adverts, there is usually an image component which is

typically a scene that provides the background for the entire

advertisement with the slogan of the advertiser's choice.

Furthermore, this image may or may not be a representation of

the product. Thus, the need for a semiotic interpretation of

such non-verbal signals in a study of advertisements.

Advertisers often use special words or phrases called weasel

words. These expressions are often misleading. A weasel word

is a modifier that practically negates the claim that follows

it. The expression "weasel word" is aptly coined after the egg

eating habits of weasels. A weasel will suck out the inside of

an egg, leaving it with an infant appearance to the casual

observer. Examples of these words are: helps, works, best,

good, goodness.

With the way advertisers use language to promise consumers

heaven on earth, it seems brilliant writings have no place in

advertising. Hence, this study hopes to provide answers to the

following questions:

– What kind of language is employed in advertising?

– What do advertisers encode in their message?

Language use cannot be excluded from the factors that cause

the failure of an advert to reach its target audience. Thus,

the need to explore this factor into details in a study like

this.

CHAPTER THREE

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

3.1 THEORY: PRAGMATICS

Over the years, the study of pragmatics as a linguistic theory

had received diverse attention from different language

scholars. According to Steve Campsall (1998); Pragmatics is a

way of investigating how sense can be made of certain texts

even when, from a semantic viewpoint, the text seems to be

either incomplete or to have a different meaning to what is

really intended. Pragmatics allows us to investigate how

“meaning beyond the words” can be understood without

ambiguity. The extra meaning is there, not because of the

semantic aspects of the words themselves, but because we share

certain contextual knowledge with the writer or speaker of the

text.

Pragmatics is an important area of study. A simplified

way of thinking about pragmatics is to recognise, for

example, that language needs to be kept interesting - a

speaker or writer does not want to bore the listeners or

readers; for example, by being over-long or tedious. So,

humans strive to find linguistic means to make a text,

perhaps, shorter, more interesting, more relevant, more

purposeful or more personal.

Although pragmatics is a relatively new branch of linguistics,

research on it can be dated back to ancient Greece and Rome

where the term pragmaticus is found in late Latin and pragmaticos

in Greek, both meaning of being practical. Modern use and

current practice of pragmatics is credited to the influence of

the American philosophical doctrine of pragmatism. The

pragmatic interpretation of semiotics and verbal communication

studies in Foundations of the Theory of Signs by Morris

(1938), for instance, helped neatly expound the differences of

mainstream enterprises in semiotics and linguistics. For

Morris, pragmatics studies the relations of signs to

interpreters, while semantics studies the relations of signs

to the objects to which the signs are applicable, and

syntactics studies the formal relations of signs to one

another. By elaborating the sense of pragmatism in his concern

of conversational meanings, Grice (1975) enlightened modern

treatment of meaning by distinguishing two kinds of meaning,

natural and non-natural. Grice suggested that pragmatics

should centre on the more practical dimension of meaning,

namely the conversational meaning which was later formulated

in a variety of ways (Levinson, 1983; Leech, 1983).

Practical concerns also helped shift pragmaticians' focus to

explaining naturally occurring conversations which resulted in

hallmark discoveries of the Cooperative Principle by Grice

(1975) and the Politeness Principle by Leech (1983).

Subsequently, Green (1989) explicitly defined pragmatics as

natural language understanding. This was echoed by Blakemore

(1990) and Grundy (1995). The impact of pragmatism has led to

crosslinguistic international studies of language use which

resulted in, among other things, Sperber and Wilson's (1986)

relevance theory which convincingly explains how people

comprehend and utter a communicative act.

The Anglo-American tradition of pragmatic study has been

tremendously expanded and enriched with the involvement of

researchers mainly from the Continental countries such as the

Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium. A symbol of this

development was the establishment of the IPrA (the

International Pragmatic Association) in Antwerp in 1987. In

its Working Document, IPrA proposed to consider pragmatics as

a theory of linguistic adaptation and look into language use

from all dimensions (Verschueren, 1987). Henceforward,

pragmatics has been conceptualized as to incorporate micro and

macro components (Mey, 1993).

Throughout its development, pragmatics has been steered by the

philosophical practice of pragmatism and evolving to maintain

its independence as a linguistic subfield by keeping to its

tract of being practical in treating the everyday concerned

meaning.

Pragmatics is a systematic way of explaining language use in

context. It seeks to explain aspects of meaning which cannot

be found in the plain sense of words or structures, as

explained by semantics. Its origins lie in philosophy of

language and the American philosophical school of pragmatism.

As a discipline within language science, its roots lie in the

work Grice on conversational implicature and the cooperative

principle, and on the work of Stephen Levinson, Penelope Brown

and Geoff Leech on politeness.

We use language all the time to make things happen. We ask

someone to pass the salt or marry us - not, usually at the

same time. We order a meal from the restaurant or make

business appointments. Speech acts include asking for a glass

of beer, promising to drink the beer, threatening to drink

more beer, ordering someone else to drink some beer, and so

on. Some special people can do extraordinary things with

words, like baptizing a baby, declaring war, awarding a

penalty kick to a popular football club or sentencing a

convict.

Conversational Maxims and the Cooperative Principle

According to Grice (1975), the success of a conversation

depends upon the various speakers' approach to the

interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations

work is sometimes called the cooperative principle. We can

understand it partly by noting those people who are exceptions

to the rule, and are not capable of making the conversation

work. We may also, sometimes, find it useful deliberately to

infringe or disregard it - as when we receive an unwelcome

call from a telephone salesperson, or where we are being

interviewed by a police officer on suspicion of some terrible

crime.

Grice (1975) proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers

and hearers share a cooperative principle. Speakers shape

their utterances to be understood by hearers. The principle

can be explained by four underlying rules or maxims. (Crystal

calls them conversational maxims. They are also sometimes

named Grice's or Gricean maxims.)

They are the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and

manner:

Quality: speakers should be truthful. They should not say what

they think is false, or make statements for which they have no

evidence.

Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as is

required for the conversation to proceed. It should be neither

too little, nor too much. (It is not clear how one can decide

what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given

case.)

Relevance: speakers' contributions should relate clearly to

the purpose of the exchange.

Manner: speakers' contributions should be perspicuous: clear,

orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.

Grice does not of course prescribe the use of such maxims. Nor

does he suggest that we use them artificially to construct

conversations. But they are useful for analysing and

interpreting conversation, and may reveal purposes of which

(either as speaker or listener) we were not previously aware.

Very often, we communicate particular non-literal meanings by

appearing to “violate” or “flout” these maxims. If you were to

hear someone described as having “one good eye”, you might

well assume the person's other eye was defective, even though

nothing had been said about it at all.

Some linguists (such as Howard Jackson and Peter Stockwell,

who call it a “Super maxim”) single out relevance as of

greater importance than Grice recognised (Grice gives quality

and manner as super maxims). Assuming that the cooperative

principle is at work in most conversations, we can see how

hearers will try to find meaning in utterances that seem

meaningless or irrelevant. We assume that there must be a

reason for these. Jackson and Stockwell cite a conversation

between a shopkeeper and a 16-year old customer:

“Customer: Just these, please.

Shopkeeper: Are you eighteen?

Customer: Oh, I'm from Middlesbrough.

Shopkeeper: (after a brief pause) OK (serves

beer to him).”

Jackson H., and Stockwell, P.

(1996: 142)

Jackson and Stockwell suggest that “there is no explanation

for (the customer's) bizarre reply”. Perhaps this should be

qualified: we cannot be sure what the explanation is, but we

can find some plausible answer. Possible explanations might

include these:

The young man thought his being from Middlesbrough might

explain whatever it was about him that had made the

shopkeeper suspicious about his youth.

The young man thought the shopkeeper's question was

provoked by his unfamiliar manner of speaking, so he

wanted to explain this.

The young man was genuinely flustered and said the first

thing he could think of, while trying to think of a

better reason for his looking under-age.

The young man thought that the shopkeeper might treat

someone from Middlesbrough in a more indulgent manner

than people from elsewhere.

Jackson and Stockwell suggest further that the shopkeeper

“derived some inference or other” from the teenager's reply,

since she served him the beer. It might of course be that she

had raised the question (how old is this customer?) once, but

when he appeared to have misunderstood it, was not ready to

ask it again or clarify it - perhaps because this seemed too

much like hard work, and as a stranger, the teenager would be

unlikely to attract attention (from the police or trading

standards officers) as a regular under-age purchaser of beer.

In analysing utterances and searching for relevance we can use

a hierarchy of propositions - those that might be asserted,

presupposed, entailed or inferred from any utterance.

Assertion: what is asserted is the obvious, plain or surface

meaning of the utterance (though many utterances are not

assertions of anything).

Presupposition: what is taken for granted in the utterance. “I

saw the Mona Lisa in the Louvre” presupposes that the Mona

Lisa is in the Louvre.

Entailments: logical or necessary corollaries of an utterance,

thus, the above example entails:

I saw something in the Louvre.

I saw something somewhere.

Something was seen.

There is a Louvre.

There is a Mona Lisa, and so on.

Inferences: these are interpretations that other people draw

from the utterance, for which we cannot always directly

account. From this example, someone might infer, rationally,

that the Mona Lisa is, or was recently, on show to the public.

They might infer, less rationally, that the speaker has been

to France recently - because if the statement were about

something from years ago, he or she would have said so.

The Pragmasociolinguistic Concept

This approach, which is an extension of Bach and Harnish’s

(1979) Speech Act Theory, seeks to remedy the weaknesses in

the Speech Act Theory. The Pragmasociolinguistic concept is an

integrative approach suitable for the purpose of this

research. It incorporates: the social context consisting of

the setting (formal, historical or cultural), relationship

between participants; the pragmatic context or factors

consisting of the world knowledge of participants in the

language event, the linguistic context which influences the

choice of words used according to the communicative competence

of the illocutors. Adegbija (1982), one of the exponents of

this theory has contended that the Pragmasociolinguistic

concept accounts for the historical, personal, environmental,

socio-cultural and linguistic aspects of context. He explains

further that utterances are decoded at various layers of

meaning such as the primary, (stress, intonation, pitch and

other prosodic features). According to Acheoah (1982), another

exponent of Pragmasociolinguistic, the secondary layer of

interpretation of an utterance yields an indirect Speech Act,

being a higher level of interpretation. At the higher level,

presuppositions of speakers are worked out towards determining

meanings.

There is a consensus view that pragmatics as a separate study

is more than necessary because it handles those meanings that

semantics overlooks (Leech, 1983). Thus in spite of the

criticisms, the impact of pragmatics has been colossal and

multifaceted. The study of speech acts, for instance, provided

illuminating explanation into sociolinguistic conduct. The

findings of the cooperative principle and politeness principle

also provided insights into person-to-person interactions. The

choice of different linguistic means for a communicative act

and the various interpretations for the same speech act

elucidate human mentality in the relevance principle which

contributes to the study of communication in particular and

cognition in general. Implications of pragmatic studies are

also evident in language teaching practices. Deixis, for

instance, is important in the teaching of reading. Speech acts

are often helpful for improving translation and writing.

Pragmatic principles are also finding their way into the study

of literary works as well as language teaching classrooms.

3.2 METHODOLOGY

This research will examine various billboard advertisements

from different industries such as brewery, fast food outlets,

religious organisations, telecommunications and beverages. The

major analysis in the next chapter will be conducted by using

pragmatics theory to examine the relationship between the

texts and the structure, graphical symbols and meanings

conveyed by the data collected from the various billboard

advertisements (ten samples, two for each category). Also,

there will be proper examination of other statistical studies

in the field of pragmatics that look at which of the products’

advertisement is more appealing and endearing to the consumer.

3.2.1 METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION

This study will collect primary data by taking snap shots of

selected billboard adverts in Lagos. All the billboard adverts

selected for this research will be collected in Lagos; the

centre of commercial excellence. Two adverts are selected for

each of the five categories in order to get an unbiased

opinion about each category. The data collected for this

research are specially considered for the purpose of

accessibility, thematic coverage and for comprehensive data

analysis.

3.2.2 METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS

The samples for analysis are selected using parameters derived

from Grice (1975) and Leech (1983: 20-24). The parameters

include Cooperative Principles and Politeness Principles.

Also, the data collected for this research will be analysed

using Adegbija’s (1994: 34) approach which has as its core,

the “pragmasociolinguistic” context. With the help of

pragmasociolinguistic, this research will examine the various

ways in which advertisements reflect the socio-cultural

experience of the consumers and advertisers in a particular

context.

Thus, after identifying the pragmatic feature in each corpus,

we will examine the social and linguistic contexts that

generate them as stated in the objectives of this research.

The classification of the maxims of the cooperative principles

directs the analyses done in this study.

CHAPTER FOUR

DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

4.1 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, contemporary billboard adverts are presented

and analyzed in terms of both their registerial

characteristics and their structure. The adverts with their

texts are grouped so that certain characteristics such as

themes (the central idea of each billboard advert), linguistic

structures are easily identified.

4.2 DATA PRESENTATION

GROUP A: FAST FOOD OUTLETS

TEXT 1. SAUDI FOOD PALACE

TEXT 2. EXCELLENCY FAST FOOD

GROUP B: BREWERY

TEXT 3. GUINNESS EXTRA STOUT

TEXT 4. STAR LAGER BEER

GROUP C: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

TEXT 5. MTN

TEXT 6. GLOBACOM

GROUP D: RELIGION

TEXT 7. FREEDOM FAITH ASSEMBLY

TEXT 8. GOD HOUSE INTERNATIONAL

GROUP E: FOOD SPICES AND BEVERAGES

TEXT 9. MAGGI STAR

TEXT 10. LUNA MILK

4.3 DATA ANALYSIS

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