"How you know?": language choice and linguistic features in advertisements

Abstract

Language is a vital tool to effective advertisements. Copywriters manipulate it to great lengths to capture the audience's interest. One of the techniques to achieve this is 'to look for consumer insights by understanding the consumers' mind-set - appeal to the target audience by speaking their language' (Gill 2002 : 98). This paper examines the language choice and the linguistic features used in verbal messages in advertisements featured in the local media. The findings indicate that the Malaysian colloquial English is quite popular in the advertisements. Thus, this paper discusses such use and its possible impact on the kind of English that we have today.