Theories of Discourse and the Advertising Text

Abstract

For the analysis of advertising text, discourse theories can be leveraged, which fall under disciplines such as pragmatics, stylistics, and rhetoric. These theories successfully exploit mechanisms of implication, lexical creativity, stylistic innovation, and the connection between verbal and nonverbal elements. Expressiveness in advertising represents a special case of artistic expressiveness, and understanding it benefits significantly from discussions that integrate perspectives from a variety of discourse theories.