A Grammatical and Semantic Analysis of Advertising Slogans of Home Appliances in Asia

บทคัดย่อ

To increase sales generation of a product, advertising slogans are essential language elements used to impress and attract consumers. The industry of home appliances in Asia seems to face heightened competition due to a variety of brands. Therefore, the outstanding use of advertising slogans can establish a strong brand identity, resulting in capturing the consumers’ interests. This study thus pays attention to a linguistic analysis of advertising slogans of such an industry. It aims to analyze the grammatical and semantic features of 50 advertising slogans in English for home appliances across Asia. This study combined both qualitative and quantitative research with the use of textual analysis. It employed theoretical framework on grammar of Biber et al. (1999), Greenbaum and Nelson (2002), and Finegan (2004) as well as on semantics of Leech (1981). Results revealed that the selected slogans used various grammatical structures. The most commonly used features were noun phrases and verb phrases while the least one was adverb phrases. In light of clauses, the slogans were formed in independent clauses with functions. Semantically, connotative meaning was mostly found in the slogans. Meanwhile, associative, social, and thematic meanings were less frequently presented in the slogans. Overall, these grammatical and semantic elements of the advertising slogans represent distinctive structures of the English language used in home appliances in Asia.