Use of rhetorical devices and teacher concern towards advertisements

Abstract

The research entitled “Use of Rhetorical Devices and Teacher Concern towards Advertisements” aimed to find out and categorize the rhetorical use of language of the advertisements, to analyze linguistic deviations, to find out teacher concern towards the advertisements and to suggest some pedagogical implication. To accomplish the objectives the researcher collected twenty educational advertisements randomly and purposively published in the four English newspapers in Nepal during the period of 2013 to 2015 A.D. and he analyzed the rhetorical tools and linguistic deviations found in the language of them. The researcher also collected data from ten English language teachers by using a set of questionnaire to find out their concern towards advertisements. The major findings of study were the advertisements incorporated rhetorical tools and linguistic deviations. The study revealed that most of the advertisements offered the use of imperative sentences as a prime rhetorical tools and other types of sentences used in advertisements were declarative, compound and complex sentence and the use of these types of sentences could categorized as lexical choice of advertisements. Similarly, the trope ‘ellipsis’ was incorporated as a rhetorical device in the highest percentages of the advertisements among the tropes used in them. In the same way the technique ‘names and shapes’ to make the print of advertisements catchy as a persuasive device was the most popular device among the rhetorical tools offered in them which was offered in the 95 percent advertisements. The study also showed that the advertisements used linguistically deviated forms of expression as persuasive devices. They show syntactic deviation by using the persuasive devices ellipsis and anaphora, semantic deviations by using the tropes ‘metaphor’, ‘personification’ and ‘hyperbole’ and also presented the graphological deviation. Similarly the research revealed that the English teachers teaching at secondary level sometimes visited educational advertisement, majority of them were able to understand the language offered by the advertisements. All the teachers agreed that due to creative use of language caused the advertisements more memorable and the teachers used print and electronic media as resources for teaching advertisements. The thesis consists of five prime chapters. Chapter one incorporates general background, objectives of the study, significance and delimitations of the study. Chapter two consists of review of related literature for the study. It deals with review of theoretical and empirical literature from the ground of which present research was carried out. Chapter four presents the analysis and interpretation of data collected from advertisements and teachers. And finally chapter five consists of findings and pedagogical implications of the research. Beside main chapter, the supportive materials such as references questionnaire and advertisement used during the research are presents in the appendices of the thesis.