Language used in Classified Advertisement

Abstract

The study entitled "Language Used in Classified Advertisement" intends to find out and describe the sentence types/constructions, language functions, English tense and language aspects used in classified advertisements. Since the research work is a library based one, the data for this study, which are samples of classified advertisements, were collected from four different newspapers namely, The Himalayan Times, The Hindustan Times, The Japan Times and The New York Times published from Nepal, India, Japan and the USA respectively. One hundred twenty sample pieces of classified advertisements were collected from the above stated four newspapers. Thirty pieces of classified advertisements were collected from each type of newspaper. Among the major findings in sentence constructions, verbless constructions are found to be used the highest. In case of language functions, expressing directions are found to be used in the highest position. Similarly in the case of English tense used in the newspapers, past is found only in The Himalayan Times published form India. Simple, perfective and progressive are very common in the newspaper where as perfective progressive is not found to be used. The research consists of four chapters. Chapter one deals with the introduction. It includes general background, mass media and its significance, classified advertisements, sentence constructions, language functions, English tense, language aspects, review of related literatures, objectives of the study, significance of the study and definition of the terms. Chapter two deals with the methodology adopted for the study. Under this chapter, sources of data, Sampling procedures, tools for the data collections, process for the data collection and limitation of the study are studied. Chapter three deals with analysis and interpretation of the data. In this chapter, the data collection from different newspaper are analyzed and interpreted mainly in descriptive form. It is done under five sub headings: on the basis sentence structure, on the basis of language aspect, on the basis of English tense and on the basis of language functions. Chapter four presents the findings and recommendations of the study. Findings are derived from the analysis and interpretation of the data carried out in chapter three. Recommendations are made on the basis of findings. The references and appendices have been included in the last part of the thesis.