Advertising Linguistics: A Morpho-Syntactic Exploration of Pakistani Billboards

Abstract

This study aims to present the morpho-syntactic analysis of advertisements to show case the display of language in a non-native country. Advertising actually helps in shaping the cultures, trends, societies and economies in a significant way. The wide range of implications of advertisements is the key intrigue for the commencement of the study. However, the objective of the research is to identify the factors that contribute to the occurrence of morphosyntactic errors on billboards, such as language proficiency, copywriting practices, and cultural influences. For the execution of the investigation process, the ads are taken from internet with the help of convenient sampling technique and the linguistic fragments are evaluated morphologically and syntactically. It is very true that any advertisement is the mixture of many elements including the images, symbols, color schemes and language. Every element plays its role in conveying the massage properly for which it is necessary for every element to reflect its true essence. For the convenience of the research only linguistic fragments are taken under investigation. The research methodology is qualitative and the research design is chosen to be exploratory in nature. The theoretical framework is contrastive analysis hypothesis presented by Lado (1957). The findings of the study go in line with Lado’s (1957) point of view that differences in languages are because there are differences in their structures.