ABSTRACT

Newspapers are veritable tools for promoting literacy through reading, writing and dialogues (among readers and critics), which are the hallmarks of effective and efficient use of language. Newspapers have a built-in capacity to motivate readers. As a result, it is the common practice in most parts of the country to have people congregate around newspapers stands and vendors every morning reading and discussing the contents of the newspapers, especially adverts. As such, the use of advert language cannot be over-emphasized as the number of readers who come across it cannot be measured. However, this research seeks to have a survey of the language of newspaper advertisement, and to know how to construct adverts to attract readers or viewers, to be able to distinguish the terminology to use in different advert, to be able to determine the right choice of language use in newspapers advertisement, and understand the need for short and long adverts. This study concludes that the language of advertising in Nigerian newspapers especially, the vanguard newspaper which happened to be the case study, has more to do with the aesthetics of language than with commerce. Alliterations, rhetorical questions, pun, morphological adjustment and clichés among others are the advertiser’s favourite devices, and these are vey instrumental to the general success of advertising in Vanguard Newspaper.