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In this sentence the informants objected to using the word strange and found completely unacceptable the words weird and queer.

Let us take examples with the word strange which, presumably, conveys the information about “deviation” from the normal state of affairs – thus, in the situation with a missing fiveyear old child, who passed by the doorkeeper towards the exit (and the doorkeeper didn’t bother to ask a child where she was heading for, unaccompanied by an adult): “I thought it was s t r a n g e , her going down by herself”, the elevator man said. “I thought maybe she was going down by herself” (J. Cheever. The Sutton Place Story) – the doorkeeper does not care about the compliance of the child’s behavior with her typical way of conduct (whether she is allowed to go for a walk unaccompanied by adults, or not). The doorkeeper relates his behavior to the rules and regulations approved in the society, and is trying to find a good excuse for his negligence, relating it to the accepted standards (which – he fully realizes – he violated).

We found a lot of examples supporting the proposed hypotheses, but at this stage the research is not completed, and the findings cannot be qualified as final. The researcher is proceeding to the next step – forming a new experimental sampling, which is, however, based on another principle than the first sampling (see step four).

Now we are changing, varying the conditions and the basic requirement this experiment is to meet is changing only one parameter with the rest of the parameters being fixed; to do that the researcher makes up some examples where one parameter is varied. In other words, after the researcher manages to formulate the meaning of the word and proceeds to predicting its usage (following from the definition of the meaning), the researcher composes a sentence which – in accordance with his hypothesis – has to be characterized either as acceptable or, on the contrary, as unacceptable.

As we said above, we presumed that the word strange conveys the information about some deviation from the socially accepted norm. What follows is that this word must be easily used in the contexts which focus on the traditional normal behavior patterns, stereotypes, rules and regulations; on the contrary, it should not be used in the cases where such perception of the situation is impossible. For example, it is not used in the contexts where the talk is not about the social rules, but about some features which are typical for this, and only for this, object, and those characteristics are in no way related to social conventions.

So, the researcher selects (either from the material available from the corpus, or creates himself) the contexts, from which it is clear if the social conventions are implied, or, on the contrary, the talk is about changing properties of the object which have nothing to do with the social norms.

At the tenth step this experimental sampling is offered to the informant for assessing the sentences as either correct or incorrect. Verifying the hypothesis at this stage cannot be reduced to separating marked and unmarked sentences, rather, it focuses on the determining whether the experimental data complies with the researcher’s predictions and expectations, and to what extent. So, in accordance with the expectations we get a positive grade for the sentences with the word strange where there is the “idea” of a norm; and a negative grade – where there isn’t any; a positive grade with the word odd where the object “stopped resembling itself”, and a negative one in the context where there is the idea of a norm.

This difference in the meanings of these two words is essential for the native speakers and they choose one of the synonyms relying on this difference. Still, in the cases when accentuating the type of the deviation (from the norm or from one’s usual self) seems irrelevant to the speaker and the situation admits at least dual interpretation, both words can be used, cf.:

I absolutely forgot I was driving. If I’d have gone the other way over the white line I might have killed somebody. So I went on again – and five minutes later I’m dreaming again, and I nearly – I have such thoughts, I have such s t r a n g e thoughts… (А. Miller. Death of a Salesman), where substituting strange by odd generates a correct sentence, but the accent is shifted. In the original the protagonist not only characterizes the overwhelming tragic thoughts

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as something new for him, he realizes that they do not fully comply with the accepted norms of behavior, and the word strange conveys the idea that the deviations the protagonist develops are really serious – as his story unfolds, he develops a serious mental disorder. Using here the more “neutral” word odd does not prepare the reader for the further events in the play, it tells the reader about new unusual for the hero (and for him specifically!) thoughts.

4. Status and Role of Introspection in Semantic Experiment

In discussing experimental linguistic practices one of the arguable issues is the status of introspection – “in cognitive science the data, which are obtained through introspection, are not regarded as reliable” [18, с. 46-47]. True it is that in semantic investigation a researcher relies on the introspection of an informant when the latter grades correctness or incorrectness of the sentence he is assessing. An experimenter can also “use himself” as an informant, assessing not a hypothesis (!), but a sentence with respect to its correctness / incorrectness (“we can say it” or “we cannot say it”). In this case he has the right for such introspection. (Cf. a psycholinguistic experiment, in which an informant’s questionnaire is also based on his introspection and his feeling of the language, though not on the researcher’ introspection as he is definitely biased in his associations, towards his theory.) If introspection is treated like this it cannot be qualified as a subjective, biased approach and the data obtained through this kind of introspection can be trusted as unbiased and undistorted. “A widespread fear that in semantic experiment we explore an “individual speech system”, rather than a system of language, should be dispelled forever” – the speaker speaks “not for himself, but for the others” [10]. In general, communication is based on the “principle of linguistic identity” stated by A. Martinet [19]. Here we have to emphasize, however, that the opponents of introspection are bothered about a different kind of introspection – as some authors claim [2], they treat as unreliable the introspective way through which a researcher made his way towards a hypothesis. Here again we have to admit that outlining a hypothesis in any field of science is based on subjective perceptions, to a certain extent (and these subjective perceptions will be filtered in the experimental procedures – and here again linguistics is similar to any other science), but in semantics these subjective perceptions relate to the research subject matter – i.e. the language. Any hypothesis is introspective by definition, while its experimental verification will make up for the subjective component. Moreover, opposing introspection and behavioristic methods is speculative as in the semantic experiment (at least in its Russian national tradition manifested in the works of Ju.D. Apresjan, O.N. Seliverstova and many others) both types of introspection are happily “married”, and are successfully complemented by behaviorist methods. For instance, the linguistic behavior of a word will serve as a basis for a scientific reflection to be followed by formulating a hypothesis about the meaning of a word, which in its turn is verified, checked and double checked through several iterations. So, introspection makes an indispensable component of a linguistic research which, however, needs experimental verification.

5. Estimating Reliability of Informant’s Answers

There arises a question as to how reliable informant’s assessment of the correctness / incorrectness of the utterance is – i.e. to define who can act as an informant and who cannot. The point is that even if the experiment was carefully planned and carried out, and all the requirements are met, the resulting grades still show some disagreement, the grades may differ. These differences may be deterministic and relevant, and may also be caused by some random noise. Deterministic ones can result from incorrect experimental procedure – for instance, a researcher may vary more than one parameter at a time (in this case the resulting grades may not surrender to any reasonable explanation), or a hypothesis about a word semantics is too vaguely formulated and can allow more than one consequence, sometimes contradictory to each other [8]. Such system-related disagreements can be also attributed to the difference in language codes of the speakers (e.g. due to the generation gap, or social strata related), as well as possible different perception of the state of affairs. Nevertheless, these are easily made up for at the preexperiment stage.

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The second group of discrepancies in the answers is related to random noise – due to psychological factors (the ambience factor – an informant is distracted, tired, feels unwell, sometimes he may not take the experiment seriously [1, c. 96], may by influenced by his neighbor, etc.); or an informant may be governed by his stereotypic perception of the grading scale. When an experimenter choses a scale he has to remember that different cultures practice differing grading standards – the top grade may be marked as 1 in one culture, while some other culture, on the contrary, marks the lowest grade with 1. We have to admit, that as in any experimental practice, the random noise is indispensable in linguistic experiment, but there have been elaborated reliable mathematical-statistical methods which help filter off random noise from a deterministic component, which refers to the system of language. These methods make the integral part of the expert evaluation method which allows, on the one hand, to estimate the

“quality” of an informant, and on the other hand – to verify the hypothesis and thus either prove it or discard as false.

6. Expert Evaluation Method in Linguistic Experiment

While grading the sentences the informant is governed by the language rules and regulations as well as by some random factors. Thus, each grade being the result of deterministic and random processes can be treated as a variate (not to confuse with a “variable”). In the linguistic experiment this variate (X) can take on only integer values on the closed interval [1; 5] (fivepoint system) (this scale was tested in [16]). Therefore, it should be referred to as a discrete variate.

Discrete variates can be processed by mathematical-statistical methods. We chose several statistics that best describe such random distributions.

The first one is the expectation for each sentence, or − in other words − the mean value of grades. The expectation shows the location of the centre of a distribution. Thus, it can be interpreted as a numerical expression of the influence of deterministic factors.

The second characteristic is the dispersion. It defines the extent the grades are spread around their mean value. It means that the dispersion is a numerical expression of the influence of random factors. The lower the dispersion of the grade, the more reliable the grade is (the influence of random factors is lower), and vice versa. If the dispersion is high, it is reasonable to try to find and analyze possible reasons which might have led to high dispersion since it cannot be neglected.

The next step of the algorithm is calculating the mean value for each sentence taking into account the competence of informants. The measure of competence of an informant can be expressed via the coefficient of competence, which is a standardized value and can take on any value on the interval (0; 1). Standardization requirement means that the sum of the coefficients of the whole group of informants is to amount to 1.

These coefficients can be calculated a posteriori, i.e. judging by the results of interviewing. We proceed from the assumption that informants’ competence should be estimated in terms of the extent to which each informant’s grade agrees with the mean value [17].

The coefficient of concordance may assume a value on the closed interval [0; 1] (for recurrence formulas to calculate the coefficient see [20, pp. 90-91]). If W=0, there is no consistency of informants’ opinions, i.e. no connection between the grades given by different informants. If W=1, the informants’ opinions coincide absolutely.

To treat the grades as concurring enough it is necessary that W is higher than a set normative point Wn (W > Wn).

Let us take Wn = 0.5. Thus, in case W > 0.5, the informants’ opinions are rather concurring than different. Then we admit the results of expertise to be valid and the group of informants to be reliable. But what is more significant is that we have succeeded in the experiment, and expertise procedures were accurately arranged in accordance with all the requirements of the linguistic experiment (see [8; 20, pp. 87-92] for a detailed account of calculating procedures).

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Conclusion. As a result of the experiment (see Semantic Research and Experiment for a step-by-step procedure of semantic experiment), we put forward some hypotheses presumably explaining the differences in the words’ meanings (the seventh step); we presumed that the basic differences are as follows:

-the word strange conveys the information that the object being referred to is characterized as deviating from the norm, standard accepted in the society;

-the word odd conveys the information that the object being referred to is characterized as deviating from its “normal” condition; in other words, the object behaves in an unordinary way, different from the way he usually behaves;

-the word weird conveys the information that the agent is different from the ordinary due to the influence of some mysterious force which is difficult to explain; the agent is presented as being unable to exercise control over the events (in the modern world where people are trying to follow the rules of political correctness, using this word might help us refrain from assessment and avoid any verdict – this suggestion, however, calls for detailed sociolinguistic verification).

(The word queer is excluded at the very beginning from the list of adjectives – informants

remarked that even in the original examples, e.g., from fiction, dating from the beginning and the middle of the 20th century, this word sounded “awkward”; and they preferred to substitute it with other words from the synonymous set. They explained that at present this adjective developed a new meaning which introduces the information on non-traditional sexual orientation (which is still not entered into all the dictionaries)).

The hypotheses have been tested on the available material. For example, the word strange is not used when the reference is made to the object which is characterized in the context as very positive; odd is practically not used to describe the objects which are first introduced into the focus – сf. incorrect *An o d d haunting face came up before his eyes (сf., however, a cor-

rect sentence with the word strange: A s t r a n g e haunting face came up before his eyes), and in some other similar cases.

In this way, the hypothesis concerning the difference in the meanings of the chosen adjectives was experimentally verified and proved – and it is the experimental procedure that served as a tool for determining their semantics (see the eighth, the ninth and the tenth steps in Semantic Research and Experiment above).

We have to admit, however, that the above procedure does not always fully correspond to the HDM research – sometimes, on different stages of the experiment, a linguist may do the research without any, even very vague, hypothesis about the semantic features which distinguish words meanings. In such cases a linguist goes “blindly”, practically “mechanically” substituting one word with its synonym in an attempt to obtain some “negative linguistic material”, which will enable him to put forward a hypothesis about the word meaning, which is to be verified later. In case of such “blind” interviewing a scientist is researching within the framework of an induction, rather than HDM. It is well known that induction and deduction are not easily distinguished (cf. “induction conclusions in the cognitive process are closely intertwined with deduction” [2**]) – still, we argue that they are significantly different, first of all, by the vector of analysis, that is: in the induction a researcher rises from observation to generalization while in deduction a researcher starts from a hypothesis (which he believes is true) and is heading for the observed facts, verifying his hypothesis and testing it on those facts. We have to admit, that HDM, as well as induction and deduction procedures have not been given a comprehensive account with reference to linguistics so far and are not yet represented in the Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary [3**]. These scientific methods are mostly in the focus of philosophy and cognitive methodology.

Summing up the results of the research into expert evaluation methods, we may conclude

that

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1)the data obtained from the informant in the form of grades can be relied on as objective and reflect the system of language rather than his own perceptions and attitudes: grading the sentence the informant relies on the system of language whish exists independently of him;

2)the results of expert evaluation, represented in the digital form, are treated as a distributed discrete values; what follows is that they can be processed with mathematical-statistical methods; as a result a researcher obtains a mathematical calculation for consistency in informants’ data and, consequently, reliability of their grades; high consistency, in its turn, testifies to the “quality” of the group of informants and means that interviewing this group will yield good reliable data.

In other words, we may state that linguistics should use experimental procedures, relying on the experimental verification of the proposed hypotheses. These well-elaborated verification procedures and experimental practices are steadily bridging the gap between linguistics as an originally purely descriptive field and other sciences, where mathematical apparatus has long been applied.

Of prime importance is then the elaboration of a comprehensive verification system, building up a comprehensive typology of experiments, their detailed specifications, especially in the view that, as of today, we are still on the way to establishing well-defined experimental procedures, at least, in linguistic semantics.

Bibliographic list

1.Seliverstova O.N. Trudy po semantike / O.N. Seliverstova. − M.: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul'tury, 2004. − 960 s.

2.Sulejmanova O.A. Puti verifikacii lingvisticheskih gipotez: pro et contra / O.A. Sulejmanova // Vestnik MGPU. Zhurnal Moskovskogo gorodskogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta. Ser. Filologija. Teorija jazyka. Jazykovoe obrazovanie. − M., 2013. − № 2 (12). − S. 6068.

3.Belajchuk O.S. Gipotetiko-deduktivnyj metod dlja opisanija semantiki glagolov otricanija (poshagovoe opisanie metodiki, primenjaemoj dlja reshenija konkretnoj issledovatel'skoj zadachi) / O.S. Belajchuk // Lingvistika na rubezhe jepoh: dominanty i marginalii. − Vyp. 2. − M.: MGPU, 2004. − S. 158-176.

4.Fomina M.A. Konceptualizacija «pustogo» v jazykovoj kartine mira: avtoref. dis. … kand. filol. nauk: 10.02.19 / M.A. Fomina. − M.: MGPU, 2009. − 29 c.

5.Los' A.L. Konceptualizacija «svetlogo» v jazykovoj kartine mira: dis. … kand. filol. nauk: 10.02.19 / A.L. Los'. − M., 2009. − 263 s.

6.Kibrik A.E. Ocherki po obshhim i prikladnym voprosam jazykoznanija (universal'noe, tipovoe i specificheskoe v jazyke) / A.E. Kibrik. − M.: Editorial URSS, 2001. − 336 s.

7.Vinokur T.G. Govorjashhij i slushajushhij. Varianty rechevogo povedenija / T.G. Vinokur. − M: Nauka, 1993. − 172 s.

8.Seliverstova O.N., Sulejmanova O.A. Jeksperiment v semantike / O.N. Seliverstova, O.A. Sulejmanova // Izvestija AN SSSR. Ser. literatury i jazyka. − 1988. − T. 47. − № 5. − S. 431-443.

9.Sulejmanova O.A. Nekotorye semanticheskie tipy substantivov i ih aktualizatory ves' / celyj i all / whole: dis. ... kand. filol. nauk / O.A. Sulejmanova. − M., 1985. − 189 s.

10.Shherba L.V. O trojakom aspekte jazykovyh javlenij i ob jeksperimente v jazykoznanii / L.V. Shherba // Jazykovaja sistema i rechevaja dejatel'nost'. − M.: Editorial URSS, 2004. − S. 24-39.

11.Stepanov Ju.S. Problema obshhego metoda sovremennoj lingvistiki / Ju.S. Stepanov

//Vsesojuznaja nauchnaja konferencija po teoreticheskim voprosam jazykoznanija (11-16 nojabrja 1974 g.): Tez. dokladov sekcionnyh zasedanij. − M.: Institut jazykoznanija AN SSSR,

1974. − S. 118-126.

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12.Souleimanova O.A. Strange, Odd, Weird and Queer: Their Semantics and Pragmatics / O.A. Souleimanova // Sprachwissenschaft auf dem Weg in das dritte Jahrtausend. − Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002. − S. 547-553.

13.Selin S.V. Kognitivno-terminologicheskij i strukturno-semanticheskij analiz koncepta “madness” v anglijskoj lingvokul'ture / S.V. Selin // Nauchnyj vestnik Voronezh. gos. arh.- stroit. un-ta. Sovremennye lingvisticheskie i metodiko-didakticheskie issledovanija. – 2010. – vyp. 14. – S. 47-58.

14.Podsevalova N.O. Ob#ektivacija koncepta «nose» v anglijskoj jazykovoj kartine mira / N.O. Podsevalova // Nauchnyj vestnik Voronezh. gos. arh.-stroit. un-ta. Sovremennye lingvisticheskie i metodiko-didakticheskie issledovanija. – 2009. − № 11. − S. 42-49.

15.Arnol'd I.V. Osnovy nauchnyh issledovanij v lingvistike: Ucheb. posobie / I.V. Arnol'd. − M.: Vysshaja shkola, 1991. − 140 s.

16.Timberlejk A. Invariantnost' i sintaksicheskie svojstva vida v russkom jazyke / A.

Timberlejk // Novoe v zarubezhnoj lingvistike. − Vyp. 15. − M.: Progress, 1985. − S. 261-285.

17.Fomina M.A. Expert Appraisal Technique in the Linguistic Experiment and Mathematical Processing of Experimental Data / M.A. Fomina // Sprache und Kognition: Traditionelle und neue Ansätze: Akten des 40. Linguistischen Kolloquiums in Moskau 2005. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. − S. 409-416.

18.Sulejmanova O.A., Selezneva G.A., Fomina M.A. Lingvisticheskij jeksperiment i ego mesto v jeksperimental'noj nauke / O.A. Sulejmanova, G.A. Selezneva, M.A. Fomina // Semanticheskij analiz edinic jazyka i rechi: processy konceptualizacii i struktura znachenija.

Vtorye chtenija pamjati O.N. Seliverstovoj. − M.: MGPU, 2006. − S. 256-272.

19.Martine A. Osnovy obshhej lingvistiki / A. Martine // Novoe v lingvistike. − Vyp. 3.

−M.: Izdatel'stvo inostrannoj literatury, 1963. − 568 s.

20.Fomina M.A. Konceptualizacija «pustogo» v jazykovoj kartine mira: dis. … kand. filol. nauk: 10.02.19 / Fomina M.A. − M., 2009. − 217 s.

Dictionaries used

1**. Hornby A.S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English / A.S. Hornby. − Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. − 1905 p.

2**. Filosofskij jenciklopedicheskij slovar'. − M.: INFRA-M, 2005. − 576 s.

3**. Lingvisticheskij jenciklopedicheskij slovar' / gl. red. V.N. Jarceva. − M.: Sovetskaja jenciklopedija, 1990. − 685 s.

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UDC 81.42

A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF LANGUAGE DEVICES IN ADVERTISING TEXTS OF THE EARLY 2000s AND OF THE PRESENT DAY

I.A. Verkhovykh

____________________________________________________________________________

Moscow Polytechnic University Centre of humanitarian education

PhD in Philological Sciences, Associate Professor E-mail: verkhovykh.irina@yandex.ru

___________________________________________________________________________

Statement of problem. To determine the rate of change in the range of linguistic means of expressiveness on the basis of the carried out analysis of advertising texts of the early 2000s and the present day.

Results. Various stylistic devices of influencing the consumer are singled out and described: morphemic, morphological, lexical, syntactic repetitions, sound patterns, parcelling, segmentation, syntactic parallelism, etc. Particular attention is paid to the grammatical analysis of advertising texts at the phonetic, graphic and lexical levels. As proof of the stereotyped thinking of modern copywriters, the author deliberately selects texts in which the same product is advertised. The article reveals features of the image of a modern consumer of a promotional product, which has now become an active subject of the advertising industry.

Conclusion. The author substantiates the idea of the persisting stereotype in advertising texts, as well as of a pragmatic approach with its orientation to the result when writing them, and of emphasizing the unique features of a product. The language inventory of advertising strategies has not changed since the beginning of the 2000s and suggests thinking about possible trends in the development of advertising in the future.

Keywords: dialogueness, metaphorization of lexical components, segmentation, syntactic parallelism, advertising slogan, discourse, consonance, alogism, linguistic tools.

Introduction. Each new era puts in its claims to the characteristics of a promotional product. Social norms and today’s realities are changing rapidly, a striking trait of such changes is that the advertised product or service should always be ‘new’, ‘the newest’, ‘perfect’, ‘absolute’, etc., etc. However, the repetition of the same keywords makes the advertising text jaded, boring, and unremarkable.

The beginning of the 2000s was marked by a significant increase in industrial production and by an improvement in the economic well-being of the population. Advertising business experienced a real recovery. Alcohol advertising was still allowed. New models of cell phones with the recently appeared Bluetooth function were in massive demand. ”Then, by the way, advertising on TV was relatively cheap, and the effect was incomparable, so the focus was put on it,” said Dmitry Brusilov, director of the advertising agency. – And if the commercial was successful, sales of the store could double two weeks after the release!” [1]. The writing of advertising texts was made by studios and agencies multiplying in a matter of months, that recruited young, creative, but not always competent specialists.

Today, advertising has become an important part of marketing communications, aimed at the implementation of not only information or educational functions. Modern advertising text in conjunction with non-verbal means is the basis for the formation of aesthetic taste of consumers, the way to influence the public consciousness, and the reflection of the value orientations of society.

_____________________

© Verkhovykh I.A., 2017

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The image of the consumer of the promotional product has also changed significantly. This is a sophisticated person, accustomed to independent regulation of the surrounding information space, able to abstract from unnecessary information, including commercial one. Modern researchers pay attention to the fact that the source and the recipient information are reversed: the target audience became a major figure of the communicative impact [2]. A survey of the Public Opinion Foundation conducted in 2014 showed that only 16% of Russians watch commercials with sound, 42% switch to another channel, 28% are distracted from TV by other activities, 6% turn off the sound during the commercial break and 2% turn off the TV set [3]. Being previously a passive participant in the advertising process, the modern consumer has become an active subject of the advertising industry whose demographic, social, psychological and other characteristics are certainly taken into account while creating an advertising text.

Methodology. How has the range of language tools in advertising changed over the past seventeen years? The empirical material for our study was about one hundred advertising texts of the early 2000s and texts, targeted on the modern consumer. Commercials that were broadcast on Central Television during the period from 2000 to 2002 [1*], as well as television advertising texts of our time, broadcast on federal channels, and Internet advertising were used as research material.

The main methods of research were a) semiotic analysis, and in particular the grammatical analysis of advertising texts at the phonetic, graphic, lexical and other levels; b) discourse analysis: the structure of texts and individual techniques that were used in them were studied.

The purpose of our study is to carry out a comparative analysis of advertising texts of the beginning of the zero years and modern times, and also to determine the degree of change in the arsenal of linguistic means of expressiveness. The latter determined the aspect approach to the methodology of our research: all examples of advertising texts and slogans are distributed in our work in accordance with the means of expressiveness and language devices used by copywriters.

The texts of the early 21th century were conspicuously dialogic:

“Schwarzkopf”. Experience of professionals for your hair (“Shauma”) [1*]. Your hair is light and fresh (“Head & Shoulders”) [1*].

“Black card” coffee. The secret that is available to you [1 *].

“Samsung” CD players. Music with you [1*].

In these examples, using the personal pronouns ‘you’ (to address one person) and ‘you all’ (to address a group of two or more people) indirectly regulates the process of understanding the advertising text by the audience, thus the text becomes targeted, it expresses the interaction of communicating people.

Don’t be sad. Three bread crusts [1*].

Drink “Sandal” tea. “Sandal” tea. “Sandal” tea [1*].

In the last two examples, we see incentive constructions, including the imperative form of the 2nd person singular. This imperative has expressive meaning, makes the statement emotional and alive.

The linguistic expression in the text targeted on a particular individual is one of the favorite methods of the creators of advertising texts and is actively used in today’s advertising:

Rafaello. And how do you like it? [1*]

Capsicam. Nail the pain to the wall [1*].

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Another popular method of the copywriters in the early 2000s was hyperbolization, the minus of the use of which was to convince the consumer in a rough and clumsy way that the promotional product had the best qualities. The pragmatic approach with its focus on results, the slogan “the end justifies the means” and creative futility, a lack of orientation to the consumer of the product or service, combined with the above-mentioned method of exaggerating the qualities of the promotional item, made the advertising stereotyped, uninteresting and even unethical:

“Calve”. Everything you need for a better taste (mayonnaise commercial) [1*].

“Nivea”. All that your skin needs (cream commercial) [1*]. “Efes Pilsener”. As good as you can get (beer commercial) [1*].

No other shampoo gives a better result. “Pantene”. Recommended by “Brawn” [1*].

“Before declaring that the product is the best and has unique advantages, it is worth to carefully study the proposals of competitors,” states B. Moiseev, the former editor of the department “Management, Marketing and Technology” of the newspaper “Business”. - It is possible that they have the same strategy or product, which has the same properties” [4]. But even today, despite the current Federal Law “On Advertising” [5], which does not allow unfair and unreliable advertising, the creators of advertising texts repeat the errors of their predecessors unoriginally:

«Head&Shoulders». Number one shampoo in the world. It has improved [1*].

The best assortment of fur coats and with the benefit of 50000 (“Elena Furs” factory)

[1*].

“Abada”. The best company for repairing and equipping apartments [1*].

David Ogilvy, a classic of advertising theory, advised to disengage yourself from the ‘obligation’ to advertise the product as the best on the market. “It’s not necessary,” claimed the successful American copywriter. “A good product would be enough.” If the consumer is convinced that your product is good, he will necessarily buy it” [6].

Today, the desire to exaggerate the merits of the product generates stylistic errors in advertising texts and slogans, made without taking into account the semantic field of the concepts used. For example, the slogan of the “Eldorado” company sounds like this: “Eldorado. Quality at the best price” [1*].

Representatives of the company explain the choice of this phrase as a slogan as follows:

“Commenting on the results of the research, we can say with full confidence that the advertising slogan of our company “Quality at the best price” fully corresponds to consumer sentiment and current trends in retail business” [7]. However, not quality, but a product has a price. Note that lexical incongruity is justified when it becomes one of the elements of the language game in advertising, a kind of advertising trick, a stylistic device. “Lexical incongruity does not take into account any associations and quite often gives us the opposite of what we think about the subject and what we identify it with,” writes E.B. Kurganova in this regard [8]. Let’s remember the advertising of the early 2000s:

New “Orbit” sweet mint. The most delicious protection from caries [1*]. “Tex 2001” paints: everything for building make-up [1*].

I choose “Camay”. The secret of irresistible seduction [1*]. “Nescafe”. A new day’s sip [1*].

In the examples given, the language game is in the metaphorization of lexical components, the basis of which is lexical incongruity. “Both methods are very concise, avoid explana-

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Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue № 2 (17), 2017 ISSN 2587-8093

tions and substantiation, thereby contributing to the reduction of speech,” states E.B. Kurganova. Such lexical compression saves language means, makes the advertising text memorable, and gives the phrase an additional meaning, which is later deciphered by the consumer.

Such a focus of advertisers on meaning compression is evident today as well:

“Rublevsky”. All the best of meat [1*].

Find the flavor of your attraction in the “Faberlic” catalog [1*]. “Exoderil”. A massive attack on fungi [1*].

In the early 2000s, almost every advertised product was endowed with exceptional quali-

ties:

“Zlato” sunflower oil. Oil with the highest standard [1*]. “Calve” olive mayonnaise. The secret of a perfect taste [1*].

Charged with the energy of the elements! Overprotection. Superflavor (“Mennen Speed Stick”) [1*].

The newest formula of “Colgate Total”. The most modern method of teeth whitening. 12hour protection and whitening effect at the same time (“Colgate” toothpaste) [1*].

The focus on unique properties of the product led to the fact that advertising phrases only revealed the poverty of the language and the powerlessness in the choice of expressive language means, which, in contrast to the previous method, deprived the advertising phrase of hidden meanings and additional interpretations. Unfortunately, the same thing is observed in modern advertising: “food will become special”, “individual treatment of a sore throat”, “the best friends are worthy of the best”.

“Unique taste”, “dizzying volume”, “boundless possibilities” - over the years these template epithets have ceased to be a means of the advertising impact on the consumer. The consequence of this was a decrease in interest in advertising, noted in the first decade of the XXI century [9]. However, even today, the stereotype of epithets used by copywriters attracts attention: ‘incredible’, ‘careful’, ‘beautiful’, ‘true’, ‘tested’, ‘convenient’, etc. Popular epithets in modern advertising texts are: ‘active’, ‘fast’, ‘comprehensive / multiple / combination + noun’ (orientation to mobility and lack of free time for the consumer), ‘affordable’, ‘efficient’ (targeting low and middle income people), ‘modern’ (targeting a person trying to keep up and be in step with the times), ‘unique’ (orientation on individuality).

For example, in the commercial of “Voltaren” medicated plaster («It helps to eliminate both pain and inflammation due to active components») [1*] the adjective «active» is used in the sense of «efficacious / functioning»: an indication of the effectiveness of the plaster components. The construction with homogeneous objects and the repeating conjunction «and» emphasizes the complexity of solving the problems by means of the advertised product. In the advertisement of «Septolete Total» sore throat remedy («Complete treatment for sore throat») [1*] the word «complete», favored by the copywriters, guides the modern consumer to solve several interrelated problems in a short time.

Noteworthy is the following group of advertising texts selected by us, which demonstrate the scale of stereotyped thinking of contemporary creators of advertising texts:

“Dolgit”. German quality at affordable prices (advertisement of a therapeutic cream)

[1*].

OPEL ASTRA H - German quality at an affordable price (car advertisement) [2*]. Hormann - German quality at an affordable price!!! (advertisement of sectional garage doors) [3*].

MANNOL oil - German quality at an affordable price! (advertisement of motor oil) [1*].

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