Variations in Language Use: A Study of Advertising

Humans use language to carry out different activities in society. These activities are conducted at different places and time, by different people and for different purposes. All these influence language use and give rise to different varieties of language. Suffice it to say that different varieties of language are used by humans to conduct activities in different spheres of life, including advertising. The variety of language used in advertising is not suitable in say, medicine. To this end, this paper sets to study advertising messages with a view to finding out how the language differs from language used to conduct activities in other spheres of human Endeavour. Samples of advertising messages were collected using purposive sampling technique and analyzed. It was observed that advertising makes a unique choice of language structures to create messages aimed at convincing the general public to patronize to the goods or services being advertised.