Interpersonal function of style in Kenyan newspaper advertisements

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a linguistic study on the advertising language in Kenya. While leaning towards stylistics, the study follows the framework of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Mainly we were out to discover how advertising language realizes its persuasive intention. This as we hypothesize is possible, by the many choices available within the interpersonal function of language (style). Out of such a study, we reasoned, it was possible to identify stylistic features that we could classify and generalize to the advertising language In Kenya. Towards that goal data IS collected that markets the Telecommunication Industry' from the leading newspapers in Kenya. The results show that the advertisers choose variously from the ranks of word, group and clause and through systems like mood, attitude, person, comment, lexical register, they are able to assign various interpersonal roles to the reader (and themselves). The major functions realized by the adverts analyzed in this study includes informing, persuading and reminding the readers / consumers about the advertisers' goods and services on offer. The paper concludes that SFG is an important tool for analyzing such complex register because it recognizes the systematic relationship between the social environment and the functional organization of language (cf Halliday, 1985: 11). General guide to analysis and abbreviations The companies represented here include the following, whose first initial letters are the ones featuring in the main text Company! Advertiser As represented in text. Safaricom - S Kencell - K Telkom (K) - T Cellucom (For Samsung) -C Noba -N Motorola -M In longer texts we supply the newspaper and the dates of appearance: Newspapers Abbreviation Daily Nation DN Saturday Nation StN

Sunday Nation SN East African Standard EAS East African Sunday Standard EASS

A typical example in such a reference taking into account the advertiser, paper and date would look like: Where we lead others follow (DN,1I2!03) Safaricom Corpus Newspaper date We have also underlined the key words or phrases of the text that we analyze at a given point. Others SFG SFL Systemic Functional Grammar Systemic Functional Linguistics