Textual function of style in advertising using women images in Kenyan magazines

Abstract

This is a linguistic study that examines the advertising register in Kenya. It analyses the functional role of advertising language using Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar. Our data specifically comes from Eve and Parents magazines. The study analyses advertisements that are accompanied by women Images. We are mainly concerned with how advertising manages to fulfill its two basic roles - 'to inform and to persuade' through the textual function of style. We have demonstrated how the textual elements of theme, rheme, focus, diexes and collocation are used in the advertisement texts to enhance the above roles. These elements play an important role in crafting the advertisement texts. They are therefore stylistic features of advertisements in Kenyan magazines. Other stylistic elements that dominate the advertising register of Eve and Parents magazines are adjectives, repetition, the literary features of metaphors, simile, personification, metonymy and hyperbole. They are discussed in the last chapter of this study. A section on how women are used in the register of advertising begins this last chapter of the project. The study sums up that Systemic Functional Grammar is a relevant tool for analyzing advertising register in Kenya.