An Analysis of Deixis in Advertisements in Selected Nigerian Newspapers

Abstract

It is no gainsaying that man uses language to perform different finctions that range from interpersonal to transactional, among others. The functions are often implied and to a larger extent, they need to be situated in order to be fully understood. This work sought to uncover how deictic expressions are employed by advertisers to manipulate the buying decisions of their target customer. The pragmatic tool that is employed is for contextually showing the relationship between a word and what it stands for, that is, deixis taxonomy identified by Saeed (2009) will be deployed to the fifteen randomly selected mobile telecommunication and bank adverts from the Punch newspaper. The content analysis of some is presented, while the tabular analysis is provided for the others. The study reveals that the predominant deictic elements used by the encoders of telecommunication and bank advertisements are personal and spatial. The study reveals that their usage is to craftily make the audience personalise the meanings in the advertisements, by reducing the distance between the products advertised and their target consumers. This basically suggests that there is personal and at times common ground between discourse interactants. However, the usage of these deixis is a gimmick to entice their target audience to see themselves as of high value to them.