Evidentials and advertising: a sample study

Abstract

This paper explores the use of evidential devices in press adverts in English in a compilation of original advertisements. Due to the appellative nature of advertising discourse, I think that these texts are likely to convey source of knowledge through evidentials as an advertising strategy in order to pragmatically manifest a higher level of credibility and reliability of the information presented concerning the products and the brands. The selected corpus of adverts will allow us to focus special attention on this particular genre and on how evidentials are used, in the fashion of other works carried out in other textual genres (cf. Fox, 2001; Kaplan, 2007; Marin-Arrese, 2004, 2007; Ortega-Barrera and Torres-Ramirez, 2010). Evidentials are studied as part of a set of persuasion strategies used by different linguistic communities in the discourse of advertising (Block de Behar, 1992; Cook, 1992; Cortes de los Rios, 2001; Pavitt, 2000; Rein, 1982). Conclusions will report on how evidentials are used in print adverts, and whether a type of evidential device prevails over the rest.