Linguistic Variety in Local Commercial Discourse

This study aimed to reveal the linguistic variety incorporated into local commercial discourse in Malaysia. The focus of this study is to determined how the linguistic variety is used in local fashion articles as a marketing strategy to attract the target consumers. This was a qualitative descriptive study. A total of 60 titles of the commercial articles published in 3 famous local fashion magazines namely Remaja (Youth), Keluarga (Family) and Nona (Woman) were gathered to examine the use of the linguistic variety. The findings show a high usage of English in Malay advertisements, the use of syllabic shortening or ‘clipping,’ and the existence of semantic innovation or new word influences from other languages.