To what extent is advertising language a 'Sondersprache'?

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject German Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,7, University College London, language: English, abstract: Advertising happens in a lot of areas of life, such as politics or charity, and it almost every time happens by means of a specific use of language. Exactly this specific use of the language in advertising will be the main focus of the following essay and we are going to ask if advertising language can be seen as a ¿Sondersprache¿. After providing a general definition of advertising and analysing its different techniques to influence peoples¿ behaviour, we will deal with the linguistic characteristics. Finally, after exposing the linguistic features of advertising, we shall analyse, whether advertising language could be seen as a ¿Sondersprache¿.

Nowadays, we encounter advertising like ¿Saturn: Geiz ist geil!¿ in the most different forms in our everyday life. Whether it is on flyers, on the radio or on the television, everywhere we look, advertising is flooding us.

We hear a specific melody coming from the radio and we know what product is meant; we see a little green crocodile in the left corner of a t-shirt and we directly know what brand it is from. At this stage, these two examples show us to what extent advertising is surrounding us. What is more, we can already observe a first tendency: advertising is not only using language, but it is also playing our minds with pictures and music. Most people link this term only to commercial and product advertising, but that definition is far too tight.