Advertising Claims and Figurative Language Used in Smartphone Slogans

Abstract

Advertising is a system or method of public communication between businesses and consumers. Advertiser produces an advertisement consisting of messages that the product owner would like to send to the audience. A slogan is widely used in advertisements to grab the attention within a short time. To make slogans attractive, advertisers often use advertising claims and figurative language.

This study employs a qualitative research to examine advertising claims and figurative language found in smartphone slogans from the top global brands: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi. All slogans are publicized on online advertisements from 2018 to 2021. Schrank’s advertising claim categorization (2012) and Fauconnier’s figurative language classification (1997) are used as frameworks for analyzing the studied smartphone slogans.

The findings show that the highest frequency of advertising claims found is the weasel claim (42.59%), followed by the unfinished claim (15.43%) and the vague claim (12.96%); while, the highest frequency of figurative language found is imagery (30.59%), followed by alliteration (23.53%) and hyperbole (17.65%).

In conclusion, the weasel claim of advertising claims is the most preferable one for promoting products in a creative way although the claim coverts the message through the use of deliberately vague and misleading language. The imagery of figurative language is the popular one that most advertisers choose to create the attractiveness in slogans which allow consumer to create mental image in mind. Lastly, the advertising claims and figurative language in slogans are the language techniques use reflecting unlimited creativity which can be artistically used to color human communication and to gain benefits in the business world.

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