r generally links some form of visual material with ample linguistic material, with the latter being manipulated over and above the more commonly expected rhetorical uses of language. This manipulation is a type of foregrounding, a linguistic process in which some elements--words, phrases, sentences, stressings, intonations--are given prominence or made more significant by the creator of the print ad. Harris calls this a semiotic and strictly linguistic process of establishing significance based on the intentions of the communicator (Harris 22-23).
Tina M. Lowery agrees that the verbal aspects of advertising are of special interest, but she says that little empirical work has been done on the effect of syntactic structure on the persuasiveness of advertising. She finds that there are a number of ways in which complexity can be manipulated in the context of advertising, among them affirmative statements vs. negations, active vs. passive structures, left-branching sentence structures. Lowery notes that complexity requires greater processing effort, and thus she says that motivation to process the message should be a key determinant of the effect of complexity on persuasion. The degree of personal relevance is thus important, for when ther
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