The field of advertising has a long history, and it is a field that is indispensable in our modern society because it helps inform the public of the basic goods and services that are available in the marketplace. Advertising can be defined as any form of paid communication with the purpose of motivating a reader or viewer to purchase a product or service, to influence public opinion, to win political support, to sell an idea or a cause, or to act or think and perhaps influence others in the manner desired by the client. The main goal of advertising is to motivate or persuade people to buy a particular product or service, and among the media used to accomplish this are radio, television, newspapers, magazines, direct mail, billboards, posters, catalogs, and brochures. Advertisers and all who work in the agency are in the business of selling (Pattis 1). Accomplishing this task requires the ability to communicate, but this communication often takes the form of manipulation of images and of language. Alan C. Harris notes that advertisers have a rhetorical purpose defined as the presentation and exhibition of a product or service and the exhortation and coercion of potential buyers:
Moreover, advertisers want potential purchasers to consider what is advertised to the exclusion of all other similar products or services. They therefore attempt to construct an advertisement that will fully involve the attention of the potential purchaser and which will have a suasive effect (Harris 22).
Harris goes on to note that in this way advertisers create a semiotic world to persuade the consumer of the essential "rightness" of purchasing the product or service advertised. The advertiser 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 whic...