Communicative and pragmatic functions of lexical blends in advertising discourse

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Sumy State University 2, Rymskoho-Korsakova st, Sumy

Communicative and pragmatic functions of lexical blends in advertising discourse

Medvid Olena, PhD in Philology

Solomka Alyona Master in Philology

Vashyst Kateryna Lecturer

The article examines the communicative and pragmatic functions of lexical blends in advertising discourse. It determines that advertising discourse is an area that actively uses lexical blends due to its accuracy, information compression, and simplicity of formation. The concept of advertising, which is defined as a special type of communication, the purpose of which is to have a communicative impact on a potential consumer, has been clarified.

The article also describes the classification of advertising types according to various criteria. The main goal of advertising is defined, that is, influencing both specific individuals and society as a whole, and the main purpose of an advertising text is determined, that is to attract attention and promote sales of goods and services.

The concept of blending as one of the most productive ways of word formation in the English language (the language of analytical structure) has been clarified. The authors determine that blending represents the great potential for giving the word an expressive and evaluative color compared to other word-formation ways. They consider and describe the potential of blends not only in Germanic (English and German), but also in Slavic (Ukrainian) languages, having the different -- synthetic structure. Examples of blends in English, German, and Ukrainian advertising discourse are analyzed.

The research studies the communicative and pragmatic functions that reflect both the speaker's attitude to the content of the message and its recipient. The article defines that the communicativeness of the blend is in its ability to establish contact with the message recipient, and the pragmatic aspect is to convince the consumer to buy the advertised product.

This article provides an up-to-date idea of the communicative and pragmatic functions of blends in English, German and Ukrainian advertising discourse, as these lexical units strive for expressiveness, evaluation, brevity, and help to attract the attention of the reader or listener.

Keywords: blending, lexical blend, advertising discourse, communicative influence, communicative and pragmatic functions, informational message, language means.

communicative lexical blending expressiveness

Introduction

The 21st century is the time of active application of the language economy principle, as a result of which the processes of reduction, abbreviation, and blending have become unprecedented. Advertising discourse is an area that actively uses blends as a stylistically marked, expressive, and at the same time, laconic lexical means. Due to their accuracy, information compression, and ease of formation, blends are widely used in advertising slogans and messages, as names of products or organizations and companies, serving to attract consumers' attention, create an image, and so on.

Such researchers as L. Lipka (1981), M. Turner & G. Fauconnier (1998), J. Algeo (2000), T. R Timoshenko (2001), S. Kemmer (2003), С. Friedrich (2008), O. V. Kosovych (2014), K. M. Vashyst (2020) and many others studied blending as a productive way of word-formation. The analysis of advertising discourse is presented in the works by F. Jefkins (1994), K. L. Bove (1995), R. Lakoff (2000), I. M. Gordon (2003), M. D. Pazukha (2006), Ye. N. Serdobintseva (2010), G. M Kostenko (2014), V. V. Samarina (2015), O. S. Tielietov (2015) and others. However, the issue of the functional potential of blends in Germanic and Slavic languages within the advertising discourse is not sufficiently covered today, that determines the relevance of this article.

The object of the research is blending as a productive way of word-formation in modern linguistics. The subject of the study is the communicative-pragmatic function of blends in English-language, German-language, and Ukrainian-language advertising messages.

The goal of the research is to analyze the features of the communicative-pragmatic function of blends in English, German and Ukrainian advertising. It is necessary to perform a number of tasks: study the features of the advertising text; define blending as a productive way of word formation; describe the types of blends in English, German and Ukrainian advertising; analyze the communicative-pragmatic function of blends in advertising discourse.

To achieve the goal and the tasks of the research, such general and special methods were used: information retrieval method - for the selection of empirical material and systemizing basic knowledge; generalization method - to highlight the most significant theoretical issues; contextual and functional methods - to actualize the pragmalinguistic significance of linguistic units under study - lexical blends, as well as the method of structural-semantic and component analysis - to determine the ways of blends formation and their main structural elements in Germanic and Slavic languages.

Advertising is a communicative phenomenon of social and linguistic-cultural significance. Advertising is an effective special means of communication influence on the recipient; an information message, the purpose of which is the communicative impact on the potential consumer (Gordon, 2003). Its strategic task is to promote, in various ways and by all available means, something or someone in order to create demand for a product, service, person, event, idea, etc.

A characteristic feature of advertising is that it is always performed at the request of a particular social institution. There are three main types of advertising, depending on the type of such institutions:

1) commercial (aimed at the promotion and sale of goods and services; generated by commercial organizations that are part of various economic institutions);

2) political (promotes political parties and their members, create the image of state structures or organizations; ordered by regulatory institutions);

3) social (draws attention to some urgent problems of society, aimed at changing the patterns of social behavior; ordered by regulatory and economic institutions) (Bove, 1995).

Some scientists (F. Jefkins, 1994) suggest dividing advertising according to the following criteria: object, subject, means of implementation and purpose of advertising. Advertising is also classified depending on the method of its influence: 1) rational advertising, i.e one, that appeals to the mind of a potential buyer, and 2) emotional or associative, which influences through the association of ideas, by reproducing the situation and mode of expression; advertising that has short-term goals and is designed for mediumterm impact on the consumer (Lakoff, 2000).

Advertising aims to: - attract the attention of potential buyers; - provide the buyer with specific benefits from the purchase of goods or services; - provide the buyer with opportunities for additional study of the product; - form a certain level of knowledge about the goods or services; - create a favorable image of the manufacturer or seller, as well as a trademark or production brand for consumers and business partners; - cause the need for this type of goods and services; - encourage a potential buyer to purchase this particular product from this particular company, and not from competitors; - remind the consumer about the company and its products (Kostenko, 2014).

As we can see, among the goals pursued by advertising, there are clearly defined goals that involve influencing the consumer, inspiring him / her with certain thoughts, desires, and actions. Advertising in the modern world has a significant impact on both individuals and society as a whole. The effect of advertising is realized by influencing human psychology. And as a result, it actively participates in the formation of psychological attitudes of an individual, the systems of his / her environmental assessments and self-esteem, the nature of reactions to various stimuli, the creation of specific psychological climate, etc.; and in this multi-purpose process, perhaps, the most important position is occupied by modern language means, which are implemented through the text of the advertising message for various purposes (Tielietov, 2015).

Advertising text contains information, mostly presented in a concise, artistically expressed form with a characteristic emotional color, and brings the most important facts and information about goods and services to the consciousness and attention of potential buyers. Thus, advertising message, on the one hand, brings to consumers the information necessary for the purchase and use of goods, and on the other hand, combining its information with persuasiveness and methods of suggestion, has an emotional and psychological impact on a person (Pazukha, 2006). The purpose of the advertising text is to attract the person's attention and motivate him / her to act -- to buy a product or service, as well as to assure a person that the product is not only necessary and attractive but also profitable. That is why advertising specialists use a variety of psychological and linguistic techniques. Advertising texts should be bright, simple, concise, accessible, expressive, and informative. In order to achieve this goal, the authors of advertising texts use a number of languages means: lexical, graphic, stylistic, phonetic, syntactic, morphological, and word-forming ones.

The communicative-pragmatic function is one of the main functions of the advertising message. T.V. Melkumova (2016) observes the communicative-pragmatic function in the fact that the speaker, forming his communicative strategy, plans in advance and implements in the process of speech specific techniques aimed at achieving the communicative, and pragmatic goals, in particular, manipulation of the recipient of the advertising message.

The function of lexical blends in the implementation of the communicative-pragmatic function is significant, because these lexical units are extremely “fashioned”, such that "keep up with the times". For example, blends can reflect the general features of today's globalized world, where one of the most important issues is saving time.

O. V. Kosovych (2014) provides such a definition of blending: it is an independent way of word-formation, which generates a kind of units - contaminations (blends), which have both universal and linguo-creative features. According to the researcher, blend words are a type of vocabulary that can be created by truncation. Thus, blend is a new way of word -formation in which a part of one word merges with a part of another word or with a whole word to form a single lexical innovation.

In English, there are four types of blends. Being based on the blend words classifications by J. Algeo (2000) and T. R. Timoshenko (2001), we can single out the following most popular subgroups:

1. The most frequent type of blending is a combination of two truncated stems with the imposition of a phoneme or groups of phonemes on the joint point (usually such formations are called "mergers"). This type of bland is created by the formula A (= abc) + B (= dbe) -> C (= abe). For example: globflation = glob (al) + (in) flatten - “the level of inflation in the context of globalization”, or absotively = abso (lutely) + (p) ositively - “very positive”;

2. The combination of the initial fragment of the source word with the final fragment of the second one without interword overlay. This type can be represented by the formula A (= ab) + B (= cd) -> C (= ad). For example: annoyware = annoy (ing) + (soft) ware - “software that is annoying”; babelicious = bab (y) + (d) elicious - “attractive woman”;

3. The combination of the source word's full stem with the truncated stem of another word, with or without phonemes imposition. This type can be represented by three formulas: