Introducing Communicative Event As A Tool To Communicate Via the Medium Of Language: The Case of Job Advertisement

Abstract

This study is going to investigate the language style of classified advertisements of job vacancies in order to understand how advertisers manipulate language in convincing the job-seekers to apply for the advertised jobs. Furthermore, the study tries to examine the ways that advertisements’ language may be concisely used to convey the meaning in the fewest words and avoid blurring the job seekers. To gain a clear picture of the form and content of job advertisements the views of (Lunde, 1974) and (Fairclough, 1989) are exploited to clarify how job advertisements may be perceived as a class of communicative events in order to communicate via the medium of language with potential job seekers and persuade them towards applying for the advertised jobs. The data for this qualitative study which came from the local English newspaper (Star) in the month of August were analyzed through content analysis. Being grounded in Lund (1974), who believes that an advertisement should: attract attention, arouse interests, stimulate desires, create conviction and get action, the sample advertisements were examined and the results revealed that all are in accordance with Lund’s AIDEA formula. An analysis of the surface structure of the samples did not reveal how the basic structure of English sentences was adapted. The spaces allocated to these types of advertisements were so limited. Thus, the advertisers manipulate language in a way that they can convey their purposes with the use of minimum words. This may only be achieved by the use of the key words to convey the message and nominalizations.