ScienceDirect - Journal of Pragmatics : Persuasion and advertising English: Metadiscourse in slogans and headlines*1

ScienceDirect - Journal of Pragmatics : Persuasion and advertising English: Metadiscourse in slogans and headlines*1: "Metadiscourse plays a vital role both in organising the discourse and in engaging the audience, thus becoming an important aspect of persuasive writing. Assuming that metadiscourse is context-dependent and that it is linked to the norms and expectations of a particular setting and genre, this article studies the metadiscourse devices typically used by copywriters to construct their slogans and/or headlines. Our analysis starts from the assumption that advertising English should be represented as a continuum of text functions fluctuating between ‘informing’ and ‘manipulating’ in accordance with the idea that advertising is an example of covert communication. Examples selected from a typical women's magazine show that both textual and interpersonal metadiscourse help copywriters to convey a persuasive message under an informative mask."