Languaging their Way from Media to Market

and Popular Culture: An Introduction, ―To confront them in a direct way would always run the risk of allowing the criticisms to come between the car being advertised and any potential buyer. Therefore showing cars both in nature (unpolluted) and space (uncongested) confronts the claims without the risk of giving them a dangerous and unnecessary visibility. In this way the criticisms are answered without the questions themselves having been formally posed.‖ (75) Then comes the turn of phonology ie what deals with whether what looks great also sounds great. Apart from assonance, consonance, and alliteration, there are misspellings that strike the eye ie it is the pronunciation in print. For instance, there is an advertising slogan: Beanz Meanz Heinz (Durant and Lambrou 208) There is a deviation in spelling, but there is also a phonological rule that says that if the letter 's' comes after a voiced consonant or a nasal sound, a voiceless letter changes to its voiced counterpart-the sound /z/. And so it is pronounced/beinz//meinz//heinz/, and so the putting of the sound /z/ even for the eye makes it so catchy and attractive that a viewer or reader just cannot avoid noticing it, gazing at it, and clinging to it. This apart, rhyme is quite effectively used. For instance: Tunes and intonation play an important role too Here is an example: So, if ordinary shampoos don't fix your problem, try this. (Durant and Lambrou 211) Lexis deals with the choice of words used - nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. And also with other modifiers, connotations etc. Special care is taken to use the popular variety, the language used daily by people. Colloquial expressions are used. Adjective phrases are deftly turned into catch phrases making things look pleasant. Sentence variation is done to suit the context. Nouns are the most common in news. And

Spoken and Written English "the registers with the highest frequency of nouns... have the highest frequency of adjectives‖. (65) So higher the density of information, higher the frequency of nouns. As far as the function words are concerned, whatever will have a high frequency of nouns will require a proportionate number of prepositions and determiners which serve to further specify the nouns. Frequency of prepositions 1,20,000 per million, that of pronouns is 40,000 per million, primary auxiliaries is 45,000 per million, determiners is 80,000 per million, coordinators is 30,000 per million, modals is 15,000 per million, subordinators is 15,000 per million, and that of particles is 8000 per million. Statistics apart, let's now turn our attention to two words: help and like. For instance - Helps keep you young Helps prevent cavities (Language Awareness

92)

Help qualifies everything. Nobody in the world is hundred percent sure that a product will keep anybody young or a toothpaste will positively keep one‘s teeth disease free forever because the manufacturers also know ver well that there are no products like that produced. But by adding that one little word 'help' in front, they can not only use the strongest language possible after that but also avoid any legal issue. And the most fascinating part is that people have become immune to the word. They completely ignore or overlook the word 'help‘, paying attention only to what comes after it. About seventy-five percent of all advertising uses the word 'help‘. The second word is ‗like‘.

Awareness 93) Other than being a qualifier, 'like' is also a comparative element. The term 'like' is used to get a potential buyer to stop thinking about the product per se, and to get him/her thinking about something bigger or better or different from the product which is being sold, so that the sellers can make one believe that the product is more than what it is, by likening it to something else. Constant lexical innovations are made-new words are coined to make the brand memorable. Here are a couple of examples: Cookability- that's the beauty of gas. Gordon's and Tonic - innervigoration. (Thorpe 263) The same mechanism works as far as the syntax or the sentence structure is concerned. There are a number of ways in which the media persons reorder their material in the sentences to draw attention to certain elements. Marked themes bring clause elements other than the subject to the front of the sentence giving them prominence. Fronting is a useful device for doing so. For example: Far more serious were the severe head injuries; in particular a bruising of the brain. (Biber et al 902) Inversion of subject - verb or subject - operator occurs 1000 occurrences per million words. And ninety percent of all inversions occur in main clauses. Postponement of the direct object is common in news. (Biber et al 926) Again, the principle of end weight is important in favouring postponement of direct object, "when the direct object is long and complex, as is the case of news reporting. News is also marked by a high frequency of short dynamic passives because the focus is on specific events rather than generalizations." (Biber et al 931) Imperatives are used to urge consumers to buy, give, or join. The following example appeared as a television advertisement for The Department of Employment in March 1995: Verbless clauses are used: Vibrant, rich and extremely well-balanced. (Ceramella and Lee 78) Sentences are simple and coordinated rather than subordinated. Metaphorical language, symbolism, personification, animation, puns are used effectively. Copywriters occasionally use metaphors to create kind of emotional associations they want to implant in our

taste of paradise for the coconut ‗Bounty‘ bar. (Russell

178)

And all this is done to make things uncommon, to strike the reader/viewer/ consumer, to color his or her view, to make him or her to buy what is being offered at the market. The aim of the sellers is to attract the attention of the consumers and they succeed in doing so to a large extent. And the potential buyers/consumers get dismayed and influenced by the imposition of some order and pattern on life, which is generally a thing of bits and pieces of disorder, and human nature craves for an ordered comprehensible wholeness. The disordered raw material of life has been mastered and controlled and an order imposed upon it. Besides, moulding language into an ordered pattern brings conviction, satisfaction, giving people a sense of control and mastery creating a tilt in the minds towards the products/services.

REFERENCES

1. Biber et al. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 1999. 2. Ceramella, Nick and Elizabeth Lee. Cambridge English for the Media. South Asian Edition, India: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 3. Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 4. Durant, Alan and Marina Lambrou. Language and Media: A Resource Book for Students. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. 5. Russell, Shirley. Grammar, Structure, and Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 6. Stevens, Paul. ―Weasel Words: God‘s Little Helpers.‖ Language Awareness. Eds. Paul Eschholz et al. New York: St Martin‘s Press, 1982. 8. The International Encyclopedia of Communication. John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 28 March 2008. 9. 10. Thorpe, Sara. Mastering Advanced English Language. Hampshire RG21 6XS: Palgrave, 1997.

Associate Professor, Department of English, SPNKS Govt PG College, Dausa, Rajasthan