An investigation into the linguistic features of supermarket advertising and its relationship with social class

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An investigation into the linguistic features of supermarket advertising and its relationship with social class Introduction and Literature Review This study will consider the grammatical and phonological features of supermarket advertising, using adverts from a range of supermarkets, each with a different target consumer range of a different social class group. Prior to gathering information, I consulted a plethora of literature. I shall begin this analysis by referring to a statement from Sean Brierley; ‘consumers self-identify with products, and buy when they can see a match with their own personality.(2002:124)’ This implies that the linguistic features advert should correlate with the linguistics of its target social class in terms of the level of standard of the grammar and the phonology. With this in mind, consider Trudgill’s findings in his Norwich Study (2000:97); investigating the use of non-standard third person singular -s variable, he found that the middle-middle class used the standard form 100% of the time, the lower-middle class 98% of the time, the upper-working class 30% of the time, and the lower class just 3% of the time. With these figures established, I decided to investigate whether the correlation between standard grammar variations and social class groups was consistent with super market advertising and social class groups. Specifically, this study will investigate the instances of abbreviations and non-standard omission of prepositions and inflections. Furthermore, analysis of dialectal features will occur, along with consideration for the supermarkets choice of accent for each advert. Methodology In order to gain a list of UK supermarkets ranked in order of perceived social class, I con... ... middle of paper ... ...xMMLVe1cDE&feature=related 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72gRMOPVG-c 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQRiK-qF788 Morrisons 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6wkragGcuM 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kmYl8j95zs 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7HSlliVFNk&feature=related 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iALzcTU3oY0 Aldi 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_TCZSQzrM 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz0F8uXZdKY&feature=related 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lytCyG_LMvs 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkdo45dJxU0&feature=autoplay&list=PLC8BC9F6ABC6A8334&playnext=3 LIDL 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWx-YCptG74 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93QlQbfKCfc 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQuFV13dusE&feature=related 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSyGtU653I&feature=autoplay&list=PLD5C59B95F36D0C71&playnext=1

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