Manipulative Language in Advertising: Unveiling the Truth

What’s Behind An Advertisement?

When consumers look at advertisements, most do not pay attention to the meaning of words and are won by the unfinished message put out by advertisers. Advertisers use the manipulation of language to create claims that suggest something about their products without directly claiming it to be true. Through this method, consumers are attracted to a product because they infer certain things about the product from its claim even though those things are often not true of the product itself. There are not many laws protecting the consumers, however the Federal Trade Commission designed a few to prevent fraudulent or untruthful claims in advertising. The FTC cracked down on the more blatant abuses in advertising claims, making it so advertisers have to be careful in what they say. To be lawful and keep advertisers away from getting in trouble, they use words known as weasel words. We turn to expert William Lutz to define weasel words and to understand the usage behind them. Lutz is a retired English professor whose purpose in his text, “With These Words, I Can Sell You Anything,” “is to uncover and lay bare the rhetorical strategies of advertisers that often conceal the true product or embellish its effectiveness” (Myers 197). Lutz elaborates on the concept of weasel words and includes how unfinished words, rhetorical questions, and action weasel words are used to portray a hollow message to consumers (Myers 197). Defined by Lutz, “weasel words appear to say one thing when in fact they say the opposite, or nothing at all” (Lutz 197). A current print ad that uses weasel words to promote their product is titled, “Who’s got turkey neck? Not me,” and is trying to promote a tightening neck cream called StriV...

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...hat it does say new on it, but what is new? Is it just a small change such as smell, or did they change the ingredients. The consumer will never know what makes the product new, but the only thing they are thinking about is how it is the new edition and not the old. The second time new and introducing is used is right under the company’s slogan and it states, “Introducing All-New”. As someone just is reading the ad, they are automatically going to assume this is the latest and greatest cream out and it is just being introduced to the market. This entices consumers because they all want the latest and greatest of everything and introducing a product as new accomplishes the goal of selling products. If you are to read into the ad and understand the words being used, they are introducing there new advertising campaign for there cream, not the product itself (Lutz 201).