Language styles of advertisements in Time Magazine

ABSTRACT

Language is a fundamental aspect of human life. To communicate and establish relationship with other, people use language as tool of their communication (Wardhaugh, 1985: 29). To communicate means to transfer ideas from one person to the others. If people did not have a tool t o communicate, every people’s activities and interactions would be stagnant.

There are two kinds of language, spoken language and written language. In expressing or delivering ideas in both forms, spoken and written language, people have and use their own style because it is related to the social aspect. Chaika (1982:29) states that style refers to the selection of the linguistic forms to convey social or artistic effects. Style also acts as a set of instructions. Another opinion comes from Keraf (1984:112). He states that style is the ability and the competence to make a sentence in a good way.

This research is focused on analyzing language styles of advertisements in Time Magazine. The researcher uses a descriptive qualitative research because the researcher wants to analyze and discusses the sentences or utterances which performs the language style. The researcher uses William Wells’ theory in analyzing language styles in this research. In the data analysis, the researcher did some processes of analysis, they are: (1) categorizing the data based on language style in terms of sentence structure, (2) analyzing the data and interpreting the data, and (3) making conclusion from the analysis.

The result of this study shows that language styles of advertisements in Time Magazine are classified into seven kinds of language style which cover hard sell style, soft sell style, straightforward style, demonstration style, spokesperson style, problem solution style, and comparison style.

Finally, after finishing this research, the researcher hopes that this research can give contribution to the researcher himself, to the readers, and to the further researchers who conduct the same research. Furthermore, the researcher suggests to the next researchers to study more complete research, especially in the same field.