• Contact

  • Newsletter

  • About us

  • Delivery options

  • Prospero Book Market Podcast

  • The Discourse of Classified Advertising: Exploring the Nature of Linguistic Simplicity

    The Discourse of Classified Advertising by Bruthiaux, Paul;

    Exploring the Nature of Linguistic Simplicity

    Series: Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics;

      • GET 10% OFF

      • The discount is only available for 'Alert of Favourite Topics' newsletter recipients.
      • Publisher's listprice GBP 152.50
      • The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.

        72 856 Ft (69 387 Ft + 5% VAT)
      • Discount 10% (cc. 7 286 Ft off)
      • Discounted price 65 571 Ft (62 448 Ft + 5% VAT)

    72 856 Ft

    db

    Availability

    printed on demand

    Why don't you give exact delivery time?

    Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.

    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 3 October 1996

    • ISBN 9780195100327
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages224 pages
    • Size 216x145x19 mm
    • Weight 409 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations tables
    • 0

    Categories

    Short description:

    Bruthiaux examines the linguistic nature of classified advertising in English based on a broad corpus of advertisements. His study looks at variation in degree of syntactic elaboration and considers the role of conventionalization in this process.

    More

    Long description:

    Linguists who have studied simplified varieties of a given language, such as pidgins or the language of care-givers, have tended to explain similarities in their structure by the fact that they use the same mechanisms of simplification. Bruthiaux tests this idea by looking at the structure of classified ads in American English, using a body of 800 ads from four categories: automobile sales, apartments for rent, help wanted, and personal ads.

    Bruthiaux's thesis is that strict, uniform constraints on space should result in uniformly simple texts, no matter which category they are in, and that any variation would be due to the particular needs of each category. To prove this he describes the linguistic structure of classified ads, and shows that they are characterized by a minimal degree of morphosyntactic elaboration. He then examines aspects of their conventions to highlight the role of pre-patterned and prefabricated segments whose collocational rigidity may force the inclusion of otherwise dispensable items. He finds that there is indeed significant variation across ad categories in terms of morphosyntactic elaboration, and concludes that this is due to a greater or lesser need to be explicit, as well as a greater or lesser anticipation of interaction. Finally, he examines the implications of these findings for the study of linguistic simplification and register variation.

    Bruthiaux's concise treatment of the specialized register of classified advertising covers many issues that are important in all ESP work ... I found the book clearly written, with frequent summary statements that made it easy to track analyses and arguments that had been presented ... Bruthiaux's volume makes valuable contributions, including clearly showing how issues important to ESP are manifest in the discourse of classified ads.

    More
    0