• Maillat Didier

In this proseminar, students (in the 2nd or 3rd year of their BALET) will look at one of the most prominent vectors of linguistic dominance for English in the world, namely advertising. We will investigate how the English language shapes and is shaped in advertising. English is not used in the same way depending on the medium in which it is inscribed. In this respect, advertising constrains English in specific ways, be it through billboards, TV ads, magazine advertisements, but also in more recent online uses. Indeed clickbaits, personalised ads and other online advertising techniques use specific communicative means to achieve persuasion… and, at times, what might be described as manipulation. In this course, students will become acquainted with the linguistic and communicative specificity of advertising language. The focus in this proseminar will thus be on the linguistic practices and uses which develop in and through advertising. Finally, we will also try to understand the part played by advertising in the changes affecting English in general.

Through a variety of close analyses, students will learn how linguistic tools can help us describe and understand the communicative effects found in this omnipresent form of English language.

- overview of theoretical approaches for the study of English in advertising

- methodological tools used to analyse the English language

- knowledge of the central concepts in the field

- methodological and practical approach to collecting data

- understanding of the scientific approach to the study of the English language

- essay writing skills for English linguistics

A bibliography and a list of assigned readings will be made available in the first week of the semester.