Polycode expressive means in English advertising discourse

The article describes the English advertising discourse for women, the texts of which were present in the 30-s and 40-s of the twentieth century. The purpose of the study is to analyze the arsenal of expressive linguistic means, both verbal and paralinguistic, to influence the female readership in order to enhance the pragmatic effect of the texts about the advertised product. The material of the study are texts of British and American magazines for women, presented on the websites of archival publications (vintageadbrowser.com, etc.), using the methods of linguistic description, classification, linguistic-stylistic and contextual analysis and translation. The analysis of expressive means in the English discourse of advertising texts for women made it possible to assume that advertising texts of this chronological period are polycode messages containing various means of verbal and non-verbal, paragraphemic expressions, such as various rhetorical devices (epithets, euphemisms, puns), visual images – drawings, photography, font variation, punctuation variation, implications, etc. Obviously, for the female readership, the greatest persuasiveness of the advertising text lies in the visual effect, therefore, visualization plays a central role in the set of expressive means of advertising discourse, i.e. drawings and photographs that, through a set of appropriate implications, cause a predictable psychological effect - the conviction of the need to purchase a product. The meaning of the actual verbal component of the text is not the leading one, since the gender characteristics of this readership are due to the motive – to imitate higher standards and more successful and beautiful people, whose images are present in advertising. The polycode nature of the advertising text is a necessary condition for achieving the pragmatic function of advertising aimed at persuading the target audience, and it consists in the mandatory combination of means of various language codes: verbal (graphemic proper) and paragraphemic (punctuation, graphics, drawings) means of discourse.

polycode, discourse, advertising, expressive means