A GRAPHO-SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECTED ADVERTISEMENTS IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS

Abstract

This paper sought to investigate the stylistic variations in newspaper advertisements to assess the creative impetus of advertisers in the Punch and Guardian newspapers. The data for this study were identified according to their types as business, obituary, political, birthday and congratulatory adverts. The Graphology of the advert types as well as the likely syntactic inappropriateness in each sample was the goal of the paper.  The data were then theoretically isolated in terms of marked-ness in patterns and deviance in choices of advertisers. We found that details such as dates, venues and phone numbers are vital information in advertisements. Secondly, major syntactic disorders in advertisements are meant to achieve stylistic purposes. Moreover, the syntactic errors in advertisements are typographical and graphological. Above all, there is nothing as graphological errors but graphological features. We conclude that advertising is a form of communication about ideas, things, services, events or people, which is paid for by an individual or organization. The group of people that adverts are directed towards will then determine the styles of graphology and syntax (language) with which it has been written to ensure appropriate meaning-making. Therefore, graphological and syntactic deviances are not particularly errors; rather, they are meant for stylistic purposes.

Keywords: Graphology, Syntax, Advertisements, Newspapers, Errors, Communication, Stylistics