The Language of Church Advertisements

Mgr. Milada Burianová

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

This work discusses the language of Church advertisements by examining materials from the USA. The advertisement is not an inherently bad device of consumerism. It can be put into a good use given that its message complies with the Christian philosophy. However, the gap between consumerism and Christianity is broad and might be difficult to bridge. In this paper are investigated two aspects of church advertisements. The first aspect is the language and the second is the structure. The objective was to assess features typical of a church advertisement, determine the difference between a church advertisement and a commercial advertisement and the level of influence of the Christian ideology. It has been found that the subject of advertising, a church, influences the language of advertisements in respect to noung group and choice of adjectives. Persuasion is achieved by appeal to both emotional and rational side, depending on the type of reader. The strategy of persuasion in church advertising functions as in commercial advertising.

Keywords

domain, register, reklama, community, spolecenstvi, family, rodina, nabozenstvi, propagace, kulturni vliv, ideologie, advertising, advertisement, church, christian, ideology, USA, AIDA, faith, linguistics, symbol, space, commercial, commercial advertising, culture, protestantism, preecher, noun, verb, adjective, body copy, illustration, headline, influence

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 28. 5. 2007

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 15. 6. 2007
• Supervisor: PhDr. Jitka Vlčková, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Bachelor programme / field:
Philology / English Language and Literature